Buyers Guide to 6m GRP Cabin

When it came to boats around 6m, popular choices were the Fi Glass Viscount, Bonito 20, Cresta Craft V19, Morgan 6.3, Smuggler 6.3 and Haines Hunter V198. One thing they all had in common is they were open cockpit cabin boats. Hardtops didn’t exist at this time.

As the years rolled on and aluminium boats made their mark, the development of the hardtop started and today any alloy boat over 6m and fibreglass boats over 6.5m is likely to have a hardtop. Certainly, it’s rare to find a boat bigger than 7m that isn’t covered over.

The fibreglass boat manufacturers, however, were not to be left behind and before long we started to see grp boats with hardtops. Some of the earliest examples looked a little like Dr Who’s police call box, as manufacturers simple added a hardtop to the existing windscreen line and it didn’t always look that great.

But as time went on they have morphed into practical and aesthetically pleasing designs and most today have been planned from the start with the hardtop styling in mind. While early models were just alterations on top of the wrap around windscreen, these days the hardtop, screen and deckline are all married into one stylish design that looks right from any angle. Like their alloy counterparts, most grp trailer boats over 6.5m are sold as hardtop models.

However, it is not what everyone wants and there are still plenty of choices if you are in the market for an open cockpit cabin boat. Locally you have a choice which includes a couple of local brands now made in China, one from the US and the rest kiwi designed and produced. Missing from the list is Rayglass, which last year dropped the Legend 2150, their only open boat from their range. All Legends are now hardtops.

What we started out looking at were boats that had a true hull length of 6m, which doesn’t include all the overhangs such as bowsprit and portofino stern. Well if we stuck to that we would have ended up with only a couple of boats. So we rejigged it to include boats that we consider if you are in the market for a ‘6m’ open cabin boat, then these would be the boats to consider.

Overall lengths vary from 6.91m down to 5.91m, which while a significant difference, it’s surprising just how much length there is in some bowsprits and Portofino sterns. When it comes to actual hull length or LOH, we tried to get boats with an actual hull length around 6m, but then again there was a couple of outsiders either way. All the boats on the list are marketed into that broadly described “6m market” but it’s not until you compare one with another that you realise the difference.