Monohull sailors can sometimes become bemused when thinking about catamarans. ­Attributes such as size, performance and cost are all ­relative. Consider, for instance, the ­Isla 40, the newest model from French builder Fountaine Pajot.

At a little more than 39 feet length overall and with just ­under 22 feet of beam, the Isla takes up a fair share of watery real estate—about 850 square feet. That’s roughly the size of many urban apartments, and considerably more than the footprint of a similar-length monohull. Still, the ­builder calls this model a “gateway” boat, and it’s the smallest in the Fountaine Pajot sail range. With cruising cats, trying to go much smaller would mean that the hulls, to perform adequately, would not be beamy enough to fit a double berth. Besides that, they’d struggle to float all the hardware, gear and toys most cruisers want to bring to sea.

As for the ride, a 40-foot monohull beating upwind in 15 knots of breeze might seem sporty as it heels over and the spray flies. A 40-foot cat? Not so much. Oh, the boat might squirm around a little in the chop, but drinks won’t be ­tipping over—one of the ­reasons catamarans are so ­popular these days.

And then there’s price. The catamaran is going to cost more just about every time, thanks to two engines, additional air-conditioning units, and more fiberglass, resin, furniture and so forth. Then again, you get that aforementioned living space. And the Isla, at $411,000, was the least expensive cat that CW Boat of the Year judges took for a sail this past fall in Annapolis.

Me? I thought the Isla had a Goldilocks charm that would appeal to all sailors: big enough to sail just about anywhere, yet small enough to be handled by a couple or ­family, and just about right for an owner relying on charter ­income to help pay the bills.

Designed by Berret-­Racoupeau Yacht Design in collaboration with the yard’s in-house team, the Isla shares the look and feel of its larger siblings. And, like them, it sails well. Closehauled in about 12 knots of breeze—not a cat’s favorite point of sail—the GPS showed us going 6.5 to 7 knots. Cracked off to a reach, I saw a few 8s on the screen in puffs. That’s not bad for a well-­appointed cruising cat, and it shows the benefits of rigging the boat with a flat-top mainsail and overlapping genoa.

The boat was easy to ­handle too. The helm station is to starboard and raised so that the helmsman can see over the cabin top and Bimini. Three winches and several line clutches are within easy reach of the wheel, making all sail-control lines readably accessible, including those for the traveler, which spans the rear of the Bimini. There’s access to the helm from the cockpit and side deck, and a set of steps leads from there up to the Bimini, where the boom is mounted low enough to provide good access to the sail pouch when the time comes to zip up things. 

Fountaine Pajot offers the Isla with a few ­different living arrangements. The boat we visited was a Maestro, with the owner’s quarters taking up the starboard hull. There was a berth aft, a desk and head compartment amidships, and a shower forward with a washer/dryer in the forepeak. In the port hull, double-berth cabins filled either end, with separate head/shower compartments between them. There is also a four-stateroom layout, popular with charterers, called the Quatuor. A skipper’s cabin in the forepeak is also offered.

On deck, the cockpit has a table adjacent to the galley, located just inside the saloon door to port, and multiple lounge areas to kick back and enjoy the ride. Inside and opposite the galley is a digital nav station with a multifunction display mounted at eye level, with a dedicated space for a laptop below. Forward to port, a table can be raised for dining or lowered for cocktails. 

Put it all together, and you have a cat that’s fun to sail and comfortable to live aboard. Sounds just right, no?

Specifications

Mark Pillsbury is a CW editor-at-large.

The post Sailboat Review: Fountaine Pajot’s Goldilocks Cat Isla 40 appeared first on Cruising World.

Now that you’ve made the switch to cruising on two hulls instead of one, you might hear occasional snark from your monohull ex-brethren. “A catamaran, huh? You’ve got two of everything. That’s twice the maintenance!” 

Along with other monohull myths, that’s not quite true. Sure, we cat converts have double the most important safety features of a mono—two rudders and two engines, along with other virtues—but we do not have twice the annual maintenance, in terms of work and cost. 

A cat’s annual maintenance load, apart from two engines, is about the same as a similar-­size mono. Here’s what you can expect if you join the cat club, and how to handle common issues that might crop up.

Steering

Whether your steering system is chain-and-cable, Spectra line or hydraulic—as is the case with our Dolphin 460, Ocean—nothing is as disabling or ­dangerous as a loss of steering.

Does your cat’s steering feel too loose or too tight, at speed under sail or power? Give all the steering components a critical evaluation. Look for wear in the steering cables (either wire or Spectra) and sheaves. Enlist an expert, and look over his or her shoulder. Ask questions. 

For hydraulic steering systems, is the feedback on the wheel spongy? If so, there might be an air bubble (or two) in the lines, the result of a fluid leak at one or more of the connection fittings. Check with your boatbuilder for the correct bleeding procedure. Bring aboard a hydraulics expert, and observe and ask questions.

If your cat’s rudders are out of parallel alignment, the cause (a hydraulic leak, a stretched or worn cable) needs to be chased down and corrected. Make sure that the emergency tiller can be used on either rudder, and that the other rudder (if it gets damaged, for instance) can be isolated from the system and allowed to free-float. 

For example, on Ocean’s hydraulic steering, we can pop the emergency tiller onto the shaft of one rudder and throw an isolation valve for the opposite (damaged) rudder that allows the rudder to align itself with the flow of water past the hull.

Engines

Maintaining two engines is not—surprise, surprise—the highlight of a cat cruiser’s existence. But the “other engine” has come in mighty handy. 

Once, while motoring up the leeward side of the island of St. Vincent in the eastern Caribbean, Ocean’s starboard engine overheated. The raw-water impeller had failed. We switched to the port engine and continued on our way. I was able to change the starboard engine’s impeller, and we were back to both engines in 20 minutes. 

Another time, in Bermuda, the port engine’s starting battery suddenly died. By starting and revving up the starboard engine, we were able to jump-start the port engine—a good trick in a fix.

There is nothing special to maintaining a cat’s two diesel engines. Just like the diesel on a monohull, they need clean fuel (we change our filters every season, or after burning 100 gallons or so), a steady flow of cooling water (we install new impellers at the start of each season), proper coolant level (we top off as needed), and proper oil levels in the transmission or saildrive leg. To simplify maintenance intervals, most cat cruisers keep their port and starboard engine hours roughly the same. Keeping your engine room scrupulously clean is a good way to spot trouble (an oil or fuel dribble, rubber shavings from an errant drive belt, a seawater leak from a cracked hose) before it really is trouble.

Having two engines also gives you a valuable basis for comparison, and can buy you time. If one of your engines seems to be running hot or making a suspicious noise, then compare it with the other engine. If there is an issue, shut down the problem engine and run on the good one. 

Most cats do fine on one engine—you won’t go as fast, but you’ll get there. One engine is enough to power your navigation and liveaboard systems, charge your batteries, and get you home without calling for help.

Rigging

Where a monohull’s low initial stability tends to absorb rig loads, a cat’s high initial stability results in sudden high loads on standing rigging components, from swages and mechanical fittings to cables and mast tangs. 

Go aloft and inspect your cat’s standing rigging at least once a season. Look for popped strands, cracked swages, evidence of stretched tangs or worn clevis pins, or a suspicious increase in wear in the top swivel of the roller furler. On Ocean, I go aloft with a critical eye two weeks before an offshore passage. If I find trouble, this timing gives me a cushion to schedule a professional rigger and/or order a replacement component.

A cat’s high initial ­stability results in higher-than-­monohull loads on sheets and control lines too. By now, 15 years and 46,000 miles into the ownership of Ocean, we’ve replaced all of our factory-­standard polyester lines with high-strength Spectra-cored line. Be sure to give all your sail fastenings, whether metal shackles or Spectra lashings, a close look, and renew them if chafe or ultraviolet sunburn has made inroads. 

While cats heel only a maximum of 4 degrees, the sudden, repetitive lateral movements of a cat, particularly in beam seas, is hard on the connections that secure your boat’s sails to spars, to standing rigging and to the boat.

Everything else

No one knows your boat like you do. You are the detective. The tip of the spear. Look for telltale cracks in old hoses; rusty, untrustworthy hose clamps (these days, globally sourced, substandard metal parts are everywhere); drips of rust, crusts of corrosion, cracks of consequence (with metal or fiberglass, how deep is the crack?); and unnerving new noises (has the windlass always made that groaning, growling sound?).

Some maintenance items, such as expiration dates on your EPIRBs and the health of your flashlight batteries, are simple to check. You just need to remember to do so. 

Are your running lights, bilge pumps, winch pawls and propane stove up to speed? When did you last check all these items? They can creep up on you if you don’t make a list and keep it updated. A maintenance checklist sounds like something that a monohull sailor would suggest. But it’s a good idea for cat owners too.

At press time, Tom and Harriet Linskey were cruising the Marquesas aboard Ocean.

Deferred Maintenance: The Day I Declared Victory

Every time I have dallied with deferred maintenance, I’ve regretted it. That includes a situation to which I now refer as the Agony and Ecstasy of the Raw-Water Pumps.

About five years ago, at my request, a high-priced boatyard replaced Ocean’s raw-water pumps, which were leaking salt water. I didn’t know that the pump’s O-ring, which fits into a recess in the engine block, makes the pump diabolically tough to change. 

The raw-water pump is located on the front of the engine, already a tough spot to access because of a nearby watertight bulkhead. When you place the O-ring into the recess, it falls out before you can tighten the four bolts of the pump housing. So, the engine mechanics, no strangers to shortcuts, substituted a flat ring in place of the official Volvo Penta O-ring. 

All of this was unknown to me. The previous seawater leaks of the old raw-water pumps were halted, but two other leaks were born. The flat rings leaked. The oil drip escalated to a trickle, then to a stream. Would the pump erupt into an oil gusher? I didn’t know. 

