Sailing Magazine

Malö 37
Bluewater cruiser

This month we have four real cruising boats. By “real” I mean these four boats are not intended to be anything but cruising boats. You might enter a casual PHRF race from time to time in one of these boats just to hone your skills but given the current crop of racing boats and racer-cruisers it would not be much fun regardless of how generous your rating was. But the sailing world needs cruising boats and the hybrid types often lack the essentials that make a cruising boat successful. These essentials include minor details like stability, tankage and stowage volume.

I’ll line these boats up by LOA. Obviously the longer boats will and should be the most comfortable in terms of accommodations. But factors like cost, moorage and overall ease of handling often focus the search for a cruiser on the smaller boats. This Malö 37 is small enough to be an easy boat to handle while being roomy enough to offer cruising comfort and enough tankage to be independent for extended periods.

We are going to look a little harder at some numbers this month. The D/L of the Malö is 227. Call that moderate. The L/B is 3.27 if you go with the “classic” transom treatment with its additional LOA, and 3.197 if you chose the reverse transom/swim step stern. If you go with the longer LOA you gain lazarette space but you lose the swim step. I prefer the look of the classic stern but I’m sure on those days when I am not feeling so acrobatic I think the swim step would be well appreciated. I avoid discussing ballast-to-displacement ratios. There are just too many variables in that simple ratio to tell us much. But this month with four very similar boats, in concept anyway, I will compare B/Ds. The Malö has a B/D of 35 percent. Just for fun I have also taken the DWL as a function of LOA so we can see how DWL is being stretched for sailing length and interior volume by the reduction of overhangs.

The DWL/LOA of the Malö is 84 percent. The hull lines are fairly generic. That is, there is nothing particularly distinct in the hull shape. The sections are rounded. The forefoot is V-ed and the half-angle of entry is 25 degrees, which we would call full. With 37 feet of LOA to work with some performance elements may need to be compromised to make sure the rest of the picture all fits. So in this case I am not using the word “compromise” in a negative sense. It is interesting that each of these cruising designs has a spade rudder on a short, partial skeg.

The layout is simple. There is a large quarterberth to port adjacent to an adequate head. The galley is tight and it appears to me that the icebox/reefer volume is minimal. I like the sit-down chart table and the opposing settee and dinette. The forward stateroom is quite spacious. I don’t think you can do much more in 37 feet and still have a lazarette, and cruisers need a large lazarette.

This is a good-looking boat. I like the tall fractional rig with the mast well forward. A working jib and a storm jib will get the job done. The SA/D is 16.56. This is short but this number will pay off when you have 25 knots on the nose and you are not in the mood for a reef. The mainsail is sheeted to a short traveler on top of the forward raked arch. I suspect the arch and the fixed windshield join up with fabric to make a semi-hard dodger.

The anchor roller is set into the stem and led to the windlass in a deep anchor locker on the foredeck. If I had to pick on something on this deck I would complain that there are only three hatches including the companionway hatch. The other two hatches look to be minimal in size. The chainplates are inboard. The cockpit is on the small side but it has a T-shape to the well so it will be very comfortable to steer the boat.