Adding this because most of the comments on the thread came from people who have only read about but have not actually cruised a
Fountaine Pajot Bahia 46.
I agree, they're fairly lightly built. How else do you get a 46ft by 24ft
boat to only have a 21,000lb
displacement?
From crawling around inside, some areas of the glass itself are transparent.
That being said, if you are an experienced and intelligent sailor, the
boat is great. The owner of the
Bahia I currently
cruise on purchased hers in
Belize and sailed it back 10,000 miles to
Hawaii. It averages high speeds on passages, as fast as many lightweight
racing catamarans we've met, and it does better with the type of
equipment load you would want on a
liveaboard.
As an experienced
racer, I'll admit that the sail controls themselves are somewhat limited. You have short,
cabin top tracks for the
jib blocks, main
sheets and a traveler. The
roller furler spills a lot of
wind unless you pull your lazy
jib line across to your screecher block and finnagle it a bit.
The nice thing is that with 1300 feet of sail area you'll want to be spilling some
wind in a big blow. And if you know what you're doing that 1300 square feet of sail area can make her move pretty quick.
The main downside the owner told me is that the stock engines for this boat tend to be underpowered. That's why she found one with new
Yanmar 54s in each side.
SA/Disp of 27. NOT BAD.
We've gone toe to toe with lightweight custom cruisers and the thing can sail as fast as a J-35, the only downside (like with most Cats) is pointing ability. But if you're a world cruiser looking for comfort, any other comfortable
full keel or whatnot isn't going to be able to point, either. At least you'll be tacking back and forth with 24 feet of beam.
It's easy to sail with two. Most of the controls make it more than feasible to sail with only one.
Learn how to navigate storms and you should be fine with one of these.
Linear Mode
Recent Discussions