Multihull Sailing News

The fifth annual Caribbean Multihull Challenge will begin in just over a month with a record number of boats on the start line. “From a high of 18 boats in 2022, we hope to come closer to the high 20s for this coming event,” says Stephen Burzon, the event’s volunteer director of ...read more

AIM Marine Group's newest magazine will hit newsstands and your mailbox this fall! Multihull Power & Sail will feature articles on ways to enjoy the multihull lifestyle, the latest models from the world's multihull builders, the best cruising grounds for multihulls, outfitting ...read more

For sailors of a certain age, the entire concept of a mulithull is cutting edge. However, even a cursory glance at a harbor full of cats and tris will show that the “cutting edge” of today looks very different from the cutting edge of, say, the ‘90s, or even the early 2000s—to ...read more

Anacortes, Washington, is an unassuming sea-salty town near the San Juan Islands of Puget Sound, and the Betts Boats yard is easy for a passerby to miss. But within Betts’ facilities, the dawn of an era in Pacific Northwest production boatbuilding could be breaking with the ...read more

For years, Nautitech Catamarans has been doing things differently from other production cat builders, and it seems to be paying off. When the French company launched its Open series in 2013, it shrunk the saloon and dedicated more space to the cockpit where most catamaran living ...read more

Every boat show now includes a selection of multihulls, as this once niche part of the market is now not only firmly mainstream but continues to grow at a phenomenal rate. Nonetheless, there remains an exhibition that stands out from the rest—the International Multihull Show at ...read more

Luxury high-end cruising cats with high-performance DNA have occupied an established if somewhat rarified niche in the sailboat market ever since Peter Johnstone launched the first Gunboat in South Africa just over two decades ago. Kinetic Catamarans is an interesting new player ...read more

Offshore racing in the Caribbean is a relatively new concept. In years gone by it was deemed unsafe to even sail at night in the Caribbean, let alone hurtle around in darkness in a high-performance grand prix racing machine. With the advent of modern charts and navigational ...read more

For years now, maxi-trimarans, both solo-sailed and fully crewed, have been racing the clock on their own around the world in an effort to set ever faster records for the world’s fastest circumnavigation under sail. Back in 2000-01 there was also a no-holds-barred ...read more

Lagoon 51 In keeping with many of the more recently launched models created by French multihull builder Lagoon, the Lagoon 51 is all about comfort, “en plein air,” in particular, as the French might say. Topside, a whopping 80 percent of the boat’s flybridge is given over to ...read more

In the 11 years since Spindrift Racing made its debut, the pro sailing team has made a big splash, and the upcoming season is expected to be no different. Spindrift co-owners Dona Bertarelli and Yann Guichard recently unveiled their plans for 2022, which included the appointment ...read more

The Ocean Cruising Club’s 2022 Lifetime Cruising Award has been bestowed posthumously to James Wharram, a pioneer in modern offshore multihull design and sailing. Wharram, who passed away in December at the age of 93, was fascinated by Polynesian canoes from a young age, and in ...read more

Since you’re reading this in a multihull magazine, chances are you’re already a fan of catamarans and are familiar with their advantages. They offer more room than same-length monohulls, they have system redundancy built in, they tend to produce less seasickness because they ...read more

If you’ve watched America’s Cup or grand prix sailboat racing you may have noticed the mindboggling technology that goes into moving a mass of magnificently crafted composite around some buoys or around the globe. These machines are otherworldly. But in case you think those ...read more

HH44 Parallel Hybrid The HH44 sits in a sweet spot at the center of the two axes of ideal yacht design: performance versus comfort; safety versus innovation. Despite the sporty look of its reverse sheer bows, elegantly sculpted cabintrunk and a sailplan with options to spare, ...read more

My wife, Carla, and I had no intention of going to the Berry Islands. I had never even heard of them. We were at anchor in Nassau, though, when the pandemic finally reached The Bahamas. Immediately, everything started to close down. We needed a new plan, and we needed it fast. ...read more

In episode four of The Nav Station’s Celestial Navigation series, learn how to calculate your assumed position and the local hour angle using your Greenwich hour angle and dead reckoning position. Using examples in the western and eastern hemispheres, Andy Howe discusses why the ...read more

