Performance catamarans 40-48 foot range

[CaptainRivet]

Originally Posted by slowNlow

That OC 50 is wicked sexy! Is catana still making the 47? Have several friends with older models and they all love them.

Curious about your comment re balance quality. From what I’ve seen everything is pretty top shelf. At least with the production models. Can’t comment on the bigger customs.

Catana 47 officially due to HP they still build it.
have a look at the HH44, thats top notch and shelf. Look at the innovation, design, liveablity...everything perfectly combined even better then the already perfect OC50 or HH50. And that they choose beta engines
Balance is not bad, its very good quality but if you look at the level HH offers thats top shelf

Catana is one level lower but offers best quality in there price range performance catamaran, the outremer 2-3 levels lower and lives off their name. Outremer has a lot quality problems lately...


my aim best performance with good liveabitlity, go smaller but up in quality and innovations..you could easly get a condo 66footer for the price of the HH44....
I don't need 50ft length, HH44 is perfect and 47 is closest Catana offers.

[Phyrcooler]

Originally Posted by CaptainRivet

Catana 47 officially yes.
have a look at the HH44, thats top notch and shelf. Look at the innovation, design, liveablity...everything perfectly combined even better then the already perfect OC50 or HH50. And that they choose beta engines


Balance and Catana is one level lower, outremer 2-3 levels lower. Outremer has a lot quality problems lately...

compared to a FP or Lagoon a Balance is top shelf, look at HH and that is still another level for quite a comparable price.
I don't need 50ft length, HH44 is perfect and 47 is closest Catana offers.

Fully agree that the 44 is a nice size. Unfortunately for our preferences, they went with twin helms, mounted low and aft. I much prefer the OC50 helm. I still like what Balance is doing with their 48, and am looking forward to seeing actual pictures of their 44.

[CaptainRivet]

Originally Posted by Phyrcooler

Fully agree that the 44 is a nice size. Unfortunately for our preferences, they went with twin helms, mounted low and aft. I much prefer the OC50 helm. I still like what Balance is doing with their 48, and am looking forward to seeing actual pictures of their 44.

44 is small enough to have them aft, you have them inwards if bad weather and outside if you enjoy perfect sailing condition like in a normal mono. All on one level. You can get single helm aft too but I would take twin aft. A compromise you have to make to get a 44ft to that level then HH does.

HH setup is just perfect and much better then the low aft outremer, nautitech or equisite helms which leaves you all the time in the elements and also better then the seawind see through the salon 3 windows helms...just right.

[Phyrcooler]

Originally Posted by CarlF

Are you sure you want a performance cat? Are you crossing oceans where doing more than 200NM a day is important?

The better "condocats" have much better performance than they used to have. With folding props, better than stock sails, and not overloaded a skipper who knows how to trim sails can easily exceed 10kt. They are considerably faster than a monohull. Is that good enough for you?

I just moved from a 55' cruising mono to a Leopard 50. The new boat is quite a bit faster than the mono. With apparent wind over 12kts it does 8kt+. When apparent wind is less than 12kt, I run one engine and motor sail at 8kts (the 50ft waterline really helps).

Frankly, I don't want any more "performance" than that. I've sailed quite a bit on performance cats and didn't enjoy the noise and vibration of a cat doing over 10kt. And that light construction plus carbon fiber can make them noisy even at anchor. Sleeping in an oil drum.

The fully foam-cored Leopard is quiet and peaceful compared to a performance cat. It can also carry a lot of cruising gear without hurting performance much.

For your needs, I'd especially look at the new Leopard 42. I bet it has all the performance you need and you'll save $1M+ over a performance cat.

An interesting take on “production cats. Pretty much the discussion points made by my other sailing half regarding performance vs. cost, comfort and ability to carry “stuff”. Kind of the go “small” (as in cost), go now philosophy

[jmh2002]

Something I'd like to see the performance cats address better is their solar setup. Yes they try to minimise weight and drag, but see the below image from the Outremer 55 Great Circle, with the solar completely useless when sailing south on an Atlantic crossing (even without the mainsail up, just a spinnaker).

