Here come the big boys
And the initial results have been every bit as well thought through as you’d expect
If you’re the sort of sailor who has tried a cruising catamaran and loved the living space but found the actual sailing experience rather joyless and unrewarding – no feel in the helm, a lack of lines to tweak, no real sense of speed or acceleration – then it’s time to take another look. For the first time in many years there’s a new range of cats on the market that do have lightweight hulls and large, powerful rigs, but aren’t skittish or fragile and don’t cost millions. They’re designed specifically to appeal to experienced sailors and engineered to deliver the same amount of pleasure, engagement and deep satisfaction that you get from sailing a well-tuned monohull. With its new Excess range of catamarans, Beneteau Groupe is on a mission to put the fun back into mainstream multihull cruising. Two models, the Excess 12 and 15, are already in the water at the time of writing and set to make their début at this year’s autumn boat shows. They’ve performed well in sea trials with boatspeed to match the true wind speed in just three to six knots of breeze. The Vendée Globe sailor Marc Guillemot has been
78 SEAHORSE
involved in the sea trials and declared himself impressed. ‘But it’s not really about performance figures,’ says Beneteau Groupe’s in- house multihull design guru Bruno Belmont. ‘Those are just numbers. It’s more about feel and sensations – it’s all about the pleasure of sailing.’ Most of the early offshore cruising cat designs were relatively lightweight, performance-orientated yachts, but the last three decades have seen a mass migration of nearly all major cruising multihull brands towards the low-performance, maximum comfort end of the spectrum. This move was driven by strong demand from charter fleet operators for docile, easy-to-handle yachts with all mod-cons and wide- beam hulls. The inevitably stodgy sailing characteristics of these boats have been exacerbated by increasingly strict regulations in the EU’s Recreational Craft Directive on the size and strength of scantlings, which have made each new generation of yachts progressively heavier. Beneteau Groupe’s new Excess brand aims to change all that by moving in the opposite direction with a range of offshore multihulls
Above: the new multihull brand from Beneteau Groupe,
Excess is on a mission to put the fun back into mainstream multihull cruising. Itʼs aimed squarely at experienced sailors who want the generous living space and family accommo- dation of a multihull but who find many of the other cruising cats on the market rather dull and
stodgy to sail
designed to appeal to monohull yacht owners, beach cat sailors, surfers and kitesurfers.
Simplicity is part of the solution. Many experienced sailors will forego some aspects of comfort to save weight, Belmont explains, which is the key to improving multihull performance. ‘For example, they are happy to trade in a chest of drawers for a simple, well-constructed locker. But there is no compromise on the important things like a queen-size island bed in each of the cabins. The hull beam must be wide enough for that.’ A simpler interior fit-out also saves money, which can then be spent on things that make sailing more enjoyable such as high-quality Rutgerson blocks and Dyneema steering cables.
The cockpit design is also aimed at experienced sailors. It’s a larger area than you’ll find on most comparable cats and designed to be more versatile, rather than just optimised to enable the helmsman to do everything himself. ‘To maximise the Excess Cats’ appeal to monohull sailors, we’ve taken the standard cockpit layout of a modern monohull, with twin wheels aft, and
CHRISTOPHE LAUNAY
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