It’s a conundrum many sailors face at some point in their lives: you want a boat that will give you an exciting ride, something that will fly across the water and get the adrenalin pumping, cover your face in sea spray. But you know if you buy such a boat you’ll scare the living daylights out of your partner and/or children with the likely result that they’ll never sail with you again. And yet. Buying the slow, steady kind of boat that will prove reassuring to the less confident sailors in your family feels like giving up on your dream, like swapping your Laser for a caravan, your sailing trousers for a pair of corduroys, dolphins for sheep (not that there’s anything wrong with caravans, corduroys or sheep, of course).
Matt Newland at Swallow Yachts thinks he’s found a solution to this dilemma, and it all comes down to one thing: water ballast. The BayCruiser 23, which he designed back in
