Below: ready to roll – the use of a brand new fleet of M32 cats will breathe dramatic new life into the 2016 World Match Racing Tour… as will US$1million of prizemoney. Meanwhile, the Aston Harald facilities (right) that champion Volvo race boatbuilder Killian Bushe has at his disposal to build M32s are a long way from those dusty sheds where in an earlier era the talented Irishman built many of the world’s best IOR designs
Welcome to M32 World
The relaunch of the M32 cat with a new builder and all new class management has been accompanied by the exciting adoption of the class for the 2016 World Match Racing Tour…
On 11 December 2015, on the island of Hönö near Gothenburg, a brand new, purpose-built facility was unveiled for mass-producing M32 catamarans. This gargantuan 3,050m2 climate-controlled hangar has been geared up to build 100 new M32s through 2016, with plans to fur- ther expand production the following year. All this for a catamaran that co-design- ers Göran Marström and Kåre Ljung orig- inally envisaged as a toy for them to enjoy with a few friends. They imagined just four or five would ever be built and raced locally in Sweden. But Swedish entrepre- neur Håkan Svensson decided the boat deserved a bigger audience, and the new facility is part of his vision for populating the planet with hundreds, even thousands, of M32s. That vision is M32 World. As many America’s Cup sailors have discovered after a lifetime of racing heavy- displacement keelboats, multihulls can be a surprising amount of fun. After a life
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changing outing on Lake Garda in 2012, the seed of an ambitious idea began to germinate in Svensson’s mind, until by early 2015 the entrepreneur was seriously wondering if this simple, easy-to-sail but very quick machine could become the vehicle to drive a revolution in sailing, an agent for lasting change. ‘I had organised the M32 Series in Scandinavia for a couple of years, and I’d started to have conversa- tions with the World Match Racing Tour, and a lot of things began to come together.’ They came together in the form of a company designed to turn the M32 into a global class.
It’s hard to think of another marine business quite like Aston Harald, the company Svensson put in place to promote ‘M32 World’. It is not just a boatbuilding business, not just an event management operation, nor is it just a marketing com- pany. It is all three, and Svensson believes this holistic approach will be key to M32
World’s success. He takes the view that it’s not enough simply to sell a 32ft, ultra-light catamaran to a customer. The buyer wants to learn how to handle the boat safely and to get world-class race training and coach- ing. He wants a great circuit on which to compete against other M32s. The product itself is a means to an end: a great sailing experience from start to finish.
Of course, the boat itself has to be impressive, and the M32 does offer outstanding performance, with an impres- sive power-to-weight ratio thanks to its 8.35m beam including hiking racks and an all-up weight of just 510kg.
The M32 quickly accelerates to about 15kt upwind in moderate airs, with crews regularly seeing over 30kt downwind. A big contributor to both performance and ease of handling are the C-shaped foils which, according to designer Kåre Ljung, will sup- port up to 50% of the sailing displacement, reducing wetted drag significantly.
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