The Cherubini-designed Hunter 25
Robert– The short answer is: it IS. The Hunter 25 was designed by John Cherubini, Sr., and Bob Seidelmann, in 1972-1973. The original boat had a very sleek-looking domed deck/'blister' cabin with fixed windows on about a 45-degree angle to the water (you sort of sat on them when on the rail and it was quite comfortable). The nonskid patches were painted powder blue but it was difficult to determine what ought to be considered 'deck' and what to be considered 'cabinside'. There were berths for five below including the main-cabin settee/berths' footwells sticking through the main bulkhead into the head compartment area, which was my own suggestion from the onset (but certainly not original). The forward berth had double teak louvred sliding doors to partition it from the full-width head compartment. Sail area was about 250 ft. IOR rating was 19.2 (quarter-ton was 18, so like most 25-footers, it missed). There were two keels available, the 'parallelogram' 4-ft-draught one and the 3-ft-deep version which looked like someone sat on the deeper one and crushed it vertically 12 inches (same lateral surface area, shorter height). One of the boat's most distinctive features was the pronounced pinched transom– probably about three feet wide, with the outboard bracket taking up all the room for your boat's name and home port. Around 1979 Hunter marketing decided the sleek domed deck was unpopular and had to go, and so the cosy little H-25 got a facelift– or in this case a skull-lift! The sleek domed deck was redesigned as a tidy little trunk cabin, using the after window from the 27, but there was still no standing headroom (how many 25-footers have it?) and so Hunter marketing decided on a pop-top, which was in vogue at the time among smaller trailerable boats (which of couse the Hunter 25 was not). The companionway was widened and a section of the cabin-top was made to lift up like that on the VW minibus or a camp trailer. Fortunately this did not last long, probably only in 1979 and then maybe in 1980 as an option. I have been seeing more of the fixed-head versions surviving lately than the pop-tops (which should have been obvious). Since moving to Florida Hunter seems to have had this thing for unseaworthy fads (i.e., water ballast, the 54's transom– don't get me started). They were lucky enough to have John Cherubini on salary to apply his aesthetic and practical interpretations of whatever Hunter dictated, and the resulting trunk-cabin 25s are as respectable looking as they could ever have been. A 1980 Hunter 25 is most definitely a Cherubini boat, having the little trunk cabin and possibly the pop-top. The hull remains the same and with the deep-draught keel is a pleasant-performing little boat. The nicest thing about it is that it was conceived as a yacht, not merely a daysailer, and I know of at least one guy who has put in serious ocean miles with one. I am sure that well cared-for, a Hunter 25 is as good offshore as in the sedate environs of the bays and gulfs which my father preferred but are probably too shallow for its keel anyway. J Cherubini II Cherubini Art & Nautical Design Org.
