Power to the sailer

Imagine this for a morning on the water. You start by motoring down the river at 15 knots. There’s no speed restriction and you want to get out to sea – for a sail. Once clear of the river, you find a brisk south-westerly kicking up a steep chop over the bar, so you throttle back to 10 knots and punch your way through it. Then you speed back up to 12 knots as you skim across the waves in the bay.

In open water further offshore, you turn off the engine. Your boat sails better than many dedicated sailing boats of similar size that would be lucky to motor at 6 knots. They would still be on the way down the river or bouncing over the bar, probably drenching you in spray or green water, while you’re having a lovely sail.

Does this sound farfetched? Until recently it probably would. You might have managed the planing under power, albeit with a good deal of slamming and banging outside the river and wondering whether your rig was going to stand it. And then you could have sailed, but rather painfully and in a boat that was heavily compromised.

The morning on the water I describe is exactly how things happened during my test sail with Swallow Yachts’ Coast 250. Here is a boat that does what no other trailable monohull of her size (or at least none I have come across) has managed to do: to zip along under