Months later, in Bermuda while en route to Antigua, I removed the raw-water pump and found those flat rings. Luckily, I had two of the official Volvo Penta raw-water pump O-rings, and I vowed to lie on top of the engine, with injector pipes punching into my rib cage, until the raw-water pumps were correctly installed.

Much as I tried, I could not do it. The O-rings fell out of their shallow recess every time. Then, the raw-water-pump gear got stuck halfway in, cockeyed with the engine gear. Very, very bad.

Somehow, I managed to wrestle the pump free from the engine innards. I then reinstalled the pump with the old, leaky flat ring—a soul-destroying defeat. But we voyaged on, both engines slowly streaming oil from their raw-water pumps, my usually spotless engine rooms a mess.

A year or two passed. I did not choose deferred ­maintenance; it had chosen me. Then, one evening, the solution came to me: Remove the pumps, clean the O-ring recess with an acetone-­soaked cotton swab, and use a detail paintbrush to paint the ­engine recess and the O-ring with contact cement. Let it dry, press the O-ring into the groove, insert the bolts, and tighten. 

It worked. No more oil leaks. A defeat for deferred maintenance. The satisfaction of victory runs deep. I sometimes scrunch myself into the engine compartment, my head inches from the watertight bulkhead and drive belts, just to watch my raw-water pumps whirring along, 100 percent leak-free. 

They are so solid. They are inspiring. They are my babies. —TL

The post Is Multihull Maintenance Twice the Work? appeared first on Cruising World.

In February, French boat builder Lagoon brought Hull No. 2 of its 55-foot luxury catamaran to the Miami International Boat Show. I can easily see this long-legged bluewater cruiser finding a niche among its siblings that range in length from 40 to 77 feet.

The 55, designed by VPLP, has an interior by Nauta and exterior styling by Patrick le Quément. Given its size and systems, the 55 will likely be a boat that many private ­owners will staff with a captain and mate, though it’s well-laid-out for a shorthanded crew, and certainly would be suitable for an owner-skipper who is up for the job of maintenance. 

And in charter, where ­Lagoons have long been popular? Well, let’s count the ways the 55 could be enjoyed.

First, there’s the flybridge, where the helm is located. Steps to either side ensure a good flow of traffic. The wheel is offset to starboard. Just forward of it, close at hand, three electric winches handle all the sail-control lines except for the traveler; that’s adjusted using an electric continuous-line winch whose push-button controls are mounted ­nearby. Abaft the helm, there’s a sink and fridge alongside a U-shaped seating area that surrounds a low cocktail ­table—a lovely place to sit.

Below, in the cockpit, are two more tables to starboard with tops that unfold to seat a crowd. There are also multiple cushioned lounges, all facing aft to take in the view astern. When raised, the swim platform/tender storage area provides a balcony over the water. Lowered, it’s a place to sit and hang feet in the water.

Directly forward of the cabin house, there’s another U-shaped seating area, and the center window in the saloon opens so refreshments can be passed out to anyone sitting there. The 55 has a self-tacking jib, with a sheet that’s led to a track on the coachroof just ahead of the mast, keeping lines out of the way on the foredeck. There is also a sprit with an electric furler for a code zero. During the show, the boat was rigged with a cloth sunshade over the forward ­seating area, held aloft by a pair of ­removable carbon-fiber poles. 

The boat in Miami carried a price tag of $2.2 million. That included options such as teak soles on the flybridge, in the cockpit and on the transoms; air conditioning; extra refrigeration; a washer and dryer ­amidships in the port hull; a pair of upgraded 115 hp Nanni engines with saildrives (80 hp diesels are standard); and a suite of B&G electronics.

Lagoon offers a number of interior layouts. This boat had four staterooms. The ­owner’s en suite stateroom was aft in the starboard hull, with a smaller guest stateroom forward. On the port side, two additional guest staterooms sat fore and aft, with a crew cabin (with its own head and shower) in the forepeak. The interior volume in the hulls ­allowed all the guest berths to be laid out athwartships. 

Five- and six-stateroom ­layouts are also available, and an owner can choose to have the galley up or down. All told, the 55 could have berths for 16 people.

Throughout the interior, ports and hatches abound, ­letting in lots of light and providing views of the world ­outside. In my notes, I jotted down “elegant” to describe the boat’s look and feel. 

Under power at a cruising rpm of 2,000, we saw readings of about 9 knots on the GPS. The steering seemed a bit sluggish both motoring and under sail, but the boat had arrived just prior to the show, and I’d suspected that it just needed an adjustment. 

The breeze barely broke 10 knots on our sea trial, and we weren’t able to fly the code-­zero sail due to missing gear, but with the self-tacker set, we moved along closehauled at about 6 knots, and gained ­another knot and a half by bearing off to a beam reach.

It was a comfortable ride. Sailing along, it didn’t take me long to find my sweet spot on the 55: the seat ­incorporated ­into the far forward ­lifeline stanchion, where I hung one arm over the wire and sat watching the bows slice through the waves. Believe me when I say that I could have stayed there all day.

Mark Pillsbury is a CW ­editor-at-large.

The post The Lagoon 55: Built for the Long Haul appeared first on Cruising World.

Today’s rich market of cruising catamarans spans a broad spectrum from payload to performance. On the one side are boats whose credentials as well-appointed floating condominiums outshine their sailing performance; on the other are souped-up hull-flying speedsters with load cells and dump buttons more suited to a young, athletic professional crew than to the average cruising couple. 

For more than two decades, Phil Berman has sought to find a satisfying middle ground in the world of cruising catamarans. His latest offering, the Balance 482—with its downwind sail area of 2,900 square feet and a light-ship displacement of under 25,000 pounds on a 48-foot waterline—might not be the most extreme thoroughbred catamaran on the market, but it has power and sophistication, and a backstory worth understanding.

In 1999, Berman—Hobie Cat world champion of 1979, and a longtime sailor of cruising catamarans himself—founded the Multihull Company. Initially, it was a consulting service that served only as a buyer’s broker. Before long, though, he began taking listings on brokerage catamarans and hiring other brokers to serve a growing list of clients. 

Over the ensuing years, Berman ­attended hundreds of surveys and sea trials of catamarans built by every major yard around the world. Along the way, he developed strong perspectives on what worked and what didn’t, in both ­production and design.

“I’ve never been a fan of balsa core,” Berman says, “particularly balsa-core decks. No matter what happens, you’re inevitably going to have water incursion in any fitting that’s attached through the deck, especially hatches.”

The fabrication and installation of bulkheads always catch his attention: “I think bulkheads should be made out of composite material, not marine plywood.” He prefers bulkheads cut on CNC machines to close tolerances and entirely tabbed with fiberglass. “Bulkheads shouldn’t be moving or floating,” he says. “I’d go on surveys, and I could hear them moving. I’d lift up floorboards, and I could stick a finger between the bulkhead and the hull, and it would get crushed if I left it there too long.”

It wasn’t just catamaran ­construction that bothered Berman, but also sailing performance. His big epiphany came during the sea trial of a 50-something-foot French production cat off Palm Beach, Florida. 

“I was trying to go to windward in 17 knots of wind,” he says. “I couldn’t sail faster than 6½ knots, and I couldn’t point higher than 55 degrees. I just had this weird revelation: Like, man, we’ve lost the balance. And that was the day when I decided that I really ought to try to design a different kind of catamaran.”

Of course, not every catamaran he saw turned him off. For a few years in the early 2000s, he imported the French-built Switch 51. “I loved that boat in its day,” Berman says. “It was foam core with composite bulkheads, handmade foam-core furniture. It had nice living accommodations in the hulls, and it was physically attractive.” And it sailed well.

In the middle of the 2000s, Berman distributed Dolphin Catamarans, designed in France by Philippe Pouvreau and built in Brazil by Junior Pimenta. Those boats came close to the balance Berman was looking for, but they still had things he wanted to change. 

“I did some redesign on that boat, but the one thing I learned is that once you tool a boat, you can’t go back,” he says. “Changing tooling is so costly.”

From 2008 to 2011, Berman represented Catana in the United States. By then, he knew that in the cats that sailed well, daggerboards were a common denominator, not shallow-draft fixed keels. Still, there was one detail common to the French performance catamarans that irked him: “All the French thought you had to have two wheels out on each hull. That was the sporty way to go. But I always looked at it as an affectation, because if you’re voyaging, you’re not standing there or sitting there steering your boat; you’re on autopilot. But when you do have to steer your boat, when you have to come into a harbor, or if you’re daysailing, you have this massive exposure—either to the cold or the wet or the sun.”

Berman’s strong preference for true cruising cats was a single bulkhead-­mounted helm station. But even that idea had its problems. 

“What was really evident to me was that on smaller or medium-size boats, you had to pop up some kind of enclosure over it with isinglass for foul-weather sailing,” he says. “And it’s in the wrong place to be sailing because you’re higher up in the fulcrum, and you have to walk up and down there. Aesthetically, that’s a disaster. I like things to be clean and elegant, spare and unadorned. Understated is always better, you know?”

These were some of the ideas that Berman pulled together when he started Balance Catamarans a decade ago. In fall 2013, he brought the first of these cats to the US boat-show circuit: the Balance 451. Designed by Roger Hill in New Zealand and built by Lee Xiangong in China, the 451 exhibited some of the DNA we see in today’s Balance cats: slim hulls, wave-piercing bows, composite bulkheads, and foam-cored hulls, deck and hardtop. At the time, Cruising World’s Boat of the Year judges saw a lot to like in that boat, but also saw evidence of a designer, builder, creator and boat owner from three continents pulling in different directions. “I would have done this differently,” was a common refrain we heard.

