Two brand new British builds splashed last week, the GT35 (above) and the Broadblue Rapier 550. They may not be familiar names to all yet, but they represent a continued growing demand for British built boats. A Rustler 37 (Falmouth), a renewed Discovery 58 (Southampton) and a BayCruiser 25 from Swallow Boats in Wales are also new designs due for launch this summer.

The GT35 is the first offering from a new venture called GT Yachts. The company aims to produce a range of family cruisers, designed by Stephen Jones and built by Windboats, an east coast yard who have spent the last few decades building Oysters. GT are looking to fill a gap in the 35-50ft market of discerning buyers looking for pure cruising yachts of high quality. Their principles include seaworthiness, safety and comfort – the 35 seems sensible and well built over revolutionary. A 39 and a 45 footer are already in the pipeline. See www.gtyachts.com for more

The Rapier 550 on the other hand is certainly revolutionary! She has been built by the Dazcat team at Cornish yard Multimarine, led by Darren Newton. A modern fast cruising catamaran, with dreadnought bows, a hard edge profile and liberal use of tinted glass, the 550 is also fairly radical in concept. She is a long distance performance cat, designed to be sailed single-handedly from inside. The vast glass superstructure houses enormous living space plus an internal steering station – so running rigging is all led to a winch pit surrounding the mastbase, forward of the saloon.

A sail load monitoring system has been designed to give the option of automatically reducing sails according to rig load using powered reverse winches at this internal steering station.

Broadblue are promoting fast, dry, shorthanded passage-making potential, with the prospect of 350nm per day passages.

See www.broadblue.com for more.