RUSTLER 41

Bored of ordinary? Rustler's first-ever powerboat might be just the tonic you need...

- WORDS: Alex Smith

Having forged its reputation over the last 50-60 years through the creation of top-notch ocean-going sailing yachts, Rustler's first-ever motorboat has finally arrived. And we say finally because it's been quite a few years in the making.

The project originally began in response to customer requests for an easy, reliable seagoing motor yacht that would be simpler to handle and more stable to cruise on than a sailing yacht. But exactly how that would look remained open to question for a long spell while Rustler director, Adrian Jones, consulted with his customers, his inhouse staff, and a range of yacht designers.

Critically, he wanted to create something that would cater not for how we imagine we might use our boats, but for how we actually use them. As a small-scale semi-custom British builder, there was of course plenty of discussion about going semi-displacement like Dale or Duchy - but after a conversation with Tony Castro, it was decided that a planing hull with some extra beam would make better sense. After all, volume is useful on a modestly sized cruiser; and once you're up and running, the potential firmness of a planing vessel's relatively bulbous forward hull form tends to be mitigated by virtue of the fact that it’s skimming over (rather than ploughing through) the water's surface. And so in spite of its slow-grown heritage in Rustler’s artisan West Country workshop, the 41 became that rarest of things - a classical gentleman's launch with an authentic planing hull.

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