When you’re looking for a second-hand boat, it’s often easy to imagine that there’s a pretty broad choice in any given category. After spending a while thinking about your priorities and seeing what’s available, however, you might come to realise that, in fact, there aren’t many at all.

That’s exactly what Trevor Card learned before buying his Bavaria 30 Cruiser last year. Trevor and his wife, Rhonda, had started looking and planning several years before they would be in a position to buy. ‘Our opinions kept changing as we went along’, explained Trevor. ‘We decided we weren’t likely to go very far – perhaps only as far as Brittany and a few other parts of the French coast. Now we have grandchildren too, so our priority was to find a boat designed for local cruising’.

Trevor and Rhonda started by looking at a range of possibilities, including the Westerly Konsort. ‘It’s a lovely boat, but didn’t have some of the things we wanted – not so much in terms of layout, but in other respects. We wanted wheel steering, and some of our essentials like an electric anchor windlass and a holding tank aren’t always easy to fit to older boats.’

On boats of the Bavaria’s age – Romah dates from 2006 – holding tanks are often fitted from new. And whereas some of us might see wheel steering as a drawback, especially on a boat of this size, Rhonda, in particular, preferred it to a tiller.

Light-airs performance is more than respectable for a high-volume cruising yacht. Photo: David Harding

It says something about the thoroughness of Trevor’s research that, for example, he identified the difficulties of fitting an electric anchor windlass to a Bavaria 30 Cruiser that didn’t already have one. Online research revealed that part of the moulding in the anchor well is changed during the construction if a windlass is fitted.

Apart from other Bavaria 30 Cruisers, the most likely alternative was the Moody S31. The Moody’s negative points were principally the deeper draught and lower headroom. Two S31s came under scrutiny from the Cards before they discovered a suitably-equipped Bavaria in the form of Romah, just up the harbour in Poole. She came with all the essentials on their list, including the windlass and holding tank. She also had the tandem keel, giving a draught of 4ft 6in (1.4m) as opposed to the fin-keeler’s 6ft 5in (1.95m).

The cockpit is a decent size, though much of it is occupied by the helm console and table. Photo: David Harding

Exploring the options

In the autumn of 2023, Romah moved about a mile down the harbour to her new home. She had been kept in Poole since new, and it now looks as though she’s going to be staying for a while longer.

For me as a journalist it was interesting to meet the Bavaria 30. I have tested a good number of Bavarias since the early 2000s, visited the factory, spoken with owners and surveyors and been privy to a fair few communications and discussions that never became public.

Article continues below…

Hanse 315 review

Hanse’s new smallest addition was designed to be affordable. Graham Snook tested her to see if she’s worth it…

£92,300.00

Hunter Channel 31: A sporty, solidly built cruiser

A solidly built cruiser with a sporty edge and twin-keel option, Hunter’s Channel 31 has been impressing since her launch…

Such experiences inevitably shape one’s expectations to some extent, though my encounters with Bavarias have become happier over time and, on this occasion, the boat acquitted herself very well despite being from an era when other Bavarias I tested didn’t always elicit unguarded praise.

Significantly, Romah came through her survey well in structural terms. She also looks in remarkably good condition for a boat getting on for 20 years old. The joinery has worn well and is both substantial and nicely finished.

The mainsheet applies a different angle of pull to the boom on opposite tacks. Otherwise the hardware and deck layout are broadly conventional. Photo: David Harding

Snagging list

Most of the points on the survey were unrelated to the basic structure. Trevor drew up a spreadsheet, with the surveyor’s and his own ‘urgent’ points at the top, followed by ‘recommended items’ and then ‘improvements’. Replacing the rudder-tube seal was near the top of the list. Trevor also replaced the bolt through the rudder stock above the cockpit sole, making it captive to prevent the rudder dropping out of the bottom of the boat. It had attempted such an escape under the previous ownership, being thwarted only by the steering quadrant.

Another major job, not urgent but carried out while the boat was still ashore over the winter, was sand-blasting to remove the built-up layers of old antifouling. Everything else on the list, urgent or otherwise, was in the realms of the ‘not unexpected’, from replacing the lower section of the backstay to changing the anode on the saildrive leg, remedial work on seacocks, replacing the calorifier and leaky plastic pipework connections, and general work on the electrical and mechanical systems.

A tandem keel was an option seen on a good number of Bavaria 30 Cruisers. Photo: David Harding

The bill for everything on top of the purchase price came to £7,000, give or take a few pennies and not including the work that Trevor did himself (or with a little help from boating friends who had woodworking skills to supplement his own). That included cutting the port side of the fixed saloon table and converting it into a folding leaf so it became less of a squeeze around the port side of the saloon.

More joinery-work was undertaken in the forecabin, where reaching the log and echo sounder transducers had meant lifting the mattress and bunk-top and diving in head first. Making a removable panel in the aft end of the berth allowed much easier access.

Worth the effort

After a winter of working methodically through a lengthy list, Trevor was finally ready to launch. But how would Romah sail? Having chartered slightly larger Bavarias of similar age, Trevor had some idea of what to expect and had no real concerns on the sailing and handling front. The biggest unknown was the effect of the tandem keel, an option that became popular on cruising yachts from the late 1980s thanks to the creative design of Warwick Collins.

Some of us sailed boats with original Collins tandem keels, which were fitted to a number of production yachts including Sadlers. They later spawned keels in similar vein from other builders, Etap and Bavaria among them. Wings were incorporated in some, while others, like Bavaria’s, had a bulb beneath the two vertical sections of foil.

Plenty of instrument space by the wheel, which is pushed well aft to maximise cockpit space. Photo: David Harding

Bavaria offered deep and shallow fins as well as the tandem on the 30, the lure of the tandem being that it promised better performance than a conventional keel of similar draft combined with less draught than a deep fin (nearly 2ft/0.55m less in this case).