With the South African-built 526, Balance Catamarans hit its first home run in the eyes of the Boat of the Year judges—winning not only its category, but also the overall prize in the 2017 contest. 

“We’re not creating a charter cat, and we’re not creating a racing cat,” Berman said at the time. “We’re creating a high-performance cruising cat for a couple to sail on.” 

In the Balance 526, he had found the ideal middle path he’d been seeking all those years.

The Cape Town Connection

Evident in the Balance 526 was a wholesome partnership. To create that boat, Berman worked with builders and a designer who’d all grown up together in South Africa on the outskirts of Cape Town. Brothers Jonathan and Roger Paarman—world-class surfers and composites experts—and a couple of others had founded Nexus Yachts in Cape St. Francis in 2007. Before that, Jonathan had learned the composites trade by building surfboards and Hobie Cats in the 1970s, and then ran the factory floor for Voyage Yachts in the early 2000s. Over the years, Jonathan built Gunboats and other performance boats of carbon fiber and epoxy, including some that sailed in the Volvo Ocean Race. 

Designer Anton du Toit also came by his trade honestly, sailing around the world with his family for 14 years, beginning at age 13. Through those years, he worked in boatyards, getting to know boats from the bottom up. Later on back in Cape Town, he worked for designer Angelo Lavranos and boatbuilder Southern Wind.

A close look at the Balance 526 reveals multiple creators working together, and all pulling toward a single goal without clunky compromises. Around the time the first 526 hull was launched in 2015, Berman described the different build processes: “In China, Lee Xiangong builds our boats. Lee went to a university of boatbuilding, but he isn’t a lifelong sailor. Lee is going to do exactly what I tell him to do.” 

The result was that communication took longer, particularly when the New Zealand-based designer got looped in, and it took longer to finish any given project. 

Working with his South African ­partners was different. “Jonathan Paarman isn’t going to do exactly what he’s told to do,” Berman says. “If he thinks something is stupid, he’s going to let me know about it right away—because he’s a sailor. He intuitively knows.”

Clean lines are the defining trait of the Balance brand, beginning with the 526. For that model, Berman and du Toit started from the sailing performance they wanted the boat to achieve: steady speeds of 10 to 12 knots in ocean-cruising mode with a shorthanded crew (and with potential for higher speeds when pushed). The way to achieve that, they determined, was to keep the hulls’ beam-to-length ratio at 1-to-12. Other builders employ chines or bumps above the waterline to create more interior volume for wide fore and aft island berths in every stateroom, but the Balance team chose a form with clean lines that wouldn’t impede the flow of water over the hull. 

Trade-offs from the narrow hulls are evident in the raised athwartships king berths forward, as well as steps down into the hull that require you to start with your right foot as you descend. Boat of the Year judges found these to be elegant compromises in light of the boat’s exemplary sailing behavior.

Construction of the 526 is a sandwich of fiber over a core of closed-cell foam. The fibers are E-glass with carbon reinforcement in the high-load areas. Given that the cost of carbon fiber is several times that of fiberglass, this was a reasonable choice for a boat that isn’t intended to compete at the grand-prix level. 

That said, the resin throughout the boat is all epoxy—the best boatbuilding resin available. The cores are vacuum-bagged for thorough bonding throughout the structure; this includes such smaller parts as interior bulkheads and furniture. The result is a good blend of above-average strength-to-weight ratios and cost containment. 

It’s a boat that takes 25,000 labor-hours to build, nearly five times that of a similar-­size catamaran from a high-production builder. The Nexus yard has the capacity to build four 526s per year.

The 526 was the model in which Berman solved one of the catamaran ­market’s most vexing problems. What about the helm? On some cats, the helm exposes the sailor too much to the elements; on others, it isolates the helmsman from the rest of the crew, or it ­dangerously impedes visibility. 

The Balance’s Versahelm is a single articulating pedestal that can be pinned in different positions: up above the cabin top, with full view of the sail plan and in easy reach of all sailhandling controls; or down at the level of the cockpit sole, where the helmsperson has full protection from the elements, and full visibility through the saloon windows to all four corners of the boat.

The Balance 482, which debuted at the 2021 United States Sailboat Show in Annapolis, Maryland, is an entirely new boat that retains fundamental traits from the Balance 526, but it takes the ­cost-containment steps a bit further.

“The Balance 482 is a scaled-down version of the 526, but it’s a newly engineered and newly tooled boat,” Berman says. “We took all the learnings of the 526 and packed them into this boat. One goal of this boat was to find a way to bring the price down from the 526. This is a vinylester foam-core boat, whereas the 526 is an epoxy boat. And we’re using more molded parts. The 482 runs about $400,000 less than the 526.”

For the Balance 482 and a newer 44-footer set to debut in the US this fall, Balance is working with Cape Town builder Mark Delaney. He’s a second-­generation boatbuilder who studied marine technology in the United States and then returned to Cape Town to join his father in running Two Oceans Marine, which the elder Delaney founded in 1989 to build semiproduction power catamarans. Over the ensuing years, Two Oceans transitioned to building high-end custom powerboats and sailboats from 70 to 110 feet. Projects included sophisticated yachts built of carbon fiber and epoxy.

Working with Berman, Delaney started a new company called Balance Catamarans Cape Town to build the Balance 482 and Balance 442. “We’re gearing up to build 12 boats of each model a year,” Delaney says. “Eventually, 18 boats per year is where we’d like to get to.”

Delaney’s boatbuilding operation employs 400 staff and, with rare exceptions for specialized tasks, does everything in-house, including electrical systems, painting and interior furniture. Part of the cost-containment regimen for the 482 and 442 models is to use polyester and vinylester resin instead of epoxy, which is four times more expensive. But because Delaney’s production line is set up to build in epoxy, the yard is able to use some of those practices in the 482 and 442. 

Post-curing is also part of the build process, heating the composite parts after layup to mitigate print-through months and years down the road.

“We still post-cure the hulls like we would on epoxy boats just to try to help, because all these guys are painting their hulls,” he said. “It gives the boat a little more protection against the UV.” 

Delaney’s lamination team also takes the step of “thermoforming” the PVC foam core. The traditional method for making flat sheets of foam take the complex curves of a sailboat hull is to score the foam, leaving open channels called “kerfs,” which the resin then fills during layup. By contrast, thermoforming starts with uncut foam, to which the laminators apply heat to take the curves. Together with vacuum-bagging, this technique ­ensures a thorough bond between fiber and core without the added weight in resin to fill all the kerfs.

The result? “The sailing performance was excellent,” said 2022 Boat of the Year judge Gerry Douglas, “and the structure of the boat throughout was exemplary.”

Flattening the Learning Curve

This was the boat and these were the relationships Kevin and Sandy Hutton took on when they ordered Hull No. 1 of the Balance 482. In fact, in Kevin’s case, the relationship went back further than that—to the Southern California Hobie Cat circuit of the late 1970s.

“Phil Berman and I had a lot of parallels because he worked at Hobie Newport and I worked at Hobie Long Beach,” Kevin says. “I was the snotty kid looking up at the guy who was winning all the races.”

Sandy, a longtime powerboater, was no stranger to complex machines, but a performance cruising catamaran was new.

The couple brought different backgrounds to the process of learning to run the boat. Sandy had worked as a flight nurse and knew about the design of complex machines from her time at Bell Helicopters dealing with aircraft for medical evacuations. Kevin’s background was in emergency medicine and flight medicine; he and his brother and father had bought and restored a series of down-and-out sailboats, culminating with a Catalina 400 they owned for many years and sailed along the California coast. 

To learn the Balance 482, they hired Richard and Jessica Johnson, both licensed captains, former Sea Education Association instructors, and two-time circumnavigators. The four of them went sailing for a week this past winter, after the boat was shipped from Cape Town to Fort Lauderdale, Florida.  

“It got off the ship on October 4, and we had to be in Annapolis for the boat show by October 12, so we power-sailed up the coast, and got there in four days and 17 hours,” Kevin says. 

They’d made it around Cape Hatteras just before a 60-knot blow that thrashed other boats making the same trip just behind them.

“We really shook her down,” Kevin says. “That was her first passage, and it was the roughest passage I think I’d ever sailed in. We came up the Chesapeake double-reefed and with the jib, and we were doing like 12 knots beating into the wind. It was lovely going—everything that was promised. It gave me a sense of confidence in the boat, knowing she could take that beating.”

Today, they’re relishing the relationships they made throughout the project of building the boat. “This all started just as COVID kicked in,” Kevin says. “We were all supposed to go to South Africa in August 2020. Everything had to shift to virtual. But I can’t say enough about Mark and his team, who really made it as seamless as you can. We got weekly reports. We’d schedule calls on Zoom or WhatsApp, and Mark would just be standing on our boat, walking us through it. So in some ways, we almost got to be more part of it.” 

Through their blog, they’ve gotten to know many of the other Balance owners.

I met Kevin and Sandy in the Bahamas this past February in the middle of their training week. For more than 20 years, Kevin has served as a physician at the all-volunteer medical clinic on Cat Cay, a private club. He now directs the clinic.

The Huttons had been sailing all night from Fort Lauderdale and hadn’t slept all day, instead using the daylight to practice anchoring and other techniques with the Johnsons. That night over a dinner of fish tacos, they were awake and alive and ebullient about the adventures and the community they were stepping into.

Sandy was still on her big learning curve, such as when she was on watch during the entry into Cat Cay harbor, being shown tips and techniques that included use of the chart plotter. Just as they approached the harbor entrance, she juiced the engine throttle.

“What are you doing?” the instructor asked.

“You said, ‘Zoom in,’” she replied.

Clearly, the Huttons are poised and ready to have some fun on the water. “I probably need a good solid year of getting comfortable,” Sandy says. “I think it’s just going to be a balance of how much time to be away from home, I can see myself wanting to spend more time on the boat.”

