Outrémer 40/43 v's Catana 401 v's Catana 41

[RMH]

Hi
We are lost !!!
Has anyone got some personal experience of any of the above boats that we can have a chat with to discuss general good/bad points, things to watch out for, sailing good/bad points and expectations ?

Experienced monohull sailors that are looking at cats for extended blue water cruise and maybe some adventure sailing to Patagonia ?
We are truly confused by the amount of conflicting data out there but what we are hoping to buy is a cat with minimum two double berths. Sailed easily by one with reasonable sea keeping qualities, galley up, good bridge deck clearance, capable of 180-200 mile days and under £200k ?

We have dismissed the Leopards, Lagoon, FP, St Francis, and come down to Catana and Outremers but we don't know anyone we can talk to with first hand experience.

Any help gratefully received ?

Many thanks

Richard

[Barra]

Hi

We own and cruise a phisa 42 which used the catana 401 mould extended at the stern. Overall we are very happy with it for extended cruising especially since i basically solo sail 90% of the time with just myself and the admiral on board.

Unlike that other hot thread we do sail most of the time (down to around 6 knot winds)

Great compromise between performance (including windward) and comfort IMHO. I can give you some comparisons between the 401 and the phisa having just spent some time with a 401 also and what to look for.

send me a pm of ask away on the forum with any specifics you may have

cheers
barra

[Sand crab]

I have no experience with either. However, most or all of the older Outies have a solent or self tacking jib so they would be a bit easier to sail than the Catanas with the genoas. It was posted here that the Os had solid FG below the waterline which made them noisier then cored hulls. Catana has an active Yahoo group that you can join. You have to ask permission but they even accepted me so it not that hard.
CatanaCats@yahoogroups.com

[RMH]

Many thanks for the kind advice for which I am sincerely grateful.
I have sent an email to try and join the Catana yahoo group and am waiting on a reply.

I don't know the Phisa 42 and even though I have looked it up I cannot see any for sale. Can you please tell me why a Phisa as oppose to a Catana ? Other than the 401 what other model of Catana in the 40 - 50ft range do you think I would be wise to consider for under £200,000 ?
My understanding is that the older Catana's see to have a better rep than the newer Catana's ?
What are your thoughts about the Catana 41 ?

The Outremers are very well thought of but a good one in budget is as rare as donkey do doo's

Plus the Outremers seem very very expensive and I wonder how much of that is value for money ?

Thanks

Richard

[colemj]

Originally Posted by RMH

why a Phisa as oppose to a Catana ?

It is not a choice. When Catana stopped production of the 401, they sold the molds to Phisa, which lengthened them and made some other changes and sold it as the Phisa 42.

The two models did not overlap in time, so there wasn't any choice to be made between them.

I don't know how much this means to you, but the comfort, outfitting and amenities of the Catana 401 is far above those in the Outremer 40 - they aren't very comparable in this regard.

Mark

[CRM]

For me, the Catana is the best way to go if these are your only two choices. Before I bought my latest cat, I looked hard at both the Outremer and the Catana, but found showstoppers with both. I really wanted an Outremer for the good sailing characteristics, but found the interior to be far too spartan. I live aboard full-time, and found the Outremer accommodations to be much too much like camping than what I and my wife are willing to put up with. As for the Catana, I would not put up with the exposed outboard helm stations in nasty weather, and nasty weather is a given. I insist on having someone competent at the helm station 100% of the time that the boat is underway. This requires good weather protection. When it was time to pull out my checkbook, I chose a cat that sails well, but certainly is no racer, but also provides comfortable accommodations that make it home for us.

[RMH]

Are you pleased with the boat ?
What kind of daily mile ages can you expect ?
What are the good/bad points ?
I like the 401 what do you think I should look out for ?
I know it's a lot of questions but I am genuinely grateful ?

Many thanks

Richard

[RMH]

Yes I wondered about the Outremer being a little too basic. We are going to live on ours as well and while the Catana doesn't perform as well as an Outremer from what I can glean they are still fairly quick ?
Both are weight sensitive cats but I hope We are on the right track with Catana ?

[Boatguy30]

I think a Morelli Melvin Leopard 40 is the best 40ish foot production cat. Much faster you'd expect. Only downside for serious offshore sailing is they are a bit narrow.

[RMH]

I have heard so many people say that the Leopards are very slow and poor sailing boats. I have never sailed one so I am not saying this is true but just what I have read. They are on the heavy side. I did look at a 44 that had been extended to 48ft but even the broker said it was the wrong boat for us because of its sailing qualities.

[CRM]

Our Leopard 46 will achieve 10+ kn in a tradewinds broad reach between Caribbean islands with conservative sail trim - double reefed main and genoa. We can point to about 40 deg apparent without the sails luffing, but the fastest point of sail is more like 50-60 deg apparent. For planning purposes, we conservatively assume at least 150 miles/day on long passages with full tanks, a month of provisions, and a moderate amount of gear. But we have occasionally seen up to about 190 miles/day. We experience very infrequent wave slap under the bridge deck, even in 10+ ft waves. The boat rides comfortably at the speeds we see, but frankly I think that higher speeds would likely become uncomfortable. My wife and I, sailing alone, just are not usually in enough of a hurry to beat ourselves up by trying to squeeze out the last half knot of speed. Our boat tacks easily in close quarters.