Imagine a sailboat under 60ft with private en suite accommodations for five couples plus professional crew. Add to that enough space to allow those same lucky guests their own private lounging areas outside. That’s a lot of room. That’s the Fountaine Pajot Samana 59. DESIGN & ...read more

This spring, two double-hulled canoes, Hōkūle‘a and Hikianalia, will set off for what organizers are calling the Moananuiākea Voyage—a 41,000-mile, 42-month circumnavigation of the Pacific. The boats will visit 46 countries and archipelagos that are home to nearly 100 indigenous ...read more

Hanneke Boon, one of James Wharram's longtime partners, has announced that the famed catamaran pioneer passed last week after a long battle with Alzheimer's. He was 93. In a statement posted to the Wharram website, she said "People would refer to James as the great James ...read more

The new MiniCat 460 Elite is the largest of the four MiniCat models, and it’s a souped up version of 460 Esprit. We had a chance to test it on the Gunpowder River on the Chesapeake, and the consensus was that this is one smart boat that’s also a kick in the pants to sail. ...read more

Spurred on, no doubt, by the continuing extraordinary demand for sailboats of all sizes, the catamaran industry has made a point of not letting the events of the past year stop it from continuing to innovate. If you’re in search of the perfect boat for relaxing on the hook, look ...read more

Witnessing the proliferation of Tesla automobiles you would have no doubt that the revolution in electromobility is well underway. Turn your gaze to the cruising world, though, and you might well wonder what went wrong. Where are all the electric boats? And as for electric ...read more

It’s a given that boatbuilding these days is a global industry, with sailboats going down the ways everywhere from the icy waters of Scandinavia to the South China sea. This includes the manufacture of multihulls—no surprise given their birthplace in the far-flung islands of the ...read more

Groupe Beneteau, builder of Lagoon Catamarans, debuted its new Excess multihull line at the Dusseldorf boat show in Germany in 2018. At the time they held a press conference where I may have been a bit of a pain as I asked what I thought were appropriate questions about the ...read more

More than just a sailor and designer, James Wharram, originally of Manchester, England, is also both a free-thinker and an individual clearly dedicated to getting as much out of this life as possible. Although he made his mark as a multihull designer, builder and voyager who ...read more

Lagoon 55 “Our experience tells us that people ignore a design that ignores people. That’s why we wanted to draw a beautiful boat that would be immediately identifiable as being a Lagoon,” says designer Patrick le Quément. And indeed, the new Lagoon 55 is a boat with an ...read more

Navel gazing doesn’t get much better than from the deck of a sailboat anchored somewhere exotic. You can think great thoughts staring up at the stars from a South Seas anchorage. It’s also better doing so on a catamaran. Full confession: I’m a cat convert, a cat evangelist if ...read more

Sticking with its proven design formula, but also cherry-picking popular features from its recent models, Leopard Catamarans has launched a “best of” package with this new boat that sold nearly 30 units before hull #1 even touched water. Like a greatest hits album, the Leopard ...read more

Bali Catspace This is not a racing boat. However, if you want comfort afloat and plenty of room for your sailing friends, the aptly named Bali Catspace is the vessel for you. “Rarely,” Bali claims, “has a catamaran of this size offered so much habitable volume,” and they’re not ...read more

A look at the thinking that went into the new Balance 442 performance-cruiser To say there’s a lot that goes into creating an all-new boat has got to be one of the world’s great understatements. And the job only becomes exponentially harder when boats get smaller, rather than ...read more

When you say “sailboat,” most people envision a lovely sloop with a tall mast and single hull. Say charter, though, and people think colorful brochures with catamarans anchored off some tropical island. Here’s why. Space Invaders Conventional wisdom says a catamaran has about ...read more

To go behind the scenes of a well-run major regatta is to wonder at a marvel of organizational skill. Going behind the scenes at the 2020 Caribbean Multihull Challenge held off the island of St. Maarten this past winter, not so much—and that’s a good thing. Gathered around the ...read more

Sportscar builders say, “Speed costs, how fast do you want to go?” This is also true of boats. And if you can foot the bill, Hudson Yacht & Marine will be more than happy to provide you with all the speed, luxurious accommodations and outstanding construction you could ever want ...read more

