Average White Boat - just another identical white plastic lozenge with navy blue stackpack and roller genoa. Looks shiny at first, but turns out to be flimsy and not cope well with bad weather. Interior looks like the show home for a loft-living development, but as soon as the wind picks up you fall across the acres of laminate flooring and smash the chipboard galley lockers.
The alternative is a Manky Auld Boat - thirty years old, heavy, built strictly for sailing with onboard life an afterthought. Can look nice from the outside, but the inside is a damp hole complete with decades of questionable DIY modifications and a stink of spilled diesel and mildew that will cause instant seasickness even at its drying mooring (this boat probably doesn't do marinas). The galley is well suited to heating up tins of stew during a three-day gale, but there's no door to the toilet.
Both terms are stereotypes, with some bits based on a grain of truth and others merely prejudice. Don't take either too seriously
Looks it to me, the white is the first clue.
I think you will find that science has been a key element of boat design for a very long time. Early grp boats were designed according to the same science as their wooden immediate predecessors. It was only once the remarkable engineering properties of these new materials became better understood that designers started to create the modern designs we now recognise as the AWB. Social and economic factors were also important for the emergence of these designs I think.I always think a good way to think about it is that AWBs are designed with science rather than romance as the primary motivation but I'm about to get flamed for that no doubt by people who prefer the idea that old boats are somehow better in rough weather
Nope, that's a MAB alright. Whatever you do don't spoil its resale value by giving it a complete coat of antifoul - the patched look you have there is perfect and similar to the one sported by my own boat in fact...
