ORANGE PUNCH

SAFFIER NOW BRINGS A HIGHER LEVEL OF QUALITY AND EASY SAILING - SO IS THIS THE NEW NAME IN THE LUXURY PERFORMANCE GAME?

- TOBY HODGES

Conjure an image of a contemporary performance monohull, and it'll likely be a Swan, Grand Soleil, X-Yacht or something similar (the original Solaris 50 from 2015 springs to my mind). These all hail from pedigree yards, which specialise in cruising or cruiser-racer yachts. And their latest iterations are polished reworkings of that well-established theme and layout, often with a liberal sprinkling of Italian cosmetics.

However, 2025 brings a hot new face, a brash-looking design that could steal the show - and did just that at its Düsseldorf premiere in January. This yacht is from a daysailer specialist that wants to bring some of its easy short-handed methodology to this luxury fast cruising arena. We put this theory to the test sailing the new SL46 from Saffier's hometown of Ijmuiden to examine how virtually all operations are - or can be - controlled solo from the helm. Saffier has integrated many clever ideas to enable this mix of elegant comfort and ease (including a surprise favourite feature, which I'll come to later). It's also clear the yard wanted to bring its premium build quality to the fore.

Such a venture sparks questions about moving into a much larger and more competitive sphere when it has established a niche and cornered the worldwide market in daysailers. And why this shape, weight and (formidable) price? Thankfully, we had the day to find out the answers! To be given the time, resources, sail inventory and even sublime sailing conditions to really appreciate and get under the vinylester skin of such a yacht is rare.

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