Specifications

484-413-2132
balancecatamarans.com

Tim Murphy, CW editor-at-large and longtime Boat of the Year judge, visited Nexus, Two Oceans and other South African boatyards in 2015. (See “Artisan Cats of South Africa,” July 2016.) He sails his 1988 Passport 40, Billy Pilgrim, on the US East Coast and in the Bahamas.

The post Finding Balance in High Performance appeared first on Cruising World.

The sun had just come up, and the stovetop espresso maker was already in action. Even though it was early—and we were on vacation—everyone was eager to get underway to the Dry Tortugas, an island group 70 miles west of Key West, Florida. 

William was in the cockpit sorting out the snorkeling gear, while my husband, Green, was plotting the day’s route. Giulia and I were getting some breakfast sandwiches on the table. And the four teenagers aboard? Still sleeping, of course. 

Our ride for the week was a Fountaine Pajot Astréa 42 catamaran chartered from the Dream Yacht Charter base in Key West, and it was perfect. It had four staterooms and en suite heads, dining tables inside and out, and enough room for eight of us to stretch out and socialize. The week ­included fishing, snorkeling, sunbathing, plenty of sailing, great food, sundowners and laughs. The best part? Everyone (­including the teenagers) is ready to do it again—truly the mark of a good vacation.

According to a recent survey of the bareboat industry, catamarans now make up 45 ­percent of the worldwide charter fleet—a new high—and for good reason. With enough space and accommodations for large families or groups of friends, cats make excellent sailing vacation platforms. 

Get ready

Are you qualified to charter a catamaran? For many people, the path to a bareboat charter is through courses such as those offered by US Sailing and the American Sailing Association. Some schools ­offer courses specific to cruising multihulls. 

Already an experienced ­sailor? In many cases, ­particularly at bases in the Caribbean and North America, formal certifications aren’t necessary, but a sailing résumé showing some experience sailing boats of similar size is important. 

“In most cases, experience aboard a similarly sized monohull would be acceptable,” says Carol Hansen, head of marketing for Dream Yacht Charter. “But we review sailing résumés on a case-by-case basis, taking into consideration the boat and destination of choice.” 

Most charter companies also have professional captains available.

Get Set

Time for the fun part: selecting your charter company, destination and boat. Try to focus on your priorities. If you are only looking to charter a specific catamaran model, that will limit your choice of companies and destinations. On the other hand, if you’re set on a destination, you will have your choice of operators in that area. 

Bound by a tight budget? Consider low-season dates, a destination closer to home, or chartering an older boat. If you are traveling with another family, like we did—a definite perk of choosing a cat—splitting the costs makes for an affordable vacation for everyone. 

For first-timers, Hansen ­recommends the British Virgin Islands and the US Virgin Islands. 

“Both offer deep water, steady wind, and readily ­available mooring balls at the popular anchorages,” she says. “I would consider the Abacos or Antigua as the next step up because they are slightly more challenging destinations.”

Go!

Things to consider include all travel logistics (flights, ferries), a provisioning plan (do it ­yourself or order groceries ahead of time), itinerary options, and any toys you want to bring or reserve from the charter company. 

Insider tip: If you’re traveling with teens, consider renting kayaks or stand-up paddleboards to give them some fun and freedom. Trust me. 

When packing your bags, go lightly—fortunately, swimwear and T-shirts don’t take up much room. And don’t forget your camera. 

For more information about the ins and outs of planning a charter vacation, including packing tips, building an itinerary and how to provision like a pro, visit ­cruisingworld.com/charter

The post Are You Ready to Charter a Cat? appeared first on Cruising World.

For most sailing vessels, keeping batteries charged is among the most pressing of cruising challenges. 

In the majority of cases, the primary charge source is a standard, engine-manufacturer-supplied alternator, which is controlled by an integral, and thus unsophisticated, regulator. While this setup may work, when it comes to charging large, deep-cycle house banks, it’s far from ideal.  

Most deep-cycle battery manufacturers—and especially those of the sealed-valve, regulated lead-acid variety (such as absorbent glass mat and gel batteries)—recommend “smart” three-stage charging for maximum longevity and warranty coverage. If your bank is made up of lithium-ion batteries, then sophisticated, intelligent charge control is not only recommended, but it is also mandatory for ­efficiency and safety.

Virtually every vessel with a house battery bank will benefit from an alternator/regulator upgrade. Standard alternator/regulators will chronically overcharge or undercharge deep-cycle batteries, thereby shortening their lives and reducing performance. It’s easy to make the argument that an upgrade of these components will pay for itself.

For conventional lead-­acid batteries, a proprietary high-output alternator (one that is designed to work at near-maximum capacity for an extended period) along with an external smart regulator will, with a few caveats, provide the battery bank with the most ­desirable charging profile under the circumstances. This means that for the time the engine is run, the maximum amount of charge can be produced. Other than when motoring for extended periods, in most cases, the duration an auxiliary engine can be run for charging purposes is less than ideal, making it more important than ever to wring every last amp-hour out of the alternator.

In addition to utilizing a high-output alternator and smart regulator, look for two types of temperature compensation. A probe wired to the regulator and affixed to the battery will report the battery’s temperature to the regulator, allowing for compensation in the alternator output. The cooler the battery, the greater the rate at which it can accept charge; ­conversely, warm batteries must be charged more slowly. Plus, the regulator should also receive information from the alternator’s case. If it gets too hot, the output can be reduced to prevent heat damage.

The ideal alternator/regulator should have the following features: multistep charging, temperature ­compensation, self-diagnostic lights or display, programmability for different battery types (including flooded, standard and ­thin-plate pure lead, AGM, gel, carbon foam and lithium-ion), a user interface (dip switches or, preferably, a laptop), and N- or P-type field control for safety. Alternators whose field is regulated by controlling the negative side of the input—the N-type—run the risk of the alternator inadvertently producing unneeded maximum output, which can lead to costly and potentially dangerous battery damage. Alternators whose output is controlled by throttling the positive side of the field—the P-type—risk a short that can blow a fuse and cease output, which, while undesirable, isn’t harmful. My preference is for N-type alternators, as long as the regulator can ­accommodate this protocol. 

Review the installation and programming instructions before investing in a new alternator/regulator. While you can leave the installation to a professional, programming guidelines should be clear, concise and simple enough for the average sailor to follow. You should not have to be a marine electrician to program and understand the regulator’s functions.

Finally, when switching to a high-output alternator, the existing belt arrangement (a single V-belt, in many cases) will likely be inadequate. For alternators 100 amps and above, at 12 volts, a dual or serpentine belt will almost certainly be necessary. Both are available for select engines as aftermarket kits, or they can be custom-made. Overloading a single belt can lead to slippage, heat generation, and alternator and water-pump bearing failures.  

Steve D’Antonio offers services for boat owners and buyers through Steve D’Antonio Marine.

The post Time To Upgrade Your Sailboat’s Battery Bank? appeared first on Cruising World.

Our 1988 Passport 40, Billy Pilgrim, sailed south from Maine to Florida in fall 2021, then across to the Bahamas in what felt like a larger-than-usual migration of sailing snowbirds. In Florida, our population divided in two: those who would cross the Gulf Stream to the islands beyond, and those who wouldn’t. 

The Gulf Stream stands as a threshold—by no means ­impassable, but daunting just the same. Flowing north through the Florida Straits as swiftly as 4 knots, it brings its own set of problems.

Setting Up to Cross Over

The Gulf Stream challenges come in three parts: departure and entry ports, weather forecasting, and old-school vector piloting. Here, we’ll focus on crossings from Florida to the Bahamas and back. 

Coastal sailors quickly learn that the number of safe all-weather inlets from the ocean to inland waters is quite limited, especially south of Hatteras. In Florida, there are only seven: St. Marys (Florida-Georgia border), St. Johns River (Jacksonville), Port Canaveral, Fort Pierce, Lake Worth (West Palm Beach), Port Everglades (Fort Lauderdale), and Government Cut (Miami). Several other inlets can be transited in settled weather and good light, or with local knowledge. The print and online versions of the Waterway Guide (waterwayguide.com) are the gold standard for timely information about US coastal piloting, including inlets.

Across the Gulf Stream in the Bahamas, the number of official ports of entry is also limited. The closest of these include West End and Freeport on Grand Bahama Island, or Bimini at the western edge of the Great Bahama Bank. Of course, it’s possible to fly the quarantine flag, stay aboard the boat, and continue sailing deeper into Bahamian waters, and then clear customs in the Berry Islands, the Abaco islands or Nassau. The same principles for crossing the Gulf Stream apply. 

Assuming your boat travels at 8 knots or slower, you’ll want to leave from a US port that’s south of your chosen Bahamian port of entry. Look at the coordinates of each waypoint, particularly the latitude, recalling that 1 minute of latitude equals 1 nautical mile, and 1 degree of latitude equals 60 miles. (Degrees and minutes of longitude do not correlate with distance.)

Watching the Weather

Timing for the crossing to the islands is dictated broadly by the seasons, and particularly by insurance mandates. Many yacht policies stipulate that cruising boats must stay north of some predetermined latitude (typically, the Florida-Georgia line, but sometimes as far north as Cape Hatteras) until the end of hurricane season. Some policies set that date at November 1, some at November 30.

Regarding weather, crossing the Gulf Stream in December and January means two things: prevailing fresh to strong easterlies (northeast to southeast quadrant, typically 15 to 25 knots, sometimes higher) and occasional dramatic northers. Northers are weather fronts that blow from the north and, in winter, often arrive dramatically. In the day or two before a norther, your wind will typically veer through the southeast, south, west and ­northwest. The front itself usually comes with a black squall, a drenching downpour and a cold blast of high wind. On the backside of the front, the northerly winds can blow strong for several days. Veteran cruisers on both sides of the Gulf Stream learn to watch for northers and seek good shelter when they come.

