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Nili of Hamburg
by Chris Price

Nili is a 48-foot (14.85 metre) Reinke design, built in Hamburg by the owner. 

It took eight years to finish building the boat, working at weekends. Now the labour of love is complete and 'Nili' is berthed at Horta harbour, on Faial, in the island group of the Azores. The islands, way out in the Atlantic, belong to Portugal and are a great favourite with voyaging sailors.

The hull is built from aluminium alloy, and there are many interesting features. 
The most obvious, of course, is the inward-curving top strake of the hull. It's quite rare to see this - or so one might have thought, if there wasn't another very similar one just across the harbour. 

The design is a single chine, fully framed, flush deck, centre cockpit, twin-keeler.


We really liked the slutter rig with self-tacker, or to put that another way, the sloop-cutter / cutter-sloop / modern cutter headstay configuration, which is gaining in popularity. 

This a type of twin-headstay setup where the inner stay is the main working forestay, and the outer stay usually carries a large light genoa. Of course, there's nothing new under the sun, so this layout may well be donkey's years old, but in (fairly) recent times it seems to have been seen first on the Vertue. 

There are a lot of variations on it, with the two stays often parallel and anything from 150 mm (6 inches) to a metre (3 feet) or more apart. 
The self-tacking jib on its curved track saves a lot of work when short tacking. 

The engine is a beefy Mercedes OM314 80 hp diesel. This is a sensible size of engine to install, when many owners admit to motoring for a large percentage of time at sea. The big advantage of the centre cockpit layout below decks is the separate aft cabin; although the stern looks quite fine here, there is still plenty of room for a decent sized cabin due to the length of the boat. 

One big advantage of home builds is that a boat can be prepared for a specific purpose, as against production boats, which are often very difficult to modify for passagemaking. Take the cockpit seats here, for instance. They have been built with very tall backs for comfort on long voyages. How could this sort of modification be done to a production boat? 

Some more clever custom features in the cockpit include, for example, the small bars welded across the corners for lifeline hooks. 
All the sailing instruments are protected under the sprayhood. There is a sensible solid windscreen - why fit a plastic one which you can't see out of after three months, when the plan is to leave it up permanently, and never take it down? There are strong vertical grab-bars by the companionway, which also support the windscreen frame. 

A clear perspex main hatch allows for plenty of light below, even when the hatch has to be in - although perhaps it's made from a polycarbonate, in which case it would probably be Makrolon, as the boat hails from Germany, this being the trade name for it there, like Lexan in the US. 

The steering position is well forward, protected by the sprayhood. 
This is, perhaps, the only feature with which one might argue, since it restricts access to the main hatch. Why not simply extend the sprayhood aft? Still, you build your boat, and arrange things the way that seems to make sense at the time. If it doesn't work out, on a metal boat it's easy enough to make changes later. 

On deck, we noted the tall 3-wire lifelines, the granny bars (or mast pulpits), to keep you secure while working at the mast, the pulpit, and pushpit, all stainless and mounted in sockets, making them easily removable. 

There are plenty of heavy mooring cleats and, to finish off, up at the front, the cathead bowsprit with a handy-looking bugelanker (loop-handled anchor) - which has about the best reputation of any anchor around. 

A lot of thought went into the fitting-out of this boat. It's built to go places.

Our thanks to Chris for furnishing us with this article and the accompanying photographs.
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