Hoping for northerlies

By the time we went out for our sail, Trevor had only had an opportunity to sail Romah a couple of times, and then in fairly light winds, so we were hoping that the forecast 10-13 knots of northerly would appear. Not enough to push the boat hard, it should at least have allowed us to generate 15-17 knots over the deck upwind. Rhonda was unable to join us, so we recruited Mindy, a Parkstone Wayfarer sailor who also owns a Moody 34 with her husband, as a useful extra pair of hands.

The substantial, nicely finished interior woodwork still looks good after nearly 20 years. Photo: David Harding

As seems to be the norm these days, the weather gods failed to read the Met Office’s predictions and we were eventually met with 8-12 knots from the south (nothing to do with a sea-breeze, because it was far too cold and early in the season for that). It still got us moving along at 4-5 knots at times and tacking through just under 100° in the relatively flat water.

We had no weed on the bottom to hold us back, though the fixed two-bladed prop would have done little to help and there are very few cruising boats that wouldn’t benefit from newer sails. Getting Romah into a fully-functional state over the winter had been no mean achievement, and I’ve seen many worse sails, so I let Trevor off on the sail front and gave vent instead to my feelings about fixed propellers.

Despite the prop-drag and being slightly stern-heavy (as Bavaria 30 Cruisers are known to be), Romah slipped along willingly and seemed nicely balanced. The feel through the wheel was direct and the helming position – right aft, to maximise cockpit space – was comfortable enough.

All the essentials at the chart table, including space for instruments. Photo: David Harding

To simplify short-handed sailing, the self-tailing Lewmar 30s are on the aft end of the coamings within easy reach of the wheel.

What you don’t have within easy reach of the wheel is the mainsheet. It’s taken from the middle of the boom to strong points on deck forward of the companionway, then to the mast and back along the starboard side to a coachroof winch.

It’s a commonly seen arrangement I have never liked, especially on boats that broach at the slightest provocation. If you’re behind the wheel and your crew is absent or not fully alert, you can’t instantly dump the sheet when you need to bear away or when a gust hits.

While we had no opportunity to push Romah that hard, I suspect the Bavaria 30 might be more tolerant than some on the broaching front, especially with the deep fin keel that gives a pretty generous draught for a 30-footer, even if the rudder is the same depth whichever keel you have.

A conventional peninsular galley with generous fiddles and good stowage. Photo: David Harding

Form and function

Systems and hardware on deck are conventional on the whole. It was good to see towing cars for the genoa, and a backstay purchase that would have some effect if you heaved hard enough. Not everything is conventional about the rig. The mast is stepped a long way forward, as was common practice on Bavarias of that era, leading to a notably skinny foretriangle.

I would imagine the mast position was determined by the length of the cockpit and companionway, and the mainsheet position too. One unusual aspect of the rig is the ‘semi-intermediate’ shrouds that run from the tips of the spreaders to roughly the mid-point between the spreader roots and the hounds, presumably to add support to what is a fairly tall mast for one of moderately slim section with a single set of spreaders.

As was the norm on cruising yachts of this era, the genoa has a moderate overlap and the shroud base is inboard to ensure a sufficiently narrow sheeting angle. Other features consistent with her age are the slight rake to the stem and the sugar-scoop in the transom.

Back at the wheel, the helm console is part of a large moulding that also incorporates the table. Bavaria were known for using the same fittings and equipment on boats of widely differing sizes to standardise production, and it’s easy to imagine this moulding being quite at home on a model several feet longer.

An exceptionally roomy heads for a boat of this size, complete with holding tank. Photo: David Harding

Below decks

This is where the Bavaria 30 has always won friends. She’s roomy and nicely woody down below, with chunky joinery that’s generally well finished. It used to be a standing joke among journalists that the man with the sealant gun was the busiest chap in the Bavaria factory, but seemingly he used it more sparingly on the 30 than on some other models.

One feature of Bavarias that separates them from most production cruisers from large-scale builders is the absence of interior mouldings to form much of the interior. Joinery units have always been bonded directly to the hull, and in my book that’s a big plus because it minimises wasted space and allows easier access to the hull and skin fittings.

Access to the deckhead is possible too, because it’s covered by removable, vinyl-covered plywood panels.

In terms of layout, it’s much as you would expect on a boat from the early 2000s, complete with a decent chart table. Headroom is 6ft (1.83m) almost throughout, berths are a sensible length and stowage is pretty good.

An overlapping headsail calls for inboard chainplates to maintain a reasonable sheeting angle. Photo: David Harding

BAVARIA 30 CRUISER SPECIFICATIONS

DESIGNER: J&J
BUILT: 2005-2007
PRICE: £38,000-£52,000
LOA: 9.45m/31ft 0in
LWL: 8.25m/27ft 0in
BEAM: 3.29m/10ft 10in
DRAUGHT Deep fin: 1.95m (6ft 5in)
DRAUGHT Tandem: 1.40m/4ft 6in
DISPLACEMENT: 4,400kg/9,700lb
BALLAST: 1,100kg/2,425lbs
SAIL AREA: 48.6m2/523ft2

Enjoyed reading this?

A subscription to Yachting Monthly magazine costs around 40% less than the cover price, so you can save money compared to buying single issues.

Print and digital editions are available through Magazines Direct – where you can also find the latest deals.

YM is packed with information to help you get the most from your time on the water.

• • • Take your seamanship to the next level with tips, advice and skills from our experts
    • Impartial in-depth reviews of the latest yachts and equipment
    • Cruising guides to help you reach those dream destinations

Follow us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.