MAXI 1100

As an understated fast cruiser with racing potential and a nicely appointed interior, the Maxi 1100 has much to recommend her. David Harding reports

- David Harding

Finding a boat that offers the right combination of comfort and performance is rarely easy. Every boat is a compromise, and you have to choose your priorities. Then of course there’s the emotional element, which defies rational analysis. As Phil Nicholas, the happy owner of a Maxi 1100, puts it: ‘I’m mindful of the saying that unless you’re a ferryman or a fisherman you don’t need a boat. For us, it had to be a love affair.’

To some people, like Phil and his wife Julie, a boat’s appearance and what you feel for her are important. ‘When you look at so many modern boats with their towering topsides they’re really not elegant,’ he says. Few of us would disagree.

Given Phil and Julie’s enthusiasm for their boat, coupled with the amount of time they spend aboard and the number of miles they have covered, you might imagine that they had owned a number of yachts before buying Destiny. In fact they hadn’t. Julie’s uncle ran a sailing club on the Thames, where she sailed dinghies as a child, while Phil had owned a series of small motorboats between some early dinghy sailing before succumbing to the urge to buy a cruising yacht.

The Maxi proved to be that cruising yacht. Once the urge had lodged, Phil became ‘a serial boat-show goer’ even though, when he started, he was still several years away from taking the plunge.

‘I liked Beneteau’s First 31.7,’ he explains, ‘but I kept coming back to the Maxi 1100 for four or five years despite not being in a position to start looking seriously.’