Outside lifestyle re-invented
THERE has been a long build up in promotional marketing with regard to the newly-released range of Beneteau catamarans. Calling it the ‘Excess’ range set themselves a target of providing something that would pop into the market and make everyone go “wow”!
The first of the line, the Excess 12, made it out to Australia and agency, Flagstaff Marine, are pretty stoked with the initial response.
The thinking heads of Beneteau took a long look at the multihull market and tried to find a niche that had not yet been provided for. Given they were already producing the highly-popular Lagoon catamarans, they could not just produce a clone.
What they came up with is simple in its logic. Catamarans had more and more been designed to be a cruising lifestyle platform, which is all fine given the catamarans dual hull lends itself to apartment style living. But it was increasingly coming at the expense of performance for which multihulls were initially popular.
Charter companies are a huge buyer of cruising multihulls and this was skewing the designs, sailing was not the primary purpose. So Beneteau began to take a step back and look at where they can find the balance between sailing pleasure and performance.
Beneteau’s Excess manager, Thibaut de Montvalon, recently nailed the main feature they were looking for, “how soon can you cut the engines and get sailing?”
For Thibaut, “cruising