Fresh from the 2020 Düsseldorf boat show where one of his boats won a number of major awards, you might have expected French naval architect Olivier Racoupeau to be taking a break. But when I catch up with him by phone, he sounds breathless and concerned about his next deadline, ...read more

Famed bluewater cruiser Jimmy Cornell has been forced to abandon his latest circumnavigation due to power-generation problems aboard his carbon-neutral catamaran. “In my long life I cannot remember ever abandoning a promising project, and it is very painful to accept failure ...read more

Walk around any boat show, and you’ll see a number of differences in the way designers and builders have decided to locate the steering stations aboard their cruising cats. Each position has its good points and bad, among them visibility, protection from the elements, ...read more

After the accident, as we were getting ready to put Zingaro, our Lock Crowther-designed Spindrift 38, up on the hard, clean her up and say goodbye, my partner, Kimmi, and I were more than a little overcome by nostalgia. Zingaro is my fourth boat, but my first catamaran. On her ...read more

It’s hard to be sure when things started to change, but I am pretty sure it was the evening of April 20, 1993. As the sunset, spluttering and sizzling into the Atlantic, the 86ft catamaran Commodore Explorer crossed an imaginary finish line near Île d’Ouessant off the northwest ...read more

When first introduced nearly a decade ago, Neel trimarans seemed little more than an oddity, an intriguing variation in an ever-burgeoning menu of cruising multihulls. Since then these unique, fixed-ama tris, with their immense solid bridgedecks reminiscent of the first plywood ...read more

It’s easy to run out of superlatives when you’re talking about sailing in Croatia: the 1,800 miles of coastline, arguably the most beautiful in the Mediterranean, stretching most of the length of the Adriatic; the hundreds of inlets and bays in the scores of islands that make it ...read more

Francis Joyon and crew aboard the maxi-tri IDEC Sport are fast approaching the halfway point in their attempt to break the “tea route” record from Hong Kong to England. The current 36-day, 2-hour, 37-minute record was set by Giovanni Soldini aboard the 70ft trimaran, Maserati, ...read more

Our driver, Dracula, has a thick slack body, and his head leans heavily to the right. One eye wanders and looks only up and left. The other is covered with an opaque membrane. His ungainly body is covered with a loose, soiled shirt and pants. It is a hot day in March 2007, and ...read more

If you Google the name Patrick Le Quément you’ll come up with some 194,000 hits, most attesting to the Frenchman’s long and successful career designing automobiles. Ford’s iconic (in Britain) Sierra? That’s one of his—at first nicknamed “the jellymold” by detractors, it went on ...read more

It was the last week of May and the hurricane season was fast approaching. My wife, Carla, and I made plans to take our Lagoon 40, Ocean Fox, west from Grenada to the Dutch Caribbean islands of Aruba, Bonaire and Curaçao—better known as the ABC Islands. The first leg from St. ...read more

I have been a sailor my whole life and knew the moment I accepted a job in Zanzibar that I would need to find my way onto a sailboat and into the sailing community there. This led me to Google, where I started searching for anything sailing-related in the area. Once I made it ...read more

HH50 The latest from Hudson Yacht Group, the Morrelli & Melvin-designed HH 50 is a bluewater-capable performance cruiser with sophisticated, yet simple-to-use systems, lightweight carbon construction, a spacious interior and a top-quality finish. The result is the best of all ...read more

It was sometime on day four that my resolve began to waver. It had held strong through the challenges of Charlotte Amalie, Road Town, Leverick Bay, Anegada and Cane Garden Bay; but now, sitting at a beachfront bar on Jost van Dyke, I had to face up to the sad fact that I just ...read more

From the outside, the cruising life can look like it’s all sunny sailing in a tropical paradise, but ask anyone who’s done it and they’ll tell you there’s a tremendous amount of work to be done before casting off. Four of the sailing community’s favorite multihull vloggers weigh ...read more

My heart still races when I think about that day. Nightmares haunted me for weeks afterward. The roar of big surf pounding on a reef tenses my entire body. My mind still sees the enormous waves next to me, and I imagine our boat broken to pieces on the surf-beaten coral. A lump ...read more