seawind catamaran reviews

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Seawind 1600

Description

Seawind Catamarans is an Australian multihull brand that is fast gaining a great reputation among sailors for their designs. There are some great catamaran designs coming out of the southern hemisphere (read our McConaghy MC50 review for another example) – Seawind are definitely in the vanguard.

They moved their yard to Vietnam to become more competitive on costs, and this stylish 52 footer sets the new standard – it’s a completely new design from iconic supermaxi designers Reichel Pugh.

When you first step onto the Seawind 1600 , you’ll note the sheltered aft deck with twin helms outboard behind the coachroof and the wide decks forward to the bows and trampolines. She has dagger boards in each hull that are flush with the deck when in the raised position and the overall look is very sleek. Retractable rudders aft are easily removed if you want to go really shallow. This design really moves the bar versus older competitors in this market (read our Catana 47 review for example).

• Those twin helms are set in a mid position and tuck halfway under the bimini: they are a real USP for this boat. They give you a fantastic combination of sailing feel and protection when you need it.
• This boat is good value for money. She is priced at around the same level as her major competitors (Outremer, ITA 14.99 etc), but I would say that the quality of the finish on this yacht is at the  top end of the scale.
• The fully integrated daggerboards give her a great profile and deliver on performance.
• The running rigging is very well organised. The plan is similar to a Catana (tried and tested), with two mainsheet tackles and a central electric winch on the aft beam. The mainsail halyard, 3 reefing lines, topping lift and the solent sheet are all fed through a duct beneath the nacelle and fed to the mast foot. Very tidy and easy to manage with few hands on the ropes.
• The daggerboards are raised and lowered with lines again hidden beneath the deck.
• We also love the forward facing nav station / control centre. The visibility is great from here.
• Those Flexiteek covered side-decks are a head turner and feel great to walk on.
• The aft cockpit and saloon are on different levels, so you don’t get that big open space that you see on many modern cats. The flip side is that the interior feels cosy.
• The outside dining area is smaller than many boats we have seen of this size. She’s aimed at long distance cruisers.
• The price of this yacht starts to run away  if you start opting for some of the carbon options (like the mast). But that is true of the competition I guess.
• This yacht has finely shaped hulls, so don’t expect a palatial cabin. But it is surprisingly roomy down below, you don’t really notice space being taken up by the daggerboards.
• The forward cabin(s) in particular are small. They are cosy queens, at best , we would say.

The Rig and Lines

There’s a track for the self-tacking jib and most of the lines run tidily from here via a channel under the nacelle and back to the winch at the transom.

There are double sheets to control the main, which do the job as both trim and preventer without having to have a track (similar to a Catana set up). All lines including those for reefing come back to the cockpit for short handed sailing.

Most of the competition score highly in this regard, but the Seawind 1600 is particularly well organised (read our Outremer 55 review for another cat design that scores highly).

There are some neat touches in the running rigging set-up: the main halyard runs to the central aft pod electric Harken winch- again this reminds me of a Catana set up – and you can step out onto the side deck to make sure your mainsail  clears the lazy-jacks when you are hoisting.

If you are single handed, you can use the remote buttons for this central winch to pull up the main, and the self-tacking jib unfurls nicely when you come off the wind. The furling line runs in a tube along the port side of the boat – very neat.

Once you are up and running, you’ll have the genoa sheet running to the central winch for easy trimming and the twin sheets running to the winches on wither side, port and starboard on the transom. If the wind picks up, it’s an easy job to centralise the mainsail if you need to gybe, for example, using the winches on each side on that twin sheet set-up. The jib is a piece of cake, of course, as it’s self tacking.

She’s powered by twin Yanmar 80HP engines that sit in some very neatly designed bays aft. There’s plenty of workspace around each engine with all systems and service points above the bilge level.

You can see the quality of the steering system down here with large stainless rods to the rudders and a 54L/ph water maker (with air conditioner in another locker on the aft deck). I’d probably have a water maker retro fitted to a 100L per hour model.

Power is supplied from the engine alternators, and 800w of solar panels on the bimini, plus a bank of Mastervolt AGM batteries in the saloon with a 2200w Mastervolt inverter.

The decks are nice and wide, and all of the hatches are flush, so moving around the boat feels safe. This catamaran does have boards, but they are recessed, so you don’t have those as an obstruction as you are walking forward.

There are plenty of hand-holds and clip on points distributed around the boat- the builders have obviously put a lot of thought into maximising safety at sea. All the lines lead back to the cockpit and both helm stations have controls for the engines- you won’t need to spin the boat around to come in on the same side every time.

The aft cockpit is going to particularly appeal to sailors in warmer climes, it looks very “Ibiza Lounge”.

The saloon has four forward facing hatches- so there’s plenty of light and ventilation. The wrap around windows give you fantastic visibility forward and around. To port you have a big U-shaped sofa with a coffee table that folds out into a dining table: there’s plenty of space for entertaining.

On the starboard side is a forward facing nav station from which you can see your sails- a handy place to hang out on watch if the weather turns nasty. Behind the nav station is an ample galley with burners and a double sink. The design lends itself to being able to wedge yourself in if things get rough with a front loading fridge and a top loading freezer.

We like the way that you can throw open the large windows between the cockpit and the saloon. The Seawind is slightly unusual in today’s market in that you step down into the saloon- most cats these days have the saloon and cockpit on one level as one big open space. It definitely helps to give the boat more zones, although once those windows are thrown open, the two areas are pretty well connected.

Guests will head down into the port hull which you can configure with twins aft or a queen size. There’s loads of storage down here and the quality of the finish, just like the saloon and cockpit, is very high.

There is another berth forward, and this is the big compromise for us, as this would have to be classified as a single rather that a double. That’s the price you pay for those slender hulls I guess.

In the master hull to starboard, the space forward is taken up by a roomy shower-room, and there are plenty of options for storage / washing machine etc down here. But all in all, you might be surprised at the size of the living accommodation down below – you just need to keep reminding yourself that this is a performance cat.

The forward guest cabin in the port hull is the big compromise – it’s going to seriously reduce your options if you have guests onboard.

The big news on the specs front is that boards up draft which comes in at a skinny 0.54m or 2’1″ : you can pull up the rudders as well, just like a Gunboat. Those rudders will slide in a hinged carbon housing which you can get to from the sugarscoops.

Displacement is 13 tonnes.

The Seawind 1600 is an out and out performance cruising catamaran that is targeting speeds in the high teens and even over 20 knots in the right conditions on a broad reach.

With those daggerboards, she points well into the wind like an Outremer and is comfortable at an AWA as low as 35 degrees. Displacement is just 13 tonnes light, so she gets moving quickly and sails well in light airs.

Seawind 1600 Polar Digram

The base price for a Seawind 1600 (Dec 2019) is around €780k and this jumps to around €850-900k once you have all of the options added. It will depend on what you go for I guess.

There is plenty of competition in this category with the Balance 526, Outremer 52 and HH50 all vying for honours in this 50 foot performance range. The Seawind 1600 is going to take some beating on the value for money stakes even if it still is a million dollar boat. You get a lot for your money – this is a very well thought out performance cruiser, our one big reservation is the size of that forward guest cabin.

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The best bluewater multihulls of all time: a complete guide

• Toby Hodges
• October 6, 2021

Toby Hodges and François Tregouet consider the best bluewater multihulls and look at the options for sailing the oceans in spacious comfort

What are the best bluewater multihulls for long term cruising? The one you own, or the one you can afford is the simple answer.

There is a wealth of proven designs to suit bluewater sailing and a variety of budgets. While we have focussed here on the best bluewater multihulls in production, we’ve also included some cracking pedigree multihulls which tour the planet and might occasionally pop