Multihull Sailing News

On a cold February day, muffled chatter and the sounds of swinging hammers fill the St. Osyth Boatyard in Clacton-on-Sea, UK. Midway down the dock, a 132-year-old piece of history sits bobbing beneath the sheen of a clear plastic tarp. Inside its hold, women are hard at work. ...read more

Wendy: You asked a while ago about which I preferred—staying at a marina or anchoring out? Just back from another blissful weekend on the hook, I can assure you it’s a no brainer. Just peace and quiet out there. No navigating yet another app to pay an extortionist transient slip ...read more

Let's start with a reality check. You’re headed for a bareboat charter someplace wonderful, you’ll have a luxurious yacht at your disposal and a multitude of coves, beaches, resorts, pubs, and eateries to explore. Do you really need more? Does a hot fudge sundae need an extra ...read more

Sailing’s answer to Formula 1 racing is a multihull spectacle. Even those of us who are smitten with the classic racing yachts of yesteryear can’t argue with SailGP’s ingenuity. I’ve heard it described with many words: cutting edge, spaceship, freak show. And it all starts with ...read more

Dan: Hey Wendy, what are your thoughts on doing a press trip down in the BVI next year? Could be a great opportunity, but we need to choose if we want a sail or powerboat. Seems like a no-brainer to me. Wendy: Hey Dan! Of course it’s a no-brainer: sailboat. They’re called trade ...read more

For more multihull reviews and stories, subscribe for free to Multihull Power & Sail You haven’t done it, have you? You haven’t put Catskill, New York, on your bucket list. Or even on your someday-if-I’m-cruising-in-the-neighborhood list. I get it. Catskill is just a ...read more

Dan: Let’s settle a debate: Which is the better cruising ground, the Chesapeake or Narragansett Bay? Personally, I’ll take Rhode Island over the tartar sauce-covered crustacean capital any day! Wendy: Dan, Dan, Dan. You reveal your New England blinders so quickly. One does not ...read more

For more multihull reviews and stories, subscribe for free to Multihull Power & Sail This winter, a young couple moved aboard a first-of-its-kind, fresh-from-the-factory Fountaine Pajot Samana 59. The cat, Aurora, is a TWe6 Smart Electric, making it the first charter cat ...read more

For more multihull reviews and stories, subscribe for free to Multihull Power & Sail When my editor assigned this story, I promised myself not to use the worn, old cliché, “A boat is a hole in water into which you pour money.” Oops. There, I said it. And I wasn’t going to ...read more

For more multihull reviews and stories, subscribe for free to Multihull Power & Sail When it comes to West Coast sailing, images of the deep, cold waters of Puget Sound, San Francisco’s breezy bay, and idyllic SoCal conditions in San Diego come to mind. But at the confluence of ...read more

For more multihull reviews and stories, subscribe for free to Multihull Power & Sail Yes, Washington D.C. may not be the first destination that comes to mind when you’re dreaming up your next cruise, but it should be. A trip by boat to the traffic-challenged national capital, in ...read more

For more multihull reviews and stories, subscribe for free to Multihull Power & Sail A few months ago while on a charter, we picked up a mooring in Île Fourchue, a little nature preserve off the coast of St. Barths. It’s thought to be the tip of a submerged, dormant volcano, ...read more

The 2023 Caribbean Multihull Challenge (CMC) introduced an unusual element to its three-day Sint Maarten-based schedule of racing: a rally. Race organizers found that the folks likely to wind up in Sint Maarten in late January fell into one of three categories: those doing the ...read more

As the Caribbean Multihull Challenge (CMC) kicks off a sixth year, race organizers have a one-word mission statement: soul. “At the beginning, we wanted to start a regatta just for multihulls. Catamarans are welcome at other regattas, but they’re not really designed for that. ...read more

Here’s my advice: Get on your boat right now and take a cruise to Fernandina Beach, Florida. Not only is this a great destination for history, food and drink, and laid-back, old-Florida vibe, its location on the Intracoastal Waterway (ICW), accessibility to one of the best ...read more

For more multihull reviews and stories, subscribe for free to Multihull Power & Sail at sailmagazine.com/multihull With heavy backpacks and our hands laden with as many grocery bags as we could carry, we trudged down the steep hill to our dinghy. I tried to settle my nerves. We ...read more

“This just came in the mail,” says Gino Morrelli excitedly as he runs into the kitchen of his California home. In his hand is a booklet that may or may not grant him the International Proficiency Certificate (IPC) that is required to charter a bareboat in Croatia. “Now we can go ...read more

French catamaran builder Lagoon has launched a new 51-footer that is an evolution of the best features of previous models combined with new additions. With a new rig and an open interior, this swanky cat will find a solid target market in both charter and private use. Like its ...read more

Xquisite catamarans are well known as comfortable, well-built long-distance cruising cats, with all of the luxury and accouterments one would expect—the antithesis, in other words, of minimalism. Which is why Xquisite’s new offering, the 30 Sportcat designed by François Perus, ...read more

For more multihull reviews and stories, subscribe for free to Multihull Power & Sail at sailmagazine.com/multihull Fountaine Pajot knows a thing or two about the mid-40-foot sweet spot for cruising multihulls, and with the launch of the new Tanna 47 cat, they’ve dialed in their ...read more

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

For more multihull reviews and stories, subscribe for free to Multihull Power & Sail at sailmagazine.com/multihull 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 ...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