I am personally happy with the M&M designed hull/sail plan for the Leopard 46. It makes a very comfortable home for us and guests while still sailing pretty well, IMHO. I have chartered some of the Simonis designed cats and found them to be less comfortable primarily because of the lower bridge deck clearance. Delivery captains/crew have commented to me on the same difference.

[Barra]

Originally Posted by RMH

Many thanks for the kind advice for which I am sincerely grateful.
I have sent an email to try and join the Catana yahoo group and am waiting on a reply.

I don't know the Phisa 42 and even though I have looked it up I cannot see any for sale. Can you please tell me why a Phisa as oppose to a Catana ? Other than the 401 what other model of Catana in the 40 - 50ft range do you think I would be wise to consider for under £200,000 ?
My understanding is that the older Catana's see to have a better rep than the newer Catana's ?
What are your thoughts about the Catana 41 ?

The Outremers are very well thought of but a good one in budget is as rare as donkey do doo's

Plus the Outremers seem very very expensive and I wonder how much of that is value for money ?

Thanks

Richard

Hi Richard

We appear to have some similar search criteria so ill give you a detailed reply. Im an ex mono sailor too that wanted a performance oriented design that sailed well including to windward and could be easily managed single handed. It also had to be based in europe for our cruing plans to start there. I am obviously biased like all boat owners but my reasoning is based on real world cruising experience.

We chartered and test sailed all the usual designs in our size range - FPs lagoon, seawind, lightwave leopard etc. It was enough to show us we didnt want a condomaran and we definitely wanted daggerboards. Ill probably get some flack on this forum for saying this but IMHO most of these designs only sail wellish in tradewinds compared to the likes of outremers and catanas which sail well in a much wider range of conditions including upwind. Importantly for a couple they can be easily single handed even in rough conditions where they dont suffer from high windage and bigger sail areas that the large condo type cats need to get going.

I really like the open cockpit layout with the central elec winch of the catana design. reefing, raising etc is easy. Twin mainsheet a good way to go with less to break and inbuilt preventer.

Like you i lusted after the outremers for the sailing performance but the admiral was less impressed with the accommodation compromises and once i got chance to inspect the solid FG hulls on a hardstand I ruled them out too (noisy and lots of flex).

the catanas become the preferred choice due to still good performance but with a better comfort level all round and thats when we stumbled onto the phisa - catana body with a modern high quality fit out but without the modern catana price tag

We were berthed alongside a 401 this year and I can tell you if you do get the chance to see a phisa you will switch to it over the 401 mainly for the better and more modern layout and better fit out quality (phisa were catanas cabinetmakers so the internals are second to none). The main change to the mould was to lengthen the stern for load carrying which was needed for longer term cruising payloads I think.

Our cruising payload is 2 tonnes which we have found to be adequate as a longterm cruising couple but Im on the lookout for a lighter tender as these boats really fly when they are light. Im not sure what the 401 would be but it would be less than this while the 411 is more i think. We came across a hopelessly overloaded 411 this year at 14 tonnes but the skipper still said he averaged around 8 knots and that was with a mast furling main.

The other big plus to the phisa over the 401 and 411 to my mind is the phisa has a similar helm layout to the bigger catana 431s and up. ie they are raised enough to see all points forward over the saloon roof where as the smaller catanas do suffer from limited visibility to the far bow. The engine bays are also close to twice the size on ours due to the stern extensions which any long term cruiser will tell you is a huge plus.

You are right the older catanas do have the better rep out there but they do come with an older internal layout too. again that led us to the phisa with a modern layout but with the older catana hulls.

Take the anti aft helm brigade with a grain of salt too. Most that knock them have simply not tried them and are firmly in the condomaran camp. For actual helming under sail they simply cannot be beaten. If the weather is foul the saloon and the smart pilot are my best friends rather than have the huge windage compromise of a fully enclosed flybridge or similar.

Now ive given a couple of 44 and 46 foot monos a decent headstart to nisiros from here in astipaliya and im off to reell em in (beam reaching in 20 odd knots)

cheers
Barra

[mark_morwood]

Originally Posted by RMH

Many thanks for the kind advice for which I am sincerely grateful.
I have sent an email to try and join the Catana yahoo group and am waiting on a reply.

...

Hi Richard,

i'm one of the "moderators" on the Catana Group, i.e. people who approve join requests to avoid spam bots. We actually don't do any message moderating except to remove spam. In any case, I looked and I don't see a request from you. Easiest is to go to https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/CatanaCats/info and click on the join button.

Regards,
Mark.

[SVThestral]

Hi

I know this is an old thread but it’s very pertinent to us. Can I ask what you ended up with and how you are getting on?

Thanks

Phyll

[Zzmeyer]

Originally Posted by RMH

I have heard so many people say that the Leopards are very slow and poor sailing boats. I have never sailed one so I am not saying this is true but just what I have read. They are on the heavy side. I did look at a 44 that had been extended to 48ft but even the broker said it was the wrong boat for us because of its sailing qualities.

Last fall I sailed 750 miles downwind on my rather quick 50 foot monohull. We went neck and neck with a very well sailed Leopard 48. We both had asymmetrical spinnakers and they had a code zero. I have also blown by several Leopards. I think since so many are charter based meaning neither equipped for speed or sailed well they may have developed a slow reputation. I was impressed enough I bought a cat. Not a Leopard, but I’m less afraid of cruising cat performance capability.