Table of contents for Summer 2017 in Multihull Sailor

Australian sailors Riley Whitelum and Elayna Carausu are known around the world, thanks to their social media accounts and YouTube channel, Sailing La Vagabonde, in which they document their experiences afloat—at the same time using the power of crowdfunding to help cover their costs. They recently decided to make the switch from a monohull to a catamaran. MHS: How did you come to discover sailing? Riley: I’ve always loved the water and enjoyed camping, so I was pretty confident I would enjoy sailing. I was planning to purchase a boat once I had saved up enough money from my work on oil rigs as a rigger/dogman. When I finally bought La Vagabonde, a 2007 Beneteau Cyclades, I was trying to learn as I went. It was a pretty steep learning curve—to…

The memories are vivid. Dolphins and diesel fumes. A blood-orange moon rising to starboard as engine trouble loomed to port. A spinnaker like a taut, glowing veil before a sun that shone down later on its wet, shredded remains. We were 30 days at sea, a virgin ocean-crossing crew aboard a French-built multihull, bashing our way nonstop from Florida to France. That was the plan, anyway. The actual voyage, with all its detours and unexpected deviations, proved infinitely more memorable than our foolish man-made scheme. It was one of the most exciting, exasperating experiences of our lives. In the Days Before One: Fate has twisted plans for our captain. With both retirement as a fighter pilot in the French Navy and his family’s next chapter as liveaboard cruisers on the…

It was a dark and stormy night—OK, not really dark, since it was day, but pretty stormy—when we cruised into Salt Whistle Bay on the Caribbean island of Mayreau aboard Indigo, our 46ft Leopard catamaran. We had just sailed north from Union Island heading for the Tobago Cays, but since it was blowing 20- 30 knots with pissing rain added to the mix, we decided that a more sheltered anchorage made sense. We pulled into the small bay to find a dozen boats already cluttering the anchorage. It used to be that these bays were void of such unnatural obstructions, but ever since Wallace J. Cooper accidentally tied his Catalina 38 up to a fishing float back in 1977, things have changed. They pop up not only in places where…

While many redesigns have more to do with marketing then with actual design, the recently launched Dragonfly 28 “Performance” from Denmark’s Quorning Boats (which follows in the wake of the company’s successful Touring and Sport versions) truly does push the envelope in a meaningful way to incorporate the latest in multihull technology. At the heart of the trailerable Dragonfly 28 Performance’s new look and feel are a pair of dramatically reconfigured amas to enhance both speed and stability. Most noticeable are the wave-piercing bows, a design feature whose benefits cannot be overestimated when pushing a boat like this hard in rough conditions. Not so obvious, but equally important, is the fact that the amas are almost 2ft longer and provide 20 percent more volume, which in turn translates into sail-carrying…

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 both skipper and passengers, provides excellent visibility in all directions and consolidates control lines neatly in one place. DESIGN & CONSTRUCTION The hull and deck are constructed of a vacuum-bagged, resin-infused fiberglass laminate, a proven modern technique popular among boatbuilders. The core is Divinycell. Poking about into lockers and hatches revealed neat, careful workmanship. Not only is the structural layup nice, but the plumbing and wiring are appropriately sized and well installed. The engine rooms call for some comments. These spaces in the aft end of the hulls are quite large and easy to get into.…

The French obsession with long-distance sailing, whether solo or fully crewed, has long been a phenomenon of superlatives. But even those superlatives pale in comparison to what French sailing legend Francis Joyon and his five crew managed to accomplish this past winter: smashing the existing Jules Verne record by sailing around the world, from Ushant, France, and back aboard the maxi-tri IDEC Sport in a mere 40 days, 23 hours and 30 minutes. Not only that, what was perhaps most extraordinary of all was how run-of-the-mill it all seemed: multiple intermediate records fell along the way, so that it felt like the overall record was already pretty much a done deal by the time the crew rounded Cape Horn and was sailing back into the Atlantic. During the stretch from…

GUNBOAT 68 If anyone was in any doubt about Gunboat’s future following the brand’s acquisition by Grand Large Yachting, they need only look at the swooping lines of the new Gunboat 68. This VPLP design is going into production at the Outremer facility in La Grand Motte, France, with hull #1 scheduled to hit the water early in 2018. The design team of Marc van Peteghem and Vincent Lauriot Prevost is behind many of the most successful racing multihull designs of the last two decades, and with styling masterminds Patrick Le Quement and Christoph Chedal Anglay to smooth the interface between performance and good looks, this new Gunboat is a naturalborn head-turner. They have cleverly fused elements of both the Morrelli & Melvin and Nigel Irens-designed Gunboat visuals into a…

With the right mix of bleeding-edge technology and cheeky attitude, Gino Morrelli and Pete Melvin have spent more than two decades creating a cult of personality. Starting with the premise that a monohull is only half a boat, these two multihull designers have developed lots of cool stuff, often captured in dramatic photos of hair-raising speed and foam-flying exhilaration. It’s no surprise then, that they have built a seductive brand, with an Apple-like following. They’re as legendary as the Wright brothers, only a century later—and wetter. Today, the M&M office is abuzz with thoughts of silver. Not a secondplace racing trophy, but the silver of a 25th anniversary. A quarter century ago, Morrelli and Melvin joined forces and their collaboration has lasted longer than many marriages. Through hundreds of projects,…