For the Gulf Stream crossing itself, you want neither of those two conditions: not the prevailing fresh easterlies, which would mean beating directly into the wind and waves, and not the ­northers, which can mean monstrous seas when the north wind meets the north-flowing current. 

The moment you want is the fleeting transition between them: the moment the wind begins to veer. You want to catch it as the wind is coming from the south, blowing in the same direction as the ocean current. In winter months, this condition seldom lasts longer than a day. You have to be ready when it comes.

Tools for onboard weather forecasting have improved immeasurably in the past several years. You can still get the old standby: VHF and SSB radio broadcasts of the latest observations and forecasts from the National Weather Service and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. What’s improved in recent years is our access to multiple forecasting models. 

Global Forecast System, European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts, Spire, and the UK’s Meteorological Office—all these independent weather models are now accessible through such online graphic interfaces as windy.com or PredictWind, and others. Best practice is to watch the 10-day forecasts and cycle through the different models to see the variances among predictions. If you watch multiple models every day for several weeks before your crossing, you’ll learn the typical weather patterns for your season. You can also join a subscription weather-routing service like those offered by Commanders’ Weather or Chris Parker. 

For off-grid cruising, from what we’ve seen, the two most price-worthy options for continuous offshore weather forecasting are Garmin’s inReach and the Iridium Go! satellite communication systems. Our Iridium Go! cost about $700. While we’re in the Bahamas, we choose an unlimited subscription service for $150 per month (including international voice calls, texts and graphic weather downloads). We’ll cancel it when we’re back in the States. PredictWind developed a weather app called Offshore that works seamlessly with Iridium Go!

Plotting a Sine-Wave Track

If your goal is to spend time in the northern Bahamas (Grand Bahama or Abacos), then you might plan to clear customs at West End or Freeport. If you’re aiming for destinations farther south (Nassau, Exumas or Lesser Antilles), then Bimini probably makes the most sense.

The final Gulf Stream-crossing problem comes here. From Maine to Florida, nearly every leg of our passage followed the same procedure. We’d enter a waypoint in our chart plotter, zoom in to check the whole leg for hazards, and then steer to that waypoint. One of our watch-keeping tasks was to continually ensure that our course over ground matched our chart plotter’s recommended course to steer. From Maine to Florida, offshore and inland, the chart plotter and this method never led us astray.

When crossing the Gulf Stream, your chart plotter will lead you astray. The slower your boat, the more you’ll stray. The best tools for this crossing are the old-school ones: paper charts, parallel rulers, dividers and a pencil. Let’s say you’re under sail and making 5 knots. Your boat’s heading might be 100 degrees true, but when you enter the north-flowing current (2 knots, 2.5 knots, 3 knots or 3.5 knots of current as you approach the Gulf Stream axis), the chart plotter will show a COG altering ever northward, 50 degrees and more from your heading. As the velocity of the Gulf Stream current increases, if you try to resolve the COG on your chart plotter with its recommended CTS, you’ll find yourself turning ­ever more southerly and directly into the current—making precious little easting.

Cape Florida to Gun Cay

Rhumb Line: 45 nm at 103m/096t; Average current 2.5 kt at 017m/010t

The solution is to recognize this problem in advance, apply an average current velocity for the entire crossing, and plot a course that minimizes the treadmill effect. Your heading will remain constant, but the resulting track across the Gulf Stream will look like a sine wave. Most observers reckon that the average velocity of the Gulf Stream through the Florida Straits is 2.5 knots.

Billy Pilgrim typically sails at 6 knots on a nice reach. In flat ­water, we’ll sometimes crack 7-and-change; pitching through choppy waves will sometimes knock down our speed into the 4s. To plot our course, I started with the rhumb line from Cape Florida on the mainland to Gun Cay, about 10 miles south of Bimini. (You could do the same from the Government Cut sea buoy to Bimini, or from Lake Worth Inlet to West End on Grand Bahama Island. Ideally, choose a departure point that’s south of your arrival point.) Our rhumb line came to 42 nautical miles at 103M/096T. The Waterway Guides and US chart books tend to communicate in degrees magnetic, and the Explorer Charts communicate in degrees true, so I jot down both to keep my head straight. 

For our crossing, I created a table whose left-hand column lists boatspeeds ranging from 4.0 knots to 8.0 knots in increments of 0.5 knots (see the chart on this page).

The second column shows the duration of time we’d be exposed to that current (45 nm divided by each of the speeds in Column 1). Making 4.0 knots, we’d be exposed to the 2.5-knot current for 11.25 hours; making 5.0 knots, for 9.0 hours; making 6.0 knots, for 7.5 hours. 

In the third column, I computed the northerly distance we’d be offset by the current. At a boatspeed of 4.0 knots, we’d be exposed to the 2.5-knot north-setting current for 11.25 hours; that means if we steered the rhumb-line course, we’d be set 28.1 nm north of our Bahamas waypoint. Making 5.0 knots, we’d be set 22.5 nm north; making 6.0 knots, we’d be set 18.8 nm north.

The final sequence of the solution is to use old-school, ­pencil-­and-paper plotting techniques to find the course to steer. Using Gulf Stream data, I determined that the average direction of current drift for our crossing was 017M/010T between Miami and the Bimini islands. To counteract the current, find the ­reciprocal course by adding 180 degrees: 197M/190T. On a paper chart, I aligned parallel rulers through 190T on the compass rose, and then walked the rulers through our Gun Cay waypoint. In pencil, I drew that line through the waypoint and extending in a southerly direction.

Next, I used dividers to measure the offset distances from Column 3 in my table. If we made 4.0 knots of boatspeed, then I needed to offset 28.1 nm; making 5.0 knots, 22.5 nm; making 6.0 knots, 18.8 nm. On the 190T line, I made tick marks for each of these distances from our Gun Cay waypoint, noting the boatspeed associated with each offset distance.

The final step was to get the parallel rulers back out and draw lines from our point of departure in Miami to each of the tick marks. On each line, I wrote our projected boatspeed and the CTS for that boatspeed. Making 4.0 knots, our CTS was 136M/129T; making 5.0 knots, 130M/123T; making 6.0 knots, 127M/122T.

Working it out this way in advance becomes especially helpful once you’re out there actually crossing the Gulf Stream. If you find that your boatspeed increases or decreases in real time, you’ve already prepared yourself to make rational course adjustments.

As it happened, our 10-day forecast presented no good day of southerlies when we were ready to leave Miami in early February, so we chose a day of light easterlies and motorsailed across. We turned on our chart plotter but didn’t enter a Bahamas waypoint into it. Instead, we steered to the CTS we’d worked out in pencil ahead of time. 

At first, we found ourselves sailing south of our rhumb line. As the velocity of the Gulf Stream current increased, even knowing what we knew, we were still alarmed to watch the northerly ­component in our COG as the minutes of latitude for our position increased well above those of our waypoint. But we held to plan. As we approached the Great Bahama Bank, the Gulf Stream velocity decreased. In the last 10 miles, we adjusted our course in small increments and saw the Gun Cay Light just where we expected. We had left the Cape Florida sea buoy at 7:30 a.m., shortly after sunrise, spent a lovely day in that impossibly deep blue, and landed at our Gun Cay waypoint by 3:30 the same afternoon, with good light to pilot visually on the banks. We had sailed a steady course, with only minor alterations for traffic. But sure enough, our GPS track shows a sine wave across the Florida Straits.

Tim Murphy is a Cruising World editor-at-large and a longtime Boat of the Year judge. He and Lesley Davison cruise their 1988 Passport 40, Billy Pilgrim (svbillypilgrim.com), between New England and the Bahamas.

The post Seamanship: How To Plot Your Course Across the Gulf Stream appeared first on Cruising World.

There’s more than one way to design a cat, so the team at Nautitech asked owners and dealers what they would like to see in a midsize cruising multihull from the yard in Rochefort, France. The result is the 44 Open, a fine sailing catamaran that’s fit out for owners on the go.

“It’s a catamaran designed by ­sailors for sailors,” Nautitech ­general manager Gildas Le Masson said during the boat’s introduction at the Miami International Boat Show in February. 

This is the first new Nautitech model since the company reintroduced the brand three years ago, and it reflects a decision to focus on the needs of private owners—­often couples, families or other shorthanded crews. Previously, ­perhaps 60 ­percent of Nautitechs ended up in charter; going forward, a company representative estimates, those numbers could shrink to just 10 ­percent of annual sales.

The 44 Open joins a four-­model range that includes the 40 Open, 46 Open and 46 Fly. Nautitech ­also builds a 47-foot power cat. Open ­refers to the feeling of being in the outdoors: Cockpits have ­generously sized dining tables; large windows encircle the saloon; and steering is ­done from helms outboard and aft on the transoms. The 46 Fly, by ­comparison, is more similar to production cats that populate charter fleets, with a helm station and entertainment ­area atop the Bimini. Le Masson said that there is not a plan to offer a flybridge option for the 44 Open.

The location of the helms is one feature I really like. At either wheel, you get a clear view of the sails, and by moving around a bit, you get good all-round visibility underway. What’s more, you get the sense of sailing that sometimes goes missing on production cats: the wind in your face and the sound of the water as the boat slices through it.

We got a good dose of both on an afternoon test sail. Motoring out of Miami’s Government Cut, the twin 50 hp Volvo Penta diesel engines and saildrives (30 hp Volvo Pentas are standard) pushed us along at 7.6 knots at cruising speed (2,100 rpm). The speedo jumped past 9 in get-home-quick mode (2,700 rpm).

