Take one family man who loves to race, but also wants to cruise with his family on a comfortable yacht. The result is the first of what we dubbed our ‘new generation’ of fast cruising yachts. Liara is 65 feet long and, although not extreme in any way, was the result of a painstaking examination of every aspect of her design to ensure a light, but strong and competitive yacht. In fact, she came in at a fully specified weight of 23,500 kilo’s which, when launched, was considerably lighter than all of the production yachts of a similar size we could find.

To prove the design the owner took her on the 2003 ARC only weeks after launching and won Racing Class A against stiff competition. In 2004 she came third against the stiffest competition – the two boats ahead of her where a Rabin 41 ULDB and a Volvo 60, and who would want to go cruising on those. Behind Liara,again in Racing Class A, came several Farr 65’s, another Volvo 60, a Baltic 78 and a Swan 86 to name but a few.

Liara’s owner has commissioned a new design from us, Liara II, which is also being built at Southern Ocean Marine(you can see more of her here). Some other designs of ours, which fall into our ‘new generation’ fast cruising yacht range, which now goes to 120ft are being marketed by Performance Yachts – more details here.