Sail

A lucky pair of sailors explores the crystal-clear waters off La Maddalena, Italy. A product of Austria’s Grabner GmbH, the Happy Cat beach cat employs a pair of inflatable hulls making it fully portable. A winner in SAIL magazine’s 2021 Best Boats,

In the 11 years since Spindrift Racing made its debut, the pro sailing team has made a big splash, and the upcoming season is expected to be no different. Spindrift co-owners Dona Bertarelli and Yann Guichard recently unveiled their plans for 2022, w

In keeping with many of the more recently launched models created by French multihull builder Lagoon, the Lagoon 51 is all about comfort, “en plein air,” in particular, as the French might say. Topside, a whopping 80 percent of the boat’s flybridge i

Chicago’s Navy Pier will host the United States Sail Grand Prix on June 18 and 19, making it the first time the championship sails on freshwater. It will be the second event of the third season, after Bermuda in May. Navy Pier will serve as the centr

The days of multihulls being the weirdos of the sea are gone. Nothing illustrated this better than the 2021 Atlantic Rally for Cruisers (ARC), which departed Las Palmas de Gran Canaria (in Spain’s Canary Islands) in November and wrapped up in Decembe

Anacortes, Washington, is an unassuming sea-salty town near the San Juan Islands of Puget Sound, and the Betts Boats yard is easy for a passerby to miss. But within Betts’ facilities, the dawn of an era in Pacific Northwest production boatbuilding co

For sailors of a certain age, the entire concept of a mulithull is cutting edge. However, even a cursory glance at a harbor full of cats and tris will show that the “cutting edge” of today looks very different from the cutting edge of, say, the ‘90s,

The latest addition to the Excess catamaran line, which now includes four models with LOAs from 37ft to 48ft, the Excess 14 carries on the tradition of cruising comfort with a dash of performance and a unique, new aesthetic. As is the case with the r

In its new 51-footer, Fountaine Pajot has sought to combine comfort with “sustainable cruising” in a sharp-looking catamaran with the company’s now trademark reverse sheer, sharp lines and tumbehome bows. As part of the “comfort” package, the Fountai

Offshore racing in the Caribbean is a relatively new concept. In years gone by it was deemed unsafe to even sail at night in the Caribbean, let alone hurtle around in darkness in a high-performance grand prix racing machine. With the advent of modern

Despite its being the smallest boat in the Fountaine Pajot catamaran line, you’d never guess it stepping aboard the new Isla 40. As the successor to the highly popular Lucia 40, the Isla had big shoes to fill, which it successfully does by incorporat

The Xquisite X5 Plus is a major update of the boat that SAIL awarded Best Large Multihull and Best Systems titles in 2017. The changes were not just cosmetic, but genuine improvements to an already fine boat, making it lighter, faster and less depend

Luxury high-end cruising cats with high-performance DNA have occupied an established, if somewhat rarified niche in the sailboat market ever since Peter Johnstone launched the first Gunboat in South Africa just over two decades ago. Kinetic Catamaran

For years, Nautitech Catamarans has been doing things differently from other production cat builders, and it seems to be paying off. When the French company launched its Open series in 2013, it shrunk the saloon and dedicated more space to the cockpi

Reading through this issue, you’ll notice a common theme: multihulls have made it. Whether it’s an increasing number of them in the ARC or the design trends cementing their place in the consumer and charter markets, it’s hard to even imagine that not