What do Russell Crowe and yachting have to do with one another? No, it’s not “Master and Commander.” Every time I look at a Wauquiez 35 Pretorien I hear his guttural shout from “Gladiator” in my head: “Pretorien!” Cue swordplay.
We first became familiar with the Pretorien through another blog frequently featured on Three Sheets, SV Estrellita 5.10b. Her owners, Carol and Livia, put a considerable amount of detail about their preparations and outfitting the boat on the blog, and on the whole appear to be pretty happy with their selection. Since we have no experience whatsoever in selecting boats for cruising we’ve been cribbing from those who do, so when a Pretorien came up for sale in Seattle recently, we took a look.
The Pretorien is not exactly a swashbuckling boat, but it is a well-respected and widely lauded world cruiser in an affordable and manageable package. Like the C&Cs we looked at recently, the 35 is not actually 35 feet, but instead a shade over 37 feet long.
The Pretoriens were ’80s era boats and they look it today; traditional interiors, IOR-influenced lines, blister-prone hulls. Nonetheless, there is much to recommend them: heavy construction with attention to detail, stick-built interiors, thoughtful galley layout, voluminous storage. A plus or minus, depending on your perspective, was their relatively early adoption of saildrive propulsion… though this increases usable interior space and reduces drag, the early implementations were prone to corrosion and have a reputation of being difficult to maintain.
Michael Locatell, the broker representing the Pretorien we looked at, earns a spot on our gold list for local brokers: the original Wauquiez dealer in the Pacific Northwest, he is intimately familiar with the boats, the construction process, and with Henri Wauquiez himself. Vastly knowledgeable about sailboats in general, Locatell is happy to discuss not only the Wauquiez models but to share his experiences with other boats to compare and contrast the relative strengths. His practical and unbiased counsel are valuable enough, but what cemented our opinion of him was what happened when we asked a follow-up question about the length the day after we viewed the boat: he went down and measured her directly, bow-rail to stern, making a very accurate job of it despite numerous difficulties.
Unfortunately, that length was a bit of a problem for us… our current slip is 36 feet, putting this particularly Pretorien about three inches long. We’re not entirely averse to moving up a slip size, but it seems like a waste for a lousy three inches that is entirely unusable rail.
By itself, that seems a pretty trifling objection to a proven world-cruiser under six figures and over thirty feet. But maybe it’s the “world-cruiser” part itself that is part of the problem; we are just not world cruising people, and there is a lot of valuable world-cruising character built into these boats that detracts in other ways from our ideal picture. I wanted badly to like the Pretorien, but she is no more than number three or four on our running list of potential boats, Russell Crowe notwithstanding.
Our scorecard on the Pretorien 35:
Performance
Despite the IOR influence, the Pretoriens are known more for their strength and stability than their fleetness of foot. This has been particularly driven home for us as we’ve closely followed the adventures of Pretorien owners Carol and Livia as they make their way across the great expanse of the Intertropical Convergence Zone. They’ll be glad if they catch a blow, I’m sure, but blows are the exception rather than the rule. We’d like something with a little more get-up-and-go to it.
Layout
The interior is pretty much the same as every other interior, which is to say, nothing to write home about. The aft cabin is no more than serviceable, the large table along the centerline is obstructive, the head is well-forward and there is no dedicated wet locker. It’s small, but then there is quite a bit of storage and you have to pick one or the other in a 36ish foot vessel. The absence of an interior liner is unusual in our spectrum of potential purchases, and is a plus for accessibility and maintenance. Still, the interior didn’t exactly set our hearts afire.
Storage
The boat has a lot of good storage, including a deep but accessible cockpit locker. The icebox looked a little small but that’s typical of the era.
Compromises
The Pretorien may be the most well-rounded boat we have looked at yet, which is no surprise considering her reputation as a reliable, but affordable, world cruiser.