The new Leopard 45 (also available as the Moorings 4500) evolved from the Leopard 44, which came out in 2012, and includes a number of features that make it an even better platform for chartering and cruising. Traditionalists may question the large cockpit forward for offshore voyaging, but owners have logged thousands of safe sea miles with similar boats, so it’s a proven design. DESIGN & CONSTRUCTION Veteran South African boatbuilder Robertson & Caine builds substantial boats, so you will find no shortcuts or questionable practices in the Leopard line. The basic construction, auxiliary systems and powerplant installations are all top grade. Layup is in conventional fiberglass, and even hidden areas are finished smoothly. Everything fits together precisely, from molded parts to interior joinery. Engine access is good, and common…

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 best-known companies that cater to this market, but there are a number of others, many of them based in South Africa, which is tied with France as the current hotbed of multihull development. One of the newer entrants into this competitive field is Balance Catamarans whose second model, the Balance 526, we took for a spin on a sunny day off Fort Lauderdale. DESIGN & CONSTRUCTION Balance is the brainchild of veteran multihull broker Phil Berman, who wanted to distill his decades of experience…

Ever since the schooner America won the “100 Guinea Cup” fated to bear its name, the America’s Cup has been as much about technology and change as actual sailing. America itself, for example, won in large part thanks not only to her then radical hull form, but her cutting-edge cotton sails. Similarly, in the decades that followed, designers and builders like Starling Burgess and Nathanael Herreshoff were in the forefront with respect to everything from aluminum spars to winch technology and the switch from gaff to Bermuda rigs. That said, the pace of change in the America’s Cup has been far from constant. While it’s true, for example, that a number of dramatic innovations marked the three-decade 12 Meter era—including Olin Stephen’s decision to separate the rudder from the keel…

You almost have to pinch yourself sailing around Thailand’s Phang Nga Bay. It’s like entering a lost world in a Hollywood movie. Rising dramatically from an emerald sea are surreal, gravity-defying limestone towers (karsts) which have been sculpted by millennia of monsoon rain and winds into spectral spires. The surrounding seascape is dotted with islands cloaked in forests of greenery. Many islands have sea caves and hidden lagoons that can be entered at certain states of the tide by kayak or on foot. It’s like sailing into a fantasy world. Having been fortunate enough to sail five of the world’s Seven Seas, I can report that only the fabled South Pacific islands come close to matching the Andaman Sea’s spectacular, exotic backdrop. If the combined age of our motley five-strong…

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 sailing families, Annie sailing the Florida Keys and Bahamas, and Eric sailing the Great Lakes. We currently own a house in San Diego, but live full-time aboard El Gato, our gently used 2000 Catana 472 that we bought in France. As far as choosing the right boat for us, it took extensive research until we narrowed our choices down to the boats that met our needs. Specifi- cally, we wanted daggerboards for performance, galley up (who wants to be below while everyone else is…

This exciting new cruising catamaran from South Africa is loosely based on a Dean 5000 cat that a Hungarian cruiser/entrepreneur named Tamas Hamor sailed around the world and managed in the charter trade with his wife, Sara. After Dean failed as a business, Hamor worked wiThex-Dean designer Rudolf Jonker and South Africa’s Phoenix Marine Manufacturing to develop a new 50ft world-girdling cat that incorporated all of Hamor’s ideas and experience. The result is a well-thought-out cruising machine with a very long list of standard features. The goal of Xquisite Yachts is to sell boats already equipped wiTheverything needed for long-term cruising and also provide owners with comprehensive lifetime service assistance. The boat and equipment conceived to realize that goal not only won a SAIL Best Boats award for Best Large…

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 toes into these waters. HH Catamarans is one of the latest of these, and going by its first offering, the HH66, the company will be a real force in this glamorous niche market. I stepped on board hull #1, R-Six, for a 300- mile passage in the Mediterranean. DESIGN & CONSTRUCTION Designers Morrelli & Melvin have a longstanding relationship with Hudson Wang and Paul Hakes, who built Gunboats for several years, so it’s no surprise that HH turned to the Californians to design…

If there’s one thing wrong with all too many sailors—sailing journalists, in particular— it’s that we often get to be way too serious about our sailing. Granted, there’s a good deal to be serious about, and if you aren’t careful you can get hurt and/or cause a fair bit of damage aboard even the most benign-looking little sloop pretty darn quick. Nonetheless, sailing is supposed to be fun—isn’t that why we do it?—and nothing says fun like a beach cat, whether it’s goofing around between races at an international regatta or piling a crowd of friends and family aboard a 16-footer. (Who says you can’t overload a multihull and still have fun?) Thank goodness summer is just around the corner! Is there anything out there to make a body feel…