The real fun came, though, when we raised the square-top main, rolled out the furled, self-tending jib, and turned off the noise. In 12 knots of breeze, the Nautitech tacked back and forth hard on the wind, ­making 6.5 knots according to the GPS. Cracked off to a beam reach (a point of sail that’s much more favorable to a catamaran), we saw the speed jump to the high-7- to low-8-knot range, and then into the high 8s when we deployed the code zero that’s flown on an aluminum bowsprit.

During my trick at the wheel, I even saw a couple of 10-plus-knot readings when the boat took off on a puff and caught a wave just right. Naval architect Marc Lombard designed the 44 Open, and he demonstrated once again that he knows how to draw slippery hulls. 

Color-coded traveler lines—red for port, green for starboard—took the guesswork out of adjusting the main, and electric winches made trimming the headsails nearly ­effortless. There was a small crowd of us aboard for the sea trial, and I thought that the layout topsides worked well. ­Having the wheels to either side of the cockpit let the skipper socialize without others encroaching on the area that’s ­actually needed to sail the boat. 

The cockpit itself had long seats to either side, shaded by the Bimini. Two tables were to starboard, and their tops could unfold to create one dining ­table that ran the length of the seat. Forward of them, with the large sliding door open, it was hard to tell the dividing line between the saloon and outside. Inside, an L-shaped galley was to starboard, with a stove and cooktop outboard, and two large sinks ­facing aft so that dishes could be passed forward and go right into them. There was loads of counter space for preparing meals, and fiddles were there to keep things from sliding off in a seaway. 

Forward in the saloon, three fridge/freezer drawers were in the starboard corner; to port was a forward-facing nav desk that would be perfect for standing a protected watch on a dark, squally night. Between the fridge and desk, ­builder and designer Christophe Chedal Anglay added a stand-up bar that wrapped around the mast’s compression post and extend aft into the saloon. Dockside, I wasn’t quite sure what to make of it, but out sailing, standing with my arm on it, the bar began to grow on me. I could see it being a natural gathering place when friends came to visit, sort of like the island is in a kitchen back home.

Hull, deck, cabin top and ­Bimini are all vacuum-­infused, using Divinycell for coring. Furniture and bulkheads are also cored to cut down on weight. As with most cats, there are options when it comes to living accommodations. This boat had the owners’ stateroom to port with a queen berth aft, a head compartment amidships and a shower area forward. To port were two guest staterooms with a shared head and shower between them. A four-cabin, two-head layout is another option, and Nautitech offers a “smart room” that transforms one of the forward cabins into a utility-type space. It definitely would be something I’d ­consider if I were an owner with extended-cruising plans.

Overall, I liked the looks of the Nautitech—its reversed bow, the boom mounted low above the coachroof, and the sweeping curve of the deck line were all eye-catching. But to be honest, it was the location of the helms that got me first and foremost. “Let’s go sailing,” they said.

Mark Pillsbury is a CW editor-at-large

The post Sailboat Review: Nautitech 44 Open appeared first on Cruising World.

The first time I experienced a fully lit-up, high-performance cruising catamaran was in Hawaii’s Molokai Channel aboard a Gunboat 66. The crew and owners knew how to live. The first mate served a sumptuous lunch as we rocketed along at a close reach under mainsail and a fractional screecher, with the autopilot driving through 5-foot seas. Humpback whales spouted nearby, and 21.7 knots never felt so civilized. § While this experience was eye-opening for me, it was the usual stuff for the owners and crew, who regularly ticked 300-plus-mile days. The boat’s off-the-wind inventory—including the fractional screecher, a masthead screecher, two asymmetrical spinnakers, and a symmetric kite—helped facilitate these big-mile days. 

Sailing off-the-wind angles efficiently aboard a multihull requires different sails than a standard main and a self-tacking jib combination. Sailmakers have created a variety of shapes—each optimized for certain wind ranges and windspeeds—to help maximize deeper wind angles. Better still, modern furling and dousing systems help take the sting out of sailhandling, as long as crews are mindful of their sails’ design parameters and their own abilities.

To learn more about today’s off-the-wind sails for cruising multihulls, I reached out to four experts. Phil Berman helped found the Multihull Company brokerage and, in 2013, formed Balance Catamarans, which builds performance-minded cruising cats. Stuart Dahlgren designs and builds sails at UK Sailmakers’ Northwest loft in Sidney, British Columbia. Bob Meagher works as a North Sails’ multihull expert out of the Fort Lauderdale, Florida, loft. Andrew Waters is a sail and service consultant at Quantum’s Annapolis, Maryland, loft. 

Below, I share their thinking by starting with sails for close-reaching angles (­ballpark 45 degrees) and move abaft through broad-reaching and running angles (theoretically, as deep as 180 degrees). While sailmakers often employ proprietary names for their off-the-wind sails, this article will deal in apparent-wind angles and apparent-wind speeds to describe sails in general terms. 

In all cases, the experts stressed that it’s important to have an open and honest dialogue with your sailmaker (before placing your order) about your vessel; its equipment and how it’s rigged; your crew’s experience level; and how, when and where you plan to use your off-the-wind sails. All sails are custom-built, so this conversation can also be a good time to discuss your goals for each sail, and how modern materials, technologies and custom tweaks can help you achieve these ambitions.

Code zeros. When it comes to sailing wind angles from roughly 40 degrees to 110 degrees, few sails are as useful as code zeros. While these sails go by a number of brand names, they are typically paneled sails that fly off sewn-in anti-torsion cables, and that can be loosely defined by their working apparent-wind angles. Code zeros are also typically rigged with dedicated furling drums, which makes for easy ­sailhandling. Some code zeros are cut flatter and designed for more close-winded work (say, 40 to 70 degrees apparent-wind angle), while others are designed to carry deeper angles (say, roughly 90 to 110 ­degrees, maybe 120 degrees) and are built with more depth. 

“If you’ve got a multihull with a main and a jib, the next sail is a code zero,” Waters says. “It’s versatile enough for reaching in light air, and it’s big enough to cover aft of the beam when the wind is stronger.”

Code zeros can be especially useful for stringing together swaths of light air, and for maximizing angles that a small, high-aspect, self-tacking jib and mainsail combination struggle to efficiently carry. 

Waters says that the best way to rig a code zero is by using a bowsprit (­longerons can also work well). “An anchor roller is not likely the best place,” he says. “There’s a lot of up-force, so you need something that’s reinforced.”

Ease of use is an important consideration when choosing off-the-wind sails, especially if you sail shorthanded. “The fastest sail doesn’t do any good if it’s stuffed inside a bow locker,” Meagher says. “It needs to be accessible.”

Others agree. “A person of modest experience can easily fly a code zero that’s on a continuous-line furler,” Berman says. “They are fairly easy to operate.”

This ease of use can be partially ­attributed to the sails’ working apparent-­wind angles, however, a lot comes down to the fact that code zeros typically reside on furlers and can be ordered with UV-protective material sewn onto the sail’s leech section. This allows the sails to remain hoisted, genoa-style, even if they aren’t being used. One consideration, of course, is the amount of UV light to which the sail will be exposed (read: Caribbean versus the Pacific “Northwet”) and the amount of time the sail will spend exposed to the elements. “It’s way better to take down the sail if you’re leaving the boat for a long time,” Dahlgren says. “But if you’re on board or on passage, it’s fine to leave it up.”

When it comes to extending the working life of sails with torque cables, Meagher stresses the importance of ensuring that halyards and tack lines are tight. “If the halyard isn’t tight enough, it puts more torque into the system,” he says, adding that he advises cruisers to have the UV-exposed ends of their torque cables inspected every year or so.

Given that code zeros are used typically for reaching angles, jibing isn’t usually a concern. “Reach-to-reach jibes aren’t that common,” Waters says, adding that this would mean rotating through half of a compass card. Instead, he suggests keeping onboard stress levels low by rolling up the sail before jibing.

Asymmetrical spinnakers. As the wind clocks aft, cruisers will encounter a crossover zone where their code zero will stop delivering the same sparkling ­performance it can produce on closer-­winded angles. Depending on one’s crew and vessel, this can be a great time to hoist an asymmetrical spinnaker. 

Asymmetrical cruising spinnakers typically are built of various-weight nylon and have soft luffs (unless they are on top-down furlers). They cover apparent-wind angles from roughly 100 to 155 degrees, and apparent-wind speeds up to (ballpark) 15 knots. Like all off-the-wind sails, cruisers can usually order asymmetrical spinnakers optimized for specific angles and windspeeds. Asymmetrical spinnakers usually range from bigger, lighter-weight A1s to A2s and A3s as the wind picks up and clocks astern. Like code zeros, asymmetrical spinnakers are designed to fly off a bowsprit or longeron, however, other options exist for fetching deeper angles (see below). 

As mentioned, asymmetrical cruising spinnakers sometimes employ top-down furlers, however, the more common practice is to use a dousing—or snuffing—sock. “Top-down furlers take more rotations to furl a sail than a bottom-up furler,” Meagher says. “So, you want to lead the furling line back to an electric winch.” In this scenario, with a top-down furler, crews would operate the sail much like a furling jib or code zero. (As a word of caution, make sure you are always looking at what you’re affecting when using a powered winch to avoid overstressing equipment.)

In the more common scenario, where the sail has a snuffer, crews typically hoist the sail sausage-style so that it can’t ­inopportunely inflate. Then, once the halyard has found its sheave box and the boat and crew are ready, a forward hand pulls on a continuous-loop line to pull the sock up to the sail’s head, exposing sailcloth to the breeze. When it’s time to douse, crews simply reverse this process and then lower the sail onto the nets. 

“Almost everyone has an asymmetric or symmetric spinnaker in a dousing sock,” Berman says. “Anything that makes sailing easier is better. Always.”

