Age comes to us all, and with it a certain softening of our midships. After almost 40 years of the Sun Odyssey line, you could be forgiven for thinking Jeanneau’s cruising boats are looking rather tubbier than they did in their younger days. Certainly, the usual dressing tricks have been used to disguise their growing beam – topside chines below the gunwales, bold hull stripes, and a rakish inverse bow all work their magic. Far from trying to hide their boats’ newfound width, however, Jeanneau is proud of the amount of beam they’ve managed to squeeze into the new Sun Odyssey 380, just as they have with her larger sisters, the 410, 440 and 490, all from the pen of the late Marc Lombard. You would also be wrong to suggest that the boat is just trying to squeeze in more volume for accommodation (though it certainly does) at the expense of sailing, and this is where the black magic invoked by naval architects comes into its own.
A wide boat doesn’t need as much weight in the keel to keep it mast-upwards and boats have been getting broader for years. A few problems arise with this, however. The wider the stern: the more the rudder lifts out when heeled, hence the move to twin rudders; the more asymmetric the waterline becomes when heeled, the more the bow sinks and unbalances the
