If the 2013 America’s Cup in San Francisco represented a cataclysmic moment for a new form of sailing, the 35th Cup not only took “foiling” to a ridiculously refined level of performance, it created an entirely new archetype of professional sailor: high-performance Olympians like ...read more
Annie Gardner & Eric Witte Port of Origin: San Diego, California Boat: Catana 472, El Gato Blog:ElGatoAdventures.com Lifelong sailors and racers who always dreamed of extensive cruising, we married two and half years ago and are finally doing it together. We both grew up in ...read more
I am both embarrassed and a little proud that I’ve had to abandon two boats in my life. To save face, I must add that neither vessel belonged to me, nor was under my command; still, the emotions involved are strong. The embarrassment, of course, is easy to understand. Any time ...read more
Five Farangs in Thailand A motley crew explores Thailand’s fabled Andaman Sea on a charter catamaran Read Paul Gelder's full story HERE. ...read more
Nuts & Bolts of an ACC 50 The basic dimensions of a 50ft ACC catamaran are: LOA 49ft 3in; Beam 27ft 9in; Wing Height 77ft; Crew 6; Wing Area 1,100 ft2; Weight 5,300lb. Hulls: Hull parameters are strictly controlled, and the hulls are therefore almost identical in appearance ...read more
The 8th edition of the International Multihull Boat Show at La Grande Motte in the South of France (from April 19-23) showcased around 60 catamarans and trimarans, with a couple of world premieres. What makes this small, intimate show unique, compared to Cannes and other ...read more
This exciting new cruising catamaran from South Africa is loosely based on a Dean 5000 cat that a Hungarian cruiser/entrepreneur, Tamas Hamor, sailed around the world and managed in the charter trade with his wife, Sara. After Dean failed as a business, Hamor worked with ex-Dean ...read more
The world of luxury catamarans is a small but intriguing one, and that of high-performance luxury cats is even smaller and more intriguing. The genre was defined more than 15 years ago by Peter Johnstone with his Gunboat brand, and now several other companies are dipping their ...read more
The new Bavaria Nautitech 46 Fly does not take its name from an ability to become airborne, but is the flybridge version of the original 46 Open. The flybridge opens a spacious area for skipper and passengers, provides excellent visibility in all directions and consolidates ...read more
High-performance sailing with luxury living set atop a carbon fiber platform – that pretty well describes the newly launched HH66 performance cruising catamaran. This Morrelli and Melvin design is built in Xiamen, China and soon will be joined by other models ranging from 55-88 ...read more
The growing popularity of catamarans for bluewater sailing has spawned a number of designs aimed at sailors who want some speed along with their comfort, yet either don’t want, or can’t afford to go down the high-tech carbon-fiber route. Builders like Catana and Outremer are the ...read more
Bali Catamarans is creating quite a lot of buzz in the sailing community with its unique layouts and chameleon convertibility. But there is more to the new Bali 4.0 than just novelty. It’s also a real sailboat. CONSTRUCTION Bali’s parent company, Catana, builds the Bali 4.0 of ...read more
If you want to get your catamaran vacation fix this winter (or next summer) and want a unique experience, consider one of the following 10 destinations. Maybe you’ve only got a week and want to stay close to home. Or perhaps you have loads of time off and don’t mind a long ...read more
Four decades after his time drifting about the islands of Caribbean, a lifelong sailor returns to the waters he once loved so much. Read the story A Multihull Boat Delivery to St. Maarten here ...read more
In the late 1970s, I spent a few months cruising the Windward and Leeward islands, gunkholing remote anchorages and living off the land, fish and fruit mostly. Sure, I was broke, but I was living like a king. Earlier in the year, I had raced across the South Atlantic from Cape ...read more
A great pioneer of multihull voyaging, James Wharram sailed from Las Palmas toward Trinidad two days before Christmas 1955. His crew consisted of two girls, Ruth and Jutta, and Pepe the dog. His boat was the 23ft catamaran Tangaroa, which he had designed and built himself. ...read more
Doo Wah Diddy Diddy Like many sailors, my dream was to retire and live on a boat, spending winters in sunny, warm, exotic places. My wife, Kathy, was unsure about this, but I was able to convince her that living and traveling onboard a boat would almost be like the camping trips ...read more
A newcomer to the production multihull scene could easily be led to believe that there are two kinds of large multihulls in this world: high-performance speedsters and relatively heavy-displacement charter-style cats in which performance necessarily takes a back seat to comfort ...read more
Fountaine Pajot has been the dominant multihull company in the world for so long that it’s always interesting to see their latest model, knowing that some of its features will be picked up later by other cruising catamaran builders. The new Ipanema 58 is a major revision of the ...read more
Innovation can be tough to define, but it is easy to spot. One look at the new Bali 4.5 catamaran and it’s clear that its designers have reached beyond tradition and rethought the flow and uses of the vast social spaces aboard a mulithull. The resulting concept, which Bali ...read more
When Gunboat founder Peter Johnstone approached Nigel Irens—the veteran Brit designer with a string of record-breaking racing cats and tris to his name—about creating a new line of high-performance catamarans, one thing was certain: the end result would be like no production ...read more
McConaghy S49 This handsome fast cruising cat by Jeff Schionning is in build at the McConaghy yard in China. Coming in somewhere between high-end production cats and custom carbon-fiber rides, it’s aimed at the burgeoning performance-cruiser market. Construction is a Corecell ...read more
The Outremer 51 illustrates perfectly the “light is fast, fast is fun” philosophy endemic to performance-cat builders. A development of the popular Outremer 49 designed by Christophe Barreau back in 2009, the 51 springs from the same basic molds, but benefits from some ...read more
