Looking at outremer catana balance nautitech

[Sail power sail]

Hello. I'm new to the forum. I'm 52 and retiring in 2 years. My wife and I are looking at purchasing a performance (not at the expense of some comfort) oriented boat and are taking our time seeing and sailing boats. To date have seen/sailed

Nautitech 40 sailed
Outremer 45 seen
Balance 451 sailed

Also sailed lagoon 450 early in process. I hadn't centered on my performance requirement at that time.

Will sail leopard 44 and lipari 41 in next couple of weeks.

Want to see and sail dolphin, maverick and catana.
There are pluses and tradeoffs for all the boats above. We are limited to 45 feet.
I'm enjoying the research and the learning and have a lot more of both to do. Advice is welcome.

[monte]

Enjoy the search mate. Lots of fun boat shopping :d I think 3 basic main criteria to focus on for cats are price, volume/comfort and performance. As prices can vary so much from good value to not so good, I'd try leave it out of the equation for starters and focus on performance v volume and storage. There's really no magic cat that has give you both. Overloading a performance cat with 'stuff' soon brings it back to a cruising cat performance so you need to keep in mind how you will use it and how much 'stuff' you will need (or how much you can sacrifice)
The outremer 45 is a very sexy cat and definitely enough space for a couple that don't mind keeping her light. Overload her and she will lose performance pretty quickly.
What are your plans for the boat? Live aboard full time, weekend sailing/racing, world cruising?
Obviously there's different strokes for different folks plans.

Btw, what were your thoughts on the nautitech 40?

[sailjumanji]

Chris White designed Atlantic 42. I do the multihull ratings in the Texas Coast races and this boat generally rates around 48 sec/mi, and competitive at that rating. For reference, that is about the same rating as a Corsair F-27 Formula. Chris is involved in most - if not all - of the builds, and quality is first rate. Like all other multihulls, you need to limit what you carry. They rarely come up for sale.

[Sail power sail]

Monte. Thanks for the comments. Lots of trade offs for sure. I want world cruising and wife wants Caribbean cruising so will be a compromise for one or both of us. I liked the nautitech open 40. We sailed at 50 percent of wind and pointed fairly well. Helm stations aft felt exposed but secure. Liked the balance 451 as well.

[Sail power sail]

Sailjumanji. A chris white designed cat pulled into my harbor in islamorada recently and looks to be here for a while. I'm hoping to spend some time with her captain and see the boat while she is here. Looks amazing. I'm not sure of model but looks at least 47.

[monte]

Originally Posted by Sail power sail

Monte. Thanks for the comments. Lots of trade offs for sure. I want world cruising and wife wants Caribbean cruising so will be a compromise for one or both of us. I liked the nautitech open 40. We sailed at 50 percent of wind and pointed fairly well. Helm stations aft felt exposed but secure. Liked the balance 451 as well.

Well for world cruising or Caribbean cruising, I think they're pretty much the same. Anything around 45' is going to be capable of both and the models you looked at would all be comfortable for a couple plus occasional guests. 1/2 windspeed is probably the norm for us on an L400 on a reach. I guess it's hard to gauge performance in different conditions unless you are sailing in company or racing. The video of the N40 open on the other thread showing it doing 20kn is pretty impressive. Obviously it's under the hammer and sailing on the edge flying a hull. It would be interesting to see it's performance loaded to cruise.
Over the past 12 months we have sailed about 6000 m but in the Caribbean over the last 6 months, just 1000 m, so most of our time here is at anchor. So performance is lower on the scale of needs and wants than comfort and payload. Most day sails for us in the Caribbean are only 30 m between islands and we would usually average 8kn, beam reaching in 20kn trade winds. Around 9kn seems to be the maximum comfortable speed for the L400 and we would be reefing usually. We are pretty heavily loaded with gear, but not over the top. It would be fun to occasionally be sailing on a faster cat, but honestly in the past year I haven't seen any going much faster than us. I usually watch the speed on AIS or visually and I don't think I've seen any cats doing over 10kn. That includes quite a few that might be rated 'performance cruisers'
It would be fun to occasionally sail at 15kn and watch the miles tick away, and the sails between islands would be more like 3hrs instead of 6hrs (not that that's necessarily a good thing, we love to sail and there's more chance of catching a fish )
I did speak with an owner of one of the cats you mentioned and he told me he was disappointed in the performance he had expected. When he mentioned it to the builders they said " well you have overloaded it. It won't perform like it's designed to" that makes sense of course, but on the downside, they had a lot less 'stuff' onboard than we have on our 5' shorter cat.
I'd be interested to hear from other cruisers on cats on what their usual passage planning speeds and actual passage speeds tend to be. For us we plan at around 6kn and actual varies from 6-8kn usually, depending on currents, wind, sea state. Upwind is probably closer to 5kn VMG and subtract the current which sometimes means we are making 3kn toward our destination. That might be frustrating if you're in a hurry or have a lot of upwind miles to cover

[Sail power sail]

Monte great info and advice. You definitely have me rethinking, which is a good thing. I grew up sailing small fast cats (nacra hobie supercat prindle) and that impacts my expectation on performance a bit. I then raised a family and bought a power boat and fished alot. now I Am ready to Sail again. I definitely appreciate comfort at anchor but want to feel a response when sailing. Speed isn't the end all I just want a boat that responds.

[monte]

I think you're headed in the right direction spending some time aboard the different options out there and deciding for yourself. I'm not trying to sway you toward any particular model, just sharing my own thoughts. Some other things to consider are how you will be spending your time aboard. What toys and gear you want to have. Dive gear, dive compressor, generator, Aircon, extra refrigeration, dinghy and outboard type and size etc.
For example we don't have a generator and rely on solar, primarily to keep the weight down and not have to rely on fuel and give us some more storage space. The trade off is we don't have Aircon and can't use it at anchor, which we don't need anyway. We can't run a 240v dive compressor so would need a petrol one if we decide to get one, which would mean carrying petrol on board to run it. I would be concerned about the effect of adding the size and weight of some of those items to an outremer 45 for example, but not so much to a FP Helia for instance.
You mentioned looking at some of the smaller FPs, I would take a good look at the Helia as well. It's quite capable of 200 M + days at sea, spacious and comfortable for a couple plus guests and has ample payload for extra stuff.

[Sail power sail]

Thanks again Monte - I have a lot to learn about electrical systems and what we will want on board. To your point I have noticed that the boats at the high performance end of my list have very tight weight tolerances.

[arsenelupiga]

playing with water and fuel tanks, I can confirm that 500kg in weight difference has considerable impact on performance of L 400.

Enjoy testing - great fun.

[Sail power sail]

I will add the helia to my list. For anyone interested the balance 451 was fairly loaded (aircon and 8 people) and we made 9 in 12-14 with the screecher (sp?) up. Felt lively.