Boat test – RM1380
The buying public can be very conservative when it comes to buying a yacht. If it doesn’t have a glassfibre hull, one mast and two triangles of sails, most people aren’t interested. It wasn’t always so. Back in the not so distant past wild-eyed men (yes, it was generally men) with wild hair often had wild ideas about what would make for the perfect yacht. The results were sometimes imperfect but they were always hmmm.. interesting. One of the only real survivors of this era is RM Yachts, which is unique in being the only boatbuilder mass producing yachts in epoxy ply. This company has been on the go building fast cruiser/racers since 1989 which has given it a lot of time to move from the ‘hmm.. interesting’ phase into the ‘hmmm.. this is actually very good’ phase. And yes, it is French – of course it's bloody well French. The country that brought you the Etch a Sketch, the Citroen DS and Alain Bombard – a man prepared to drink his own urine in order to prove his rubber dinghy was good – was always going to be the one that dared to be different.
So before we move on to the RM1380, its latest and largest fast cruiser, it’s worth
