One hell of a team (one hell of a boat)
Then again... if you look into the pedigree and track record of those involved it was never really in doubt
If you’re looking for a high- performance catamaran with round- the-world voyaging capability and line honours race-winning potential, there’s a new player in the market that’s worthy of very serious consideration. Kinetic Catamarans, a US-based company with a shipyard in Knysna, South Africa, is building a brand new range of semi-custom, carbon fibre cruiser-racer designs with some very innovative features, world class build quality and a well- proven pedigree.
Kinetic is a joint venture between Bob Hayward, a successful entrepreneur, film studio co-founder and keen ocean sailor, and Leon Scheepers, a highly regarded boatbuilder with vast experience in multihull production. The Kinetic brand is new but the shipyard has a huge amount of expertise. It was founded by Phil Harvey, who built the iconic early Gunboats such as Tribe and Safari and more recently produced some of the world’s finest full-custom multihulls at Knysna, with Scheepers managing the shipyard. ‘I was having a custom 60ft carbon catamaran built by Phil Harvey when he told me he wanted to make ours his last boat,’ Hayward explains. ‘I can see a real opportunity and am
70 SEAHORSE
giving the yard the capital backing to be world class. We’re competitive on pricing and I’m confident we’ll have a good order book. If you see a pathway to success in a sport and pastime you love, why not?’ Hayward took over, made Scheepers a partner, retained the shipyard’s highly skilled staff and switched focus from full custom to semi-custom production, which offers nearly all the advantages of a full custom build without the inherent risks of cost and build time overruns. Hayward’s boat became the prototype for Kinetic’s flagship KC62 – the second of which is already in build – and its designers, the Dutch- South African firm Simonis Voogd, were asked to draw a 54-footer with the same DNA: a competitive racer and fast ocean cruiser that is spacious, fun to sail and can be cruised by a couple. The first KC54 is also in build, with more to follow. ‘Simonis Voogd bring 30 years of practical experience to the table including their work with Robertson & Caine and the Leopard cats,’ Hayward says. ‘They also have a great racing pedigree and are very innovative.’ Indeed the first KC62, launched in July, is bristling with clever ideas and features.
Above: the five-seater forward cockpit of the KC 62 is one of many stand-out features. Unlike some big cats you may have
seen, this one is designed for liveaboard cruising as well as easy sailing. At anchor or on passage in hot weather, fling open the forward- facing doors and a cool breeze is funnelled through the bridgedeck. Combined with the large aft cockpit, the layout produces three distinct areas on board for relaxation
‘We see Kinetic as the multihull equivalent of Swan and Solaris,’ says Maarten Voogd. ‘Performance combined with comfort. To achieve this the hulls are very slender on the waterline but flare out to the chine and from there on beam is maximised to give volume inside.’ The KC62 and KC54 are true blue water cats, Voogd explains: ‘The bridgedeck clearance is high and the hull centerline-to-centerline distance is maximised to minimise interference between the hulls. A lot of reserve buoyancy has been allowed for as we’re still talking about cruising cats. It is better to allow for extra displacement beforehand than to be too optimistic about the final displacement. There is nothing worse than overloading a performance- orientated catamaran.’ For genuine trans-oceanic range the design team allowed for 700-litre fuel and water tanks, fitted with baffles and integrated into both hulls.
One notable feature of the Kinetic designs is that owners get to choose between sensible, fully retractable centreboards and high-performance C-foil daggerboards. ‘We’ve overcome the issues that earlier boats had with their centreboards,’ Hayward says. ‘They are raised and
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