These days multihulls are such an integral part of the sailing landscape that it’s easy to forget that it wasn’t so many years ago that they were viewed as, well, somewhat esoteric. Yet you only have to take a look at yachts such as Donald Crowhurst’s doomed Teignmouth Electron to see why they were seen as, um, a bit different. The transition to the current state of affairs whereby fast cruising multihulls are taking up an increasingly large sector of the market owes an awful lot to one manufacturer, Catana, who was there in the early days of the multihull boom and, by sticking to a belief that cruising multihulls could be both fast, comfortable and stylish, helped pave the way for other manufacturers to flood the market with the sort of rapid cruisers that have changed the way we approach bluewater cruising.
It has therefore been something of a surprise that the company left such a significant length of time between launching its Catana 53 in 2017 and its latest boat, the Ocean Class, which was first exhibited at last year’s Multihull Show at La Grand
