A great yacht to live aboard and easy to sail, some practical advice for sailors...
The booking was iniated through GlobeSailor and Victoria was excellent and easy to communicate with. We chartered the Hanse from Cogolin and arrived to find boat well prepared and clean by the charter company. We are a family of 5 and found the Hanse to be a well laid out boat and for her size offered a lot of space with 3 double cabins. We loved the bathing platform and twin wheels which gave plenty of cockpit space. We were also pleased that a dinghy and outboard motor were included. The fridge worked well and the batteries were able to cope with a long days use without engine charging. Overall from a life on board perspective we give her 10/10. From a sailing perspective we give her 8/10 as she was under-powered in up to 15 knots of wind because she had a very small self tacking headsail. The motor (20hp) was also a bit under-powered for longer motoring passages and we managed 5.5 knots at 2,500 rpm. (I would recommend 40hp for a yacht this size). Navigation equipment was great and the Garmin chart plotter worked well. One down side is that the life jackets are the large bulky bouyancy aid types and while they meet the French safety requirements are totally impractical to be worn when sailing or using a dinghy at night. I would recommend bringing your own wearable lifejackets. So overall we were really pleased and had a lot of fun !