Lili 6.10

Jean-Yves Poirier

The combination of a waterline length of 20' and a low wetted surface area make Lili 6.10 a very good performer in light airs. For this downwind leg, both daggerboard-style leeboards are raised to decrease drag.

For 30 years, Gilles Montaubin of St. Maixent de Beugné, France, has been designing boats powered solely by sail and oars, all of them sharing much the same spirit: a combination of apparent simplicity and true efficiency. Lili 6.10 is the most recent illustration of this very unassuming man’s outlook on sailboat design.His views are informed by performance sailing, which for Montaubin originally sprang from his experience sailing with his father, an enthusiastic racing sailor. Far from the inspiration of traditional workboats of the French coastline, his work in this vein has resulted in a large family of contemporary “trekking” sailboats, all winners of various international “Raids”—PETIT JEAN in Portugal, LILI in Scotland, WABI in Finland, and PETITELISA in Sweden, all designs which take their names from the first boats built to them. These designs all have in common a similar hull shape, with a very fine waterline entry and a long flat run. They also share the same plywood-epoxy construction method, using two or three chines reinforced by ’glass-and-epoxy fillets, making the hulls not only light in weight but also easy and relatively cheap to build.