Jeanneau NC 1095

Step aboard the boat at the starboard-side opening gunwale door, walk through the air-conditioned salon, and head directly down the companionway stairs to see what we mean. There, at the bottom of the stairway, you’ll have two doors to your left, one straight ahead and a fourth door to your right. One of those doors, of course, leads to the head. That’s the one forward and to port. Swing it open and you’ll note a roomy compartment with a separate stall shower, which is a bit surprising, as many cruisers in this class have a wet head.

The real shocker, however, comes when you start opening the other doors. As you’d expect, the one straight ahead slides open to reveal the master stateroom. This is a relatively uncomplicated stateroom, with a walkaround pedestal queen berth (the front flips up to access a large stowage compartment), a hanging locker and additional stowage compartments along the sides. But, what lies behind those other two doors? There’s no possible way a 34-foot, 5-inch LOA could actually house three private staterooms, is there?

Open one, then the other, to arrive at an emphatic “yes.” Thanks to the use of outboards, Jeanneau was free to carve out a vast amount of space from underneath the salon to create living quarters. While most boats of this size would use that space as an open mid-cabin berth, the NC 1095 offers a pair of nearly parallel cabins with small standing headroom spaces forward and low-headroom berth space stretching aft. True, these staterooms are minimal. Step in, close the door, and you have just enough room to turn around forward of the berth. In the portside cabin there’s also a small seat, and both rooms have a small hanging locker as well. But, when it comes to sleeping quarters, do you really need much more? Besides, how many other boats of this size can provide you with three private staterooms? I can’t think of a single one.

One more note about the starboard-side cabin: It has a stowage compartment forward of the berth that’s sized to contain a refrigerator. When long-distance cruising is in the plans and you don’t need a third stateroom, this space can also function as a bulk stowage and pantry area.

Head back upstairs to check out the salon, and you’ll see a much more traditional arrangement. There’s a galley aft of the helm to starboard, with a two-burner cooktop, a refrigerator, sink and stowage spaces. A dinette is on the port side. Flip down the dinette leaf, grab the forward seatback, and pull; the backrest slides, the seat base adjusts with it, and that aft-facing dinette seat suddenly becomes a forward-facing passenger’s seat.

That’s nifty design work, but it’s not nearly as cool as what you’ll discover when you take the helm, pull away from the dock, and start revving the pair of 300-hp outboards on the transom. While sea trialing this boat, the biggest eye-opener came as we sat in the salon, cruising down Maryland’s South River at just over 30 mph.

Or, maybe we should say it was the biggest ear-opener. Since those engines are all the way back there on the transom — instead of living in the belly of the boat as with inboard-powered cruisers — the salon is amazingly quiet. In fact, four of us were able to hold a conversation at perfectly normal speaking volume while running full-tilt. 

Speaking of full-tilt: The NC 1095 broke 43 mph at wide-open throttle. It’s true that fuel burn at that pace is rather significant at 54 gallons per hour, but at more reasonable cruising speeds the boat maintains better than a mile to the gallon. Besides, few cruisers give you this sportboat-like ability in the first place. If you want to plaster a grin across every face aboard, trust us, nailing the throttles and pulling a few hard S-turns will get the job done.

I noticed one other thing during the sea trial which can’t go unmentioned, and that’s exceptional stability. The waters were calm when we were on the boat, but we did run in several sets of boat wakes, we stopped and drifted beam-to, and we tried everything we could to get the boat rocking and rolling. Thanks to a low center of gravity, sound hull design, and a high beam-to-length ratio, the NC 1095 is much more stable than one would expect.

Jeanneau also displays some clever thinking in the cockpit. In a page borrowed from the NC 895, the aft settee is mounted on tracks. This allows you to push it all the way aft to the outboards and enjoy maximum cockpit space while the boat’s in use. When it’s time to moor up at the end of the day, you pull the release pins, slide the settee forward, and there’s enough space aft to tilt the outboards all the way up and out of the water. This is a fantastically smart arrangement, which could be made even smarter with the installation of a fail-safe or warning mechanism to prevent tilting the engines if you forget to first slide the settee out of the way.

More smart designs can be spotted up on the bow, where a pair of loungers with flip-up backrests flank the overhead hatches in the cabin top. Sure, you expected to see those loungers, which many modern cruisers feature. But Jeanneau also added an integrated stowage compartment in the bow. Pull out the rings, flip the top up, and you’ll find a set of filler cushions that bridge the space between the two loungers, transforming the entire cabin top into one big sunpad.

The bottom line? The Jeanneau NC 1095 has a great combination of features you don’t commonly find in cruisers of this size. Between the triple staterooms, sporty handling, and maximization of usable exterior space, it exceeds expectations in a number of ways. 

DEALERS
Central Marine Midland 
centralmarine.ca
855-226-1306

Traverse Bay Marine
traversebaymarine.com 
231-943-4400

Larsen Marine 
larsenmarine.com
847-336-5456