Helia 44, Review after a charter week

[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

[Nils Gruttner]

Hey Eddie,

Glad you liked the Helia, it's an awesome cat.

All the things you pointed out have been subject to multiple discussions among their owners and aftermarket / home-made mods have taken care of most of them .... making the Helia a great cruiser. Why didn't FP address all those issues? No idea. Commercial decision I suppose.

I purchased hull #259, the last one made I believe and she just hit the water. Had a chance to look at her the other day, saw all the points you made, but have to wait 5 years to make those mods when she comes out of charter. In the meantime ..... first trip booked on her "as is" is at the end of June, cant wait.

[bstreep]

Wow. We chartered an FP 43 in Belize almost 15 years ago. And they STILL haven't fixed the anchor locker problem. We chartered before buying, to see if a cat was in our future. This and many other problems is the reason we went mono. I just can't believe they haven't fixed the anchor problems yet.

[Factor]

Originally Posted by ed91e

The dilemma is performance or production cat.

The two things are not mutually exclusive

[Tornadosailing]

Sounds like you enjoyed your trip overall. If you search this forum you'll find quite a few nice upgrades that people have done to improve the original design.

The main halyard should run to the outboard winch, and should have a clutch. No idea why it wouldn't have one. The two jib sheets don't come with a clutch from the factory, but it's common to add them.

I agree with you about the nav station. It's terrible, but I think you're right about it being relatively easy to modify.

Adding battcars between the existing ones is a mod I've seen several guys do. The issues you saw could be due to needing a simple lube of the cars. Given that the sails seemed to be well worn, I suspect the charter cat may have seen it's fair share of abuse.

The issues with playing hide and seek with the lazy jacks is pretty common. Had the same issues with a Lagoon I used to charter, and still have those problems with my Salina. Part of the deal with big roach full batten mains on cats.

The chain piling up is normally associated with having the factory option 1/2 inch chain. Most people swap it out for 3/8 hi-test. It weighs a lot less and piles up less.

I've seen some Moorings cats with cleats on the crossbar. Even though I've seen mooring lines on these cleats, I don't think Leopard really wants you to use them for mooring. Not sure what they expect you to do with them if not mooring. I know there are several Helias with additional cleats out on the bows. Useful for mooring, docking, and as an attachment point for a symmetric spinnaker.

Tacking angle is terrible on charter cats in general. Stub keels and fat hulls are killers for going upwind. I can work my way up to 38 degrees apparent while still making decent speed, but then I'll make more leeway than I want to. The cure for this is narrow hulls and dagger boards, but then you lose lots of interior space both to the narrow hulls and the dagger board trunks. It's all a trade off.

[Pizzazz]

Just wanted to add on the nav station setup. Pretty much everyone is scaling these down and for a good reason. I believe it is no longer an essential function of a cruising boat. Most of the typical tasks (plotting, route planning, weather routing, reading about new destinations) are far easier done on a tablet while lounging. In a couple of years time the integration will be even better. So you may not miss the nav station at all.

[OldMan]

Adding a second bridle cures the lines chafing the hull while on a mooring ball. Shorter than the anchor bridle, stow on the gull striker or over the beam and clip to the net.

[AllenRbrts]

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 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

Eddie, good summary of your trip. I own hull #16. Helia is a great boat but you noted some issues. The main issue usually is the oversized halyard, after downsizing the halyard, my mind drops all by itself.Adding a couple of intermediate cars could help the billowing of sailing especially during reefing. I don’t mind the nav table. I frequently spend night passages there. I can open the hatch and look out to see what is in front and check the jib trim.

Front cleats, we have ones near the bow on the hulls, I think they are standard. I have two premade lines for mooring. They have an eye at each end. The lines go from the cleat through the mooring pendant and to the cleat. Very easy.

We go and look at boats at the boat shows and leave feeling we still love our boat the most.

[contrail]

Leopard has not wanted people to moor from the crossbeam for a number of years, now, but everyone does it. We do it in pretty strong conditions. Voyage has virtually the same set-up, spec'd similarly, and they say, "use them".



The nature of lazy jacks is that you either set them up where they can be moved out of the way, tough with our big sails, or you have to guide the sail between them. A couple of things that help: if you ease the mainsheet a bit, you have more margin with regard to heading right into the wind. If you raise the boom maybe a foot, using the topping lift, tension goes right off the lazy jacks. The bag will open wider and you have a lot more room. Finally, practice does help. If you are not raising your main, while still on the mooring, but rather, underway, if the helms person is unskiilled, have them speed up. This puts the apparent wind more forward.....the apparent wind in your car is almost always from nearly straight ahead, right? Of course, you can run out of room, as it takes awhile! A more skilled helms person can go much more slowly, whilst still keeping the wind on the nose. Finally, almost everyone is so used to looking at screens that they use the wind instrument to tell where the wind is. But, the best wind instrument you have is the sail, not to mention that even if you are going straight upwind, some part of it may be deflected to one side or the other. So, develop the habit of watching the sail, not the instruments, and change course to guide it up through the lazy jacks. By the way, although it can't do this, the autopilot steers a pretty good courses, too.........

[ed91e]

Originally Posted by Factor

The two things are not mutually exclusive

Would you want to elaborate?

[44'cruisingcat]

Originally Posted by ed91e

Would you want to elaborate?

You can get production cat's that perform well.

[ed91e]

Originally Posted by 44'cruisingcat

You can get production cat's that perform well.

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?

[ed91e]

Originally Posted by Pizzazz

Just wanted to add on the nav station setup. Pretty much everyone is scaling these down and for a good reason. I believe it is no longer an essential function of a cruising boat. Most of the typical tasks (plotting, route planning, weather routing, reading about new destinations) are far easier done on a tablet while lounging. In a couple of years time the integration will be even better. So you may not miss the nav station at all.

It's off course a matter of personal preference. But I would feel better having a dedicated forward looking seat with all instruments clearly visible in front of me while under passage. Especially if the weather isn't great.

[ed91e]

Originally Posted by Nils Gruttner

Hey Eddie,

Glad you liked the Helia, it's an awesome cat.

All the things you pointed out have been subject to multiple discussions among their owners and aftermarket / home-made mods have taken care of most of them .... making the Helia a great cruiser. Why didn't FP address all those issues? No idea. Commercial decision I suppose.

I purchased hull #259, the last one made I believe and she just hit the water. Had a chance to look at her the other day, saw all the points you made, but have to wait 5 years to make those mods when she comes out of charter. In the meantime ..... first trip booked on her "as is" is at the end of June, cant wait.

Hi Nils,

I have seen your video and read your blog. Great job!

I am sure you will love your Helia.

[44'cruisingcat]

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?

Dazcat, Gunboat, HH, Broadblue, Outremer... plus there are others.