The popularity of brands such as Outremer, HH, Balance and Seawind has soared in recent years, with a strong demand for ocean-going performance cruising cats 50ft and over. And now we’re seeing a real injection of pace from some of the more specialist semi-custom yards.
These ultra high performance multihulls combine luxury accommodation with exhilarating sailing and have spawned a growing number of cool designs. Some of these craft take the concept of performance cruising to the limit, have an easy transition to race mode and the potential to notch up 300-mile days on an ocean crossing.
Equally, in this part of the market, all-carbon construction plus carbon spars and high-tech sails have become commonplace and these boats can weigh as little as two-thirds of the typical 18-20,000kg of a mainstream 50-55ft cruising catamaran. So for those who want to sail at windspeed or more, outrun weather systems and have the space to live aboard for long periods, check out this latest selection of turbo multihulls.
Dazcat Ocean Cruiser 55
LOA 16.75m 55ft 0in • Beam 8.00m 26ft 3in • Displacement 12,000kg 26,500lb • Upwind sail area 197m2 2,120ft2 • Build time around 18 months • Estimated price £2.5-2.7m • multihullcentre.com
The Multihull Centre in Cornwall is no stranger to innovation. The Millbrook yard, nestled up a Tamar creek, has undertaken some fascinating custom projects, which dismasted and was lost at sea. It has designed and built bespoke wheelchair accessible fast multis, including the record breaking which Geoff Holt sailed across the Atlantic unassisted. And the Rapier 550 was another project that we could tell was way ahead of its time when we sailed it in 2014 – in terms of push-button sailing a large cat from inside.
