North America's largest sailing brand: Hunter, which builds more than 3,000 sailboats a year, and has been a market leader in North America for its heavy-duty Keelboats, in addition to light sailboats for general sports and recreation (and has also achieved excellent results in Europe).
Because the Hunter brand has been building sailboats in the U.S. for more than 37 years, the company has developed a highly successful manufacturing model that effectively reduces manufacturing costs. Because most modern sailboats are made of fibreglass, it takes a lot of labour to make the fibreglass coatings. The biggest cost of a boat is usually the cost of labour. The brand is still made in the USA, but it has competitive boat prices, why? Because it will be modular with some reusable equipment such as Galley galley equipment, Head toilets, some storage space and furniture. Making it easy to use the same modules for most different sized boats. Secondly, the production of the hulls also gets rid of the traditional manufacturing of the frame again for each boat, manually attaching several layers of fibreglass cloth, manually applying epoxy resin, using a manufacturing master mould, injection moulding to create the core of the hull, and then machine spraying the epoxy resin using a skilled workforce to reduce the manual handling time and manufacturing time. This can effectively reduce costs. Of course, there has to be a large demand for this behaviour and mass production to make it happen.
Despite the reduction in production costs, Hunter Yachts (Hunter) still maintains a consistently high quality. All the equipment on board is well branded and reputable, such as Lewmar, Harken, Raymarine and so on. One of the most unusual aspects of the company's sailboats is their B&R Rig and Arch mount traveler, a design where the steel cables holding the mast to the hull are angled at 120 instead of the traditional 90 degree angle, thus avoiding the need for fixed cables at the back of the boat and increasing the mainsail area. As a result, the helm, which controls the movement of the mainsail, can also be changed to an arch above the driver's seat to increase ease of movement on deck. These two features are not seen by any other sailboat builder in the world.
Another feature of Hunter Yachts is that the boat is slow... But that makes sense. It's primarily aimed at people who like to cruise at a leisurely pace, so it's designed to be easy to manoeuvre, with a luxurious interior that allows you to live comfortably aboard, at the relative expense of a little speed. But it is no slower than most sailing boats.
Currently, the Hunter Yachts (Hunter) brand has a very complete range of products, and the boat models are updated every year. Its current lineup is divided into the Recreational Sports Daysailers series (15-22 feet for recreational sports in shore-safe waters), theEdge Motorsailer, MidSize Keelboats (from 27 to 38 feet), Large Cruisers (from 39 to 50 feet), and the Centers Cockpit Centre Driving Position categories.