Boats with twin aft helms might be able to have their solar above the dinghy davits and then continue wrapping around to cover the helm stations too, serving a dual purpose.

It would be good to see some innovation in this space, especially as boats move towards hybrid and electric propulsion type setups (or simply less running of diesels for charging) and want to maximise their solar output.

Because it's all very well the HH44 (for example) claiming 3.7kW of solar, but not if most of it is in shade when on ocean passages.

Which is worse, the drag from a bigger solar arch (which might be dual purpose), or the extra diesel, genset, running time, etc...

[jmh2002]

Originally Posted by Phyrcooler

An interesting take on “production cats. Pretty much the discussion points made by my other sailing half regarding performance vs. cost, comfort and ability to carry “stuff”. Kind of the go “small”, go now philosophy

Or another take, go cruising cat instead of performance cat, but in fact go bigger to try and claw back some of the performance loss. And maybe second hand too to get value in this size range.

Light air performance will still suffer though.

[CaptainRivet]

Originally Posted by jmh2002

Something I'd like to see the performance cats address better is their solar setup. Yes they try to minimise weight and drag, but see the below image from the Outremer 55 Great Circle, with the solar completely useless when sailing south on an Atlantic crossing.

Boats with twin aft helms might be able to have their solar above the dinghy as well as wrapping around to cover the helm stations too, serving a dual purpose.

It would be good to see some innovation in this space, especially as boats move towards hybrid and electric propulsion.

look at the HH44, thats how you do it.
https://www.hhcatamarans.com/hh44

3,2kw and you can get another 0.5kw on the davits...well i am sure you could squeeze more out of this space above davits aftermaket

[CaptainRivet]

Originally Posted by jmh2002

Or another take, go cruising cat instead of performance cat, but in fact go bigger to try and claw back some of the performance loss. And maybe second hand too to get value in this size range.

Light air performance will still suffer though.

I would go performance cat and small...HH44 is perfect, my new dream cat.

[jmh2002]

Originally Posted by CaptainRivet

look at the HH44, thats how you do it.
https://www.hhcatamarans.com/hh44

3,2kw and you can get another 0.5kw on the davits...well i am sure you could squeeze more out of this space above davits aftermaket

Look at the Outremer 55 image that I posted again. It would be almost the same problem on the HH44 with most of the cabin top in shade.

This is definitely an issue to consider.

Much more of the solar needs to be aft, out over the dinghy davits and aft corners, to more fully avoid this problem - not just the 0.5kW on the HH44 which is not really over the davits, but I agree is over the aft helm stations.



PS: to be honest I think the HH44 Open is super interesting and I would like to see them execute that in a larger size too.

Most cats end up with a full soft enclosure anyway, so why not something innovative from the factory in this regard?

In that case I would extend their full hard top even further as described above.

[CaptainRivet]

Originally Posted by jmh2002

Look at the Outremer 55 image that I posted again. It would be almost the same problem on the HH44 with most of the cabin top in shade.

Much more of the solar needs to be aft, out over the dinghy davits and aft corners, to more fully avoid this problem - not just the 0.5kW on the HH44 which is not really over the davits, but I agree is over the aft helm stations.



PS: to be honest I think the HH44 Open is super interesting and I would like to see them execute that in a larger size too.

Most cats end up with a full soft enclosure anyway, so why not something innovative from the factory in this regard?

In that case I would extend their full hard top even further as described above.

Open 44 I don't like helm position, the H44 is better and you wanna have the open area.
its good to use roof space full for solar as the HH44 does. If you closely look they try to get them as close to the edges as possible. Just extend that over the davits.


Well sailing downwind just use the right sail: with the round sail (not my cat in the pic, my pics are too big to upload) and you don't have the roof shaded just flew the 8m version straight for 4 days from Gibraltar to Lanzarote in 15-35kn of wind, perfect downwind sailing.

[smj]

Originally Posted by CarlF

Are you sure you want a performance cat? Are you crossing oceans where doing more than 200NM a day is important?

The better "condocats" have much better performance than they used to have. With folding props, better than stock sails, and not overloaded a skipper who knows how to trim sails can easily exceed 10kt. They are considerably faster than a monohull. Is that good enough for you?

I just moved from a 55' cruising mono to a Leopard 50. The new boat is quite a bit faster than the mono. With apparent wind over 12kts it does 8kt+. When apparent wind is less than 12kt, I run one engine and motor sail at 8kts (the 50ft waterline really helps).

Frankly, I don't want any more "performance" than that. I've sailed quite a bit on performance cats and didn't enjoy the noise and vibration of a cat doing over 10kt. And that light construction plus carbon fiber can make them noisy even at anchor. Sleeping in an oil drum.

The fully foam-cored Leopard is quiet and peaceful compared to a performance cat. It can also carry a lot of cruising gear without hurting performance much.

For your needs, I'd especially look at the new Leopard 42. I bet it has all the performance you need and you'll save $1M+ over a performance cat.

This thread is about performance catamarans? Having to motorsail when the apparent wind drops to 12kts does not constitute performance.

[CarlF]

Originally Posted by smj

This thread is about performance catamarans? Having to motorsail when the apparent wind drops to 12kts does not constitute performance.

I expect a large percentage of the cruisers who own “performance catamarans” run one engine when the wind goes light. Maybe some wait for 8kts instead of 12kts but I’m not sure that is important.

The point is that there is little difference in average day’s run between the better performance cruising cats and the more “cruisable” performance cats that have dinghies on davits and washer/dryers.

The OP may find that the right boat for him is in this middle blurred area.

[Factor]

Originally Posted by CarlF

I expect a large percentage of the cruisers who own “performance catamarans” run one engine when the wind goes light.

You expect wrong

[Phyrcooler]

Originally Posted by smj

This thread is about performance catamarans? Having to motorsail when the apparent wind drops to 12kts does not constitute performance.

Who does that?! On any boat?

[Phyrcooler]

Originally Posted by CaptainRivet

44 is small enough to have them aft, you have them inwards if bad weather and outside if you enjoy perfect sailing condition like in a normal mono. All on one level. You can get single helm aft too but I would take twin aft. A compromise you have to make to get a 44ft to that level then HH does.

HH setup is just perfect and much better then the low aft outremer, nautitech or equisite helms which leaves you all the time in the elements and also better then the seawind see through the salon 3 windows helms...just right.

Definitely agree regarding those fully exposed, sitting on the rail, hanging off the back of the boat helms - Outremer, Nautitech et.al. Definite non starters for us. Likewise looking through the cabin is off the table for us as well. Having been on many raised helm Catamarans, and owned a flying bridge power boat, sitting anywhere at cockpit level in the aft 50% of the boat with the cabin blocking 40% or greater of your forward view is just not acceptable to us. If you ever watched the Sailing Ruby Rose and their marketing videos for Seawind, there is one wherein the Seawind cat they are on is pitching up and down in some rough waters. The view from helm through the cabin was nauseating even on TV!! Like looking through a tunnel… up, down… sky… water. All of us in the room went…”NOPE”. And then Nick mentioned needing some crackers to settle his stomach!!

The raised helm on the OC50 is perfect, The versahelm on the Balance is a great option. Nothing beats sitting up looking over the cabin to have a great view. I’m NOT advocating the flying bridge cats like the Bali, where you are completely disconnected from the salon/cockpit and the boom is 8’ off the cabin top!! Just let me sit at least head and shoulders higher than the cabin top, and have all winches, clutches and lines… Right. There.

Bottom line, helm/winches/controls location are high up on OUR checklist items. Yours may differ.