New boats: the 5 trends from the Cannes Yachting Festival

The boat show season opened with the Cannes Yachting Festival, and our editorial staff beat the docks in the hunt for news and trends. It is not a boom season for new models, although there is no shortage of newly launched boats, but we also found insights into several trends, design and market, that are affecting the sailing world.

1 – The huge noses of midsize boats.

In the world of pure cruising boats, the search for space is a mantra for shipyards, which must respond to market demand for increasingly comfortable boats. One of the key elements of this process is becoming the deckhouse, which especially in the 10-12 meter range always has important dimensions. Often at the expense is the cockpit, which becomes shorter but leaves more room for the interior. On the 11-meter pure cruisers we now have practically 2 meters of height in the saloon, slightly less in the forward cabin, this is due to the generous size of the deckhouses.

2 – The cockpit table becomes double

The outdoor table is a must for cruising boats, which now mount it fixed, or at most lowerable to the level of the benches. What’s new is that now the cockpit table can be made into two, especially on boats 40 feet and up. Not a central table, which makes circulation on board more cumbersome, but two half tables serving both cockpit benches.

3- Rationalize production

The post covid has seen the yards cope with a major growth in orders accompanied by the release of many new models. Now comes the time to rationalize the range, targeting the most successful models to keep longer in production or updating them. It is precisely the latter that is the phenomenon of “MK IIs,” so-called improved second versions of a successful boat, an operation that especially Nordic shipyards like to do, and which is seen similar in the automotive world.

4 – The advance of furling mainsails

From 50′ feet up, pure cruisers do not disregard the furling mainsail. The future Swan 51 in the Comfort version will also have it in the mast, as is the case with many other boats in the cruising segment. Slightly less widely used are the furling mainsails inside the boom, but still present, while Lagoon will be launching on upcoming models a special system that works through boom rotation.

5 – Increasingly round prunes

The trend is clear, cruisers have increasing bow width. At one time this was the “skinniest” area of the boat, today anything but. Cruising boats narrow only at the extreme bow, immediately opening up the width in a major way. And the forward cabins become more and more spacious.