Helia 44, Review after a charter week

[CaptainMarkS]

Originally Posted by ed91e

Couple here, planning to buy a boat in 2-5 years. The dilemma is performance or production cat. Among the latter the FP’s are for us the most appealing, mainly because of the “look and feel”.
The Helia 44 would be a good option size wise for liveaboards. We wanted to try one out and went for a wonderful charter week in the BVI’s. Not only beautiful weather but also three days 25 knots winds. Here are our comments:

Helm position
Oh my, it is perfect. I think we could buy a FP just because of this wonderful setup. Comfortable, well protected. Perfect with the separation of steering and winches since you are on auto-pilot anyway. Easy to single hand, even short-tacking. The instrument repeaters needed to be angled upwards to be more useful, but that’s an easy mod.
Being a production cat, one would imagine that routing of lines, and what should be on which winch should be refined to its extreme. But the lack of clutch for the main halyard was an odd “feature”. This occupied the middle winch unnecessary. Overall it was a bit odd that we had to scratch our heads to understand what should go where.

Sail and Rig
Even though the boat was only a couple of seasons old (-18). The sails felt surprisingly worn out. The lazy-jack system was quite poor. Hoisting the main was like a game, pull for a couple of seconds and then wait for a clear track between the lazy jacks.
And then the other way, when lowering the main, despite full battens. It had to be pulled down at the mast. My amateur observation said the sail would be far better with more battcars.

I think that FP has perfectly balanced the height of the boom. Still able to provide a lounge area, without the boom being too high. Lagoon are probably more cautious and have placed the boom at a “safer” height. But that comes with a rig that not only looks weird but makes it almost impossible to reach it.

Deck hardware
The davit system was super simple to use. 30s to raise or lower the dinghy. The bridle hook was not equally good. Should be easy fixed but expected this to be fault proof already from factory. One of our biggest headaches was the anchor box. Even only 5m of chain would pile up. Getting the anchor out, was normally a 15 min activity due to this poor design.
Lack of forward cleats was also strange. I saw so many FP’s at mooring balls, where the lines was wrapped around the bows. Quite bad engineering considering that these boats are made for water sailing">blue water sailing and mooring balls. Unnecessary wear and tear both for the hull and the lines.

Indoor
We really loved the design of the interior. Modern and clean, still cozy. The u-shaped galley was perfect, and you could easily be two cooking at once. Loads of fridge space and I wish we had these fridge drawers in our home. Salt water tap is a great feature to save water.
One down side on all FP’s, which is even getting worse on the New 45 is the nav station. It is the worst kind of compromise and made to look good at pictures and maybe boat shows only. The seating position is so poor, but you could probably make some cut of the sofa, and fit a proper chair. Maybe it would interfere on the access to the port hull, but still worth it.
This is almost a deal breaker for us. I am sure, while on passage we would spend a lot of time at the nav station. At least when the weather is not ideal.


Performance
It is difficult to judge since this was the first time on a multihull. But with sailing speeds between 7 and 9 knots I was quite happy. And beating upwind in 25 knots and still be able to cook and eat is fantastic. It doesn’t drain your energy the same way a full day beating on a mono-hull would do. Tacking angle was incredibly poor, maybe this boat was a bit worse than average with non-folding props etc. But I understand why many boats actually motored upwind.



Time to bring the pop corns out….


Eddie

Hi Eddie,

My sweetheart and I are now in the market to buy a liveaboard cruiser (45' range) as well. I wonder, did you end up buying one? If so, which one? If not, do you have a shortlist you can share?

Mark

[ed91e]

Originally Posted by Mark Selawry

Hi Eddie,

My sweetheart and I are now in the market to buy a liveaboard cruiser (45' range) as well. I wonder, did you end up buying one? If so, which one? If not, do you have a shortlist you can share?

Mark

Not yet, and it will probably take another 3-5 years. But we are leaning more towards the performance side. Not only for the sailing speed us such, but more on quality and maybe also second hand value. Hoping by then to find a second hand Outremer 51 or a Seawind 1600

[Mook1e]

That's quite a departure from the 44. I'm looking at setting off in 3 years myself. We're still looking at 42 to 50 feet with the Helia as a major possibility. Would you consider a used Saona or Saba? I know the forum reg Helia44 loves his Saba 50.
My wife and I toured the Outremer at Cannes last year and she just didn't like how cramped it was inside.

[sailjumanji]

Originally Posted by ed91e

Probably you're right. But still there are trade off's between hull shape and comfort.

Which production boats would sail well as per your definition?

Seawind 1190 Sport and 1600, which both have daggerboards. Less performance models - but still well above your big three condo cats - the Seawind 1160 and 1260. Depends on your budget. And my expectation is that the recently-announced Seawind 1370 will be as well. "Cruising catamarans for real sailors", yet all of these are also very comfortable production boats.

"Sails well ... definition." Sails well in light wind, instead of having to run the motors (which then requires planning trips around fuel stops). Sails reasonable upwind angles - like 30 deg AWA with the autopilot steering to "wind" - in medium breeze.

One week charter is a great introduction to a particular boat model. But consider if your priorities might change if you were actively cruising, covering thousands of nautical miles.

[Piscis]

Originally Posted by LoudMusic

Our 2011 FP Orana has cleats on the forward cross beam. I noticed while in a mooring field that no other modern cats had them. I was shocked! Just as you mention, their lines had to wrap around the outside of the boat from the forward deck cleats. Terrible! It was like that on FPs, Leopards, and Lagoons.

You dont have to do it that way. We use the metall shakles were the anchor bridle is attached to the front cross beam on both sides. Use a 10-15 meter rope, tie a knot at one side bridle attachment point, through the mooring ball, to the other side bridle attachment. Works great. For safety in tight anchorage, we use one additional line to another cleat or over bow roller to anchor chain compartment. Depends on boat setup.

However, i have seen many times cats that are just tied to one cleat at a mooring line...crew picks up line and throws it over bow cleat... finished. Though not realy a way i would do it.

John

[Saleen411]

I ALWAYS us 2 lines and NEVER on the crossbeam.....I use the real cleats.

I don't know about other boats, but the crossbeam cleats on the Leopards I've sailed are small and the crossbeam does not appear to be structurally very robust.

In fact it MAY say in the boat's manual NOT to moor your yacht off the crossbeam.

So why do people do it anyway?