One interesting way to make ­sailing deeper angles with asymmetrical ­spinnakers easier involves leveraging the boat’s hulls. “If you’re sailing a deep angle, say 160 degrees, with an asymmetric sail, you could tack it to the windward hull,” Waters says. “This projects more of the sail area around the mainsail.”

Others agree. “Most cruising ­catamarans have padeyes on the bows for asymmetric spinnakers,” Dahlgren says. “You sometimes need to add a rope clutch for the tack line.”

While racing crews commonly jibe asymmetrical spinnakers (even on multihulls), most cruisers, Waters says, are better off to first furl or douse the spinnaker, jibe their mainsail (and boat), and then redeploy the kite on the new board. 

As with all sails, it’s crucial to know when it’s time to downshift to a more conservative sail selection.

“Off-the-wind sails are for less than 15 knots,” Waters says. “If the winds are higher, the jib comes back. All off-the-wind sails are built with a wind strength and angle in mind, and if you operate the sail outside these parameters, you could have difficulty operating it, or you could damage the sail.” 

Because of this, Waters advises sailors to take down the sail anytime they start feeling uncomfortable, or if conditions start exceeding the sail’s design parameters. Meagher agrees, adding that the best time to take down an off-the-wind sail is “10 minutes before you start asking the question.” (This wisdom applies to all spinnakers—asymmetrical and otherwise.)

However, should you miss your 10-minute warning, you can often sail a deep angle (say, 160 degrees) and use your mainsail to blanket the asymmetrical kite for the douse and takedown. Or, Meagher says, if you’re sailing in flat water, you can use the iron jenny. 

“It’s magic,” he says. “Turn on the engine, hit the throttles, and your apparent wind just dropped like a rock.” (This trick doesn’t work if you’re pounding into a seaway, as doing so can generate shock loading on the rig and sails.)

Symmetrical spinnakers. As the name implies, symmetrical spinnakers typically have broad-shouldered even-sided cuts that allow them to efficiently sail apparent-wind angles of 130 degrees to 160 degrees (or deeper) in winds up to roughly 10 to 15 knots. Like asymmetrical sails, symmetrical kites are commonly set and doused using socks, and are usually built out of nylon (1.5-ounce cloth is common for offshore use; see sidebar). 

“Symmetrical spinnakers are the most stable to fly and the easiest to jibe,” Meagher says, explaining that these can be ideal sails for long downwind runs.

Unlike monohulls that employ spinnaker poles, cruising catamarans typically leverage their beam measurements and twin bows. Dahlgren says that this technique includes a four-line setup, with two guys and two sheets led to bow-fitted padeyes and blocks. Jibing becomes a matter of transferring load from the working guy and sheet to their lazy counterparts as the stern moves through the breeze. 

Depending on the apparent-wind angle, the mainsail can sometimes blanket the more efficient spinnaker, which can be less than ideal for passagemaking. While it’s tempting to drop the main and let the kite breathe, it’s important to first talk with your sailmaker and rigger. 

“One thing that’s different is that there are no backstays,” Waters says about multihulls, adding that the mainsheet often supports the rig along the length of the mast. 

“Some people say that it’s OK to use the topping lift, but that’s not supporting the mast in the center,” Meagher says. “But it’s not a big concern in light air.”

There is the matter of using the mainsail to keep things cool if the wind unexpectedly picks up or shifts direction. Dahlgren says that it’s a good idea to keep the mainsail up, even if it’s reefed: “If you get into trouble with the spinnaker without the mainsail, there’s no way to blanket the kite.”

Given their shape and useful wind angles, symmetrical spinnakers are often critical for racking up offshore miles. “If I could have only four sails, I’d have a symmetric spinnaker, a jib, a screecher and a mainsail,” Berman says. “If the crew is more experienced, they could get a large asymmetric spinnaker. I don’t see people carrying two spinnakers.”

As for properly caring for symmetrical sails, all experts say that the guidelines apply to all of the sails discussed in this article. “Maintenance is often undertaken in the conditions and how the sail is used,” Waters says, referencing each sail’s design parameters. “If you use it outside these parameters, it’s negative maintenance. Pack away sails as dry as possible; if it’s going away wet, dry it at the earliest possible time.” 

This is because dry sails rarely develop mildew. However, should this aesthetic and olfactory offense set in, all experts were realistic about the fact that the optics can be “improved” but likely not removed. 

Finally, Meagher says, off-the-wind sails that spend significant amounts of time furled and hoisted need to be regularly inspected. 

“UV is a killer,” he says, explaining that even a sail that’s protected by Sunbrella or WeatherMax needs to be inspected more often than a genoa that also resides on a furler. “Get it checked every year or year and a half.” 

The key—as with so many things sailing-related—is having the right conversations ahead of time, ensuring that you have the right experience, and being judicious about when it’s best to douse or shorten sail. Take these steps, and not only will you reach (bad pun intended) Port B faster, but you’ll also likely have more fun getting there.

David Schmidt is CW’s electronics editor.

String and Things

While sailing involves lots of specialized equipment, cruising sailors can often ­employ the same running rigging to harness and trim their entire quiver of ­off-the-wind sails. “Today’s running rigging is lightweight and stretch- and mildew-resistant,” says Tony Rey, an accomplished Grand Prix sailor and a partner at Doyle Sails Newport. “Anything with creep or stretch is because it’s low-quality.” While it can be useful to have a bit of give in the system when sailing off-the-wind angles in a seaway, Rey says it’s best if this comes from the sail, not the sheets or tack line. “It’s more about the material the sail is made from than the running rigging,” he says, advising that cruisers should always check with their rigger beforehand to ensure that their intended cordage can handle the loads. —DS

The post Off-wind Sails For Cats appeared first on Cruising World.

My first real taste of the rarefied world of contemporary performance-cruising catamarans was precisely 15 years ago, midway through the ­40th-anniversary edition of Antigua Sailing Week, aboard the Gunboat 62 Looking for Elvis. It was a surreal, memorable experience on several fronts, not the least of which is that the big, rangy cat’s owner—a Las Vegas guy called Bruce Slayden—had emerged from his quarters that morning decked out in full Elvis Presley regalia, right down to the tight jumpsuit and fake sideburns. 

But the real revelation came on the last race of the day, when Slayden’s pro skipper asked me, “You want the helm for this one?”

I’d driven big cats before, including British legend Robin Knox-Johnston’s 60-footer, British Airways, on a trans-­Atlantic voyage, so I understood the basics: Fast catamarans manufacture their own apparent wind, which is constantly trending forward, which means you are always bearing away in the puffs; and your trusted best friend is the mainsail trimmer, permanently poised to blow the mainsheet and/or traveler if things get squirrelly (that is, if the driver fails to skillfully address the first point, which is when hulls fly and matters can quickly get out of hand). But there was a major difference between the two vessels. British Airways was a stripped-out racer, while Looking for Elvis was not only a nicely appointed cruising boat, but also the Slayden family’s winter home.

On that windy afternoon off Antigua, I was transfixed and transformed. I’d never sailed anything quite like Elvis. You drive from an inside steering station (the sensory deprivation of not feelingthe breeze took some getting used to), with all the crew action (tacks and jibes and so forth) conducted directly in front of you, in the forward cockpit. It was almost like watching sailing on a big-screen TV.

That cockpit was accessed by twin doors to either side of the wheel. When the spray was flying—which was often when screeching upwind—I actually moved from one closed door to the other open one so that I could stay dry but peek out and up for an occasional glimpse of the mainsail. When the crew tacked the sails, I tacked the doors.

But it was the pure adrenaline rush of skimming to weather at 10 knots and reaching off wind at 16-plus that ­provided the lasting memory. I recall at one stage glancing sideways and thinking, My goodness, that water is moving past very quickly. But it wasn’t just the speed. It was also the effortless accompanying sensation—we weren’t sailing so much as flying, lifted above the waves, somewhere in a ­transitory state between sea and sky. 

Another thought I had that day: This type of sailing is pretty revolutionary. Looking back, it’s almost laughable. I had absolutely no clue about the changes to come.  

This past fall, at the Cannes Yachting Festival in Southern France, I was standing next to Bruno Belmont, a legendary figure in the French cat scene who for many years was involved in product development at Lagoon. He recently spearheaded the team responsible for bringing Groupe Beneteau’s Excess line of cats to the market. Belmont was in the thick of things back in the 1980s, when a trio of French production-catamaran builders—Fountaine Pajot, Catana and Lagoon—basically launched the modern cat movement.

We were gazing at a new-model Lagoon, which was a towering vessel aimed at cruising and chartering with a flybridge/party deck and massive freeboard. Just then, a PowerPoint slide flashed on a nearby screen, showing one of those 1980s cats: low to the water and sleek in profile, with an understated coachroof that almost looked like an afterthought. 

I asked Belmont: “How do you think things have evolved in the catamaran sector over the years?”

“That boat,” Belmont said, comparing the old with the new, “was a 60/40. Sixty percent performance, 40 percent comfort. This boat is a 40/60; the emphasis is on cruising comfort.”

The observation was elegant in its simplicity—probably even ­obvious—but it gave me a new perspective when ­evaluating all sailboats, not just ­catamarans. And it helped me get my mind around the power and potential of performance cats in a more recent interview with cat designer Gino Morrelli.  

Morrelli and his design partner, Pete Melvin—the principals behind their eponymous Southern California naval architecture concern, Morrelli and Melvin (M&M)—have had a hand in high-profile projects such as Steve Fossett’s globe-­girdling record-setter, PlayStation,and Team New Zealand’s AC72 cat for the 2013 America’s Cup. They were involved in a series of Leopard cats built in South Africa by Robertson and Caine, in the early Gunboat line, and in the HH Catamaran brand built in China. 

Like Belmont, Morrelli thinks in terms of percentages, but interestingly, on a quite different scale, based on windspeed. 

“One of our Robertson and Caine boats, on a good day, is a 70 or 80 percent windspeed boat,” he told me. “So if it’s blowing 12 knots, they’ll sail at 9. A stock HH cat, by default, is a windspeed-plus boat, a 1.1 or a 1.2. If it’s blowing 12, you can sail 12.” He also said that Nemo, a new HH66, is a 1.5. In other words, in those pleasant 12 knots of breeze, Nemo is easily capable of trucking along at a nifty 18 knots. Whoa. How in the world did we get here?

From a broad, historical perspective, the French have played a major role, as have a long list of builders, including Robertson and Caine in South Africa, a country that fostered its own rich cat culture that continues today. And, along with M&M, a couple of other Americans were there at the forefront, including Gunboat founder Peter Johnstone and naval architect Chris White, the designer responsible for the forward cockpit (among other innovations) that’s become the defining feature of scores of performance cats. Morrelli is the first to acknowledge White’s contribution to the genre: “You know, we basically stole [that idea] from Chris and developed it to the next level.”

When I met White in the early 1980s, he was all about trimarans. He’d previously built a Jim Brown-designed Searunner 31, followed by another tri that he’d crafted himself, a 52-footer of his own design called Juniper. After a two-year cruise on her, in 1983, he opened his own design office and pivoted to twin hulls. He drew the first in a long line of his Atlantic Cat series—with the aforementioned ­pilothouse/forward-cockpit ­arrangement—that launched in 1985.

Related: 10 Affordable Cruising Catamarans

In the early 2000s, Johnstone was well-positioned to launch a brand like Gunboat. A superb racing sailor, he was a member of the famous sailing family behind J/Boats. The first pair of Gunboats were 62-footers: light, high-tech cats designed by M&M and built in South Africa of E-glass and epoxy. Johnstone commissioned one for himself, called Tribe, and took his family on a lengthy Caribbean cruise. That trip couldn’t have produced better word-of-mouth advertising. And plenty of sailors took notice. 

Rallies and regattas soon followed, with cat companies learning to engage buyers through value-­added benefits to their ownership. (Swan, Hylas and Oyster had been doing so for years.) Social media took that owners’ club mentality to yet another level. Once a community, always a community. 

Something else has happened in recent years that Morrelli has found astounding: “It’s unbelievable to me the percentage of newbie owners we attract to HH. More than 50 percent are first-time boat owners, guys who are buying $2 million and $3 million boats. I find that a bit ­shocking, but they were successful at something at some point in their life, and they’re trying to roll that success and confidence into something else.”

My old Elvis imitator, Bruce Slayden—who made a killing in Las Vegas real estate—fit that description. And I met ­another pair this past spring while ­covering the Caribbean Multihull Challenge in St. Maarten.  

The older brother, Greg Slyngstad, had amassed his loot in a stint at Microsoft and was sailing a custom, one-off cat called Fujin, an all-carbon 53-foot rocket designed by Pacific Northwest naval ­architect Paul Bieker that’s recorded speeds of over 30 knots. The boat’s striking profile—particularly the unusual bows—is reminiscent of early Polynesian cats, but Slyngstad said that aesthetics had nothing to do with it. Bieker had added volume and flotation forward to keep the bows lifted and prevent the transom from rising (and the whole show from pitchpoling) when powered up.

“That was one of the driving forces,” Slyngstad said. “The other was to cut away the shape behind the actual useful part of the bow to reduce windage. For any boat going upwind, the biggest component of drag is from the windage above the water.” By eliminating a portion of the topsides and replacing it with a sweeping curve just abaft the leading edges of the bows, Bieker created a more efficient hull form­­—and a quite lovely one at that. 

Younger brother Todd Slyngstad—who’d earned his cash in construction in Silicon Valley—had commissioned M&M to soup up the aforementioned HH66 Nemo. One of the express purposes was to cream his sibling on the racecourse. “It was in the contract,” Morrelli said. (For the record, in the first race between the brothers, a 60-mile power reach from St. Maarten to St. Barth’s and back, Fujin nipped Nemo by less than three minutes.)

With today’s carbon cats, light (as in weight) means might (as in power), and with that objective, M&M put Nemo, as Morrelli said, “on a big diet.” The rudders and daggerboards were configured in the most efficient way possible, “and we took out what was remaining of some of the foam/glass veneers and replaced them all with carbon.” 

But, he noted, there’s only so much the designers and builders can do, something I hadn’t really considered before.

“The boatbuilder gets to build only 40 percent of the displacement,” he said. “That’s the actual structure, the platform: the hulls, decks, bulkheads, interior. We purchase 60 percent of the weight: mast, engine, gensets, batteries, winches, all that stuff. Over the past five years, we’ve really worked on getting our subcontractors to lighten up their parts. That’s really low-hanging fruit.” 

One very key component in that process is Gorilla Glass, originally developed by Corning for iPhones. “It’s super-tough and super-thin,” Morrelli said, “and about five years ago, it became commercially available in 5-by-10 sheets. The thickness has gone from like 12 millimeters to 8 millimeters. We’ll drop 300 kilos (more than 660 pounds) out of a boat just by reducing glass weight.”

But, Morrelli said, it was a combo platter of sails and boards that launched performance cats into the stratosphere they’ve now reached. 

“The main, big difference is daggerboards,” he said. “As we started putting in these deeper boards, my joke in the office is that I blame our evolution on North Sails. As North improved their ­sailmaking, the reachers got better, the spinnakers got flatter, and the sails got stiffer. And as we started increasing the horsepower in the engine—the North 3Di sails—the boats went a little faster, but it wasn’t until we put bigger daggerboards on ’em that they really took off.”

Fair enough, though there is one familiar, considered voice of at least mild dissent out there on the ocean blue. 

White, one of those original performance pioneers, is still at it all, and this past winter was cruising the Bahamas on his “project boat,” called Javelin, one of his Atlantic 55 models that he salvaged after a high-seas mishap and refitted at his home dock in Massachusetts during the pandemic. White says that daggerboards are only 5 percent of the picture. He adds that on a good boat going upwind, the daggerboards probably give you 5 degrees of pointing ability between tacks. What matters, to his thinking, is a combination of weight, rig, sheet leads in the right places, sails with decent shapes, balance, and reasonable hull shapes. 

“You can get a nasty, sloppy boat where everything’s wrong, and pop some daggerboards in it; all it’s going to do is add more weight and slow her down,” he said in an online interview. “When you’re building and equipping these things, if you want a boat that sails well, you have to pay attention to the weight. And it adds costs to pay attention to the weight. Charter boats are all about the lowest possible cost. The weight is just whatever it comes out to.” 

Efficient boards, excellent sails, light-but-robust construction: The defining elements of the modern performance-cruising cat are pretty straightforward. The trick? Combining them—with, of course, a comfortable, inviting interior layout, which is no easy feat when daggerboards must be incorporated within the hulls and saving weight is a priority. 

It was a combo Platter of sails and boards that launched performance cats into the stratosphere they’ve now reached. 

During the past decade, as the ­director of Cruising World’s Boat of the Year program, I’ve sailed every new catamaran that has debuted in the United States. American Phil Berman has found himself in the winner’s circle twice in the past five years with his line of South African-built Balance models: the Balance 526 was 2017’s Import Boat of the Year, and his latest effort, the Balance 482, was named the Best Performance Cruiser for 2022. Berman’s success with his Balance line deserves a dedicated article of its own (see “Finding Balance in High Performance” on page 48).

The M&M team has scored Boat of the Year victories with its HH series of performance cats twice: the HH55 (2018) and HH50 (2021). Longtime French builder Catana has also notched a couple of winners with its Catana 42 Carbon (2014) and Catana 53 (2019). Likewise, the Frenchmen at Outremer have scored a pair of wins: the Outremer 49 (2012) and the 60-foot Outremer 5X (2014). And Gunboat earned the Domestic Boat of the Year prize in 2015 with its Gunboat 55 Rainmaker, built in North Carolina. 

For me, it all came together when I inspected and sailed another cat produced in South Africa, the Kinetic KC54. The company—founded by movie producer and real-estate developer Bob Hayward—is a serious player, with construction by Knysna-based builder Leon Scheepers and design by the Simonis Voogd naval-­architecture firm, fronted by Cape Town wizard Alex Simonis. 

The cost of the KC54 ($2.8 million) ­dissuaded our judging panel from naming it the best boat in its class, but it did receive the Judge’s Special Recognition prize, and effusive praise.

Judge Tim Murphy said: “The best-built boat in the 2022 fleet. All carbon (­including the rig), Corecell foam core, all-infused epoxy resin cured in an autoclave. The whole boat felt integrated; there was no conflict in the different forces you sometimes see with accommodation versus performance. Spectacular.”

Judge Ed Sherman said: “The systems installer from Cay Electronics said he had at least 2,000 hours invested, and that’s just labor. The materials and goods are the best kit you can buy today.”

Judge Gerry Douglas summed things up: “It’s the Tesla of sailboats.”

In 10 to 12 knots of breeze during our sea trials on Chesapeake Bay, we all took a trick at the wheel. When it was my turn, as we topped 10 knots on a sweet beam reach, I was right back in the place I had discovered in Antigua at Sailing Week in 2007. I got that tingling feeling that comes when boatspeeds ascend into the double digits.  

Gunboat and Kinetic: the bookends of my own personal journey with performance catamarans in the new millennium. From the design and building perspective, via the evolution that’s transpired through the people who love them, the cats are obviously quite different. But the joy and thrill of sailing them? That hasn’t changed a bit.

Herb McCormick is a CW editor-at-large.

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