Was at the
Barcelona boat show yesterday and
Catana showed a 45 foot cruising
catamaran.
Catana is launching a new brand "Bali", and the 45 foot is their first
boat in what is planned to be a range of boats.
According to the sales guy, where Catana will be their performance/premium brand, Bali will be targeting the market currently served by Lagoon/FP/Leopard, and will be priced at par with them. Minikeels, less expensive materials, etc, so its their
budget brand so to say.
The 45 foot
boat had some interesting features:
- You can have it either as "Flybridge" or "Bimini".
- The whole front is
fiberglass, ie no netting between the hulls. There is a giant sunbathing area and aft a front
cockpit much bigger than the L450. This is like a whole livable area for being in the sun
- One large section of the front window (probably 3 meters/10 feet wide) slides down opens up the area between the front and
saloon.
- Similar to modern monohulls, there is an aft platform which folds down making the aft of the
cockpit without obstruction for open feeling and additional space.
The rest of pretty much like a Helia. The
Lagoon 450 lying next looked very dated.
They have a webpage
Bali Catamarans. Check it out.
When I got home I found an even more interesting boat on their webpage, their planed 42 foot. The whole
salon and cockpit is one space similar to the
Seawind, but different and in my view much better. The Galley/Nav is along the front of the
saloon (remember you can open the window to the front. There is no normal saloon table/couch but a huge cockpit table/seating that extends far forward. Then there seems to be a way to enclose the whole thing all the way to the back of the boat leaving just an area to walk across.
Rest is similar to the 45 foot boat above.
This one seems very promising. In my view, the ideal
charter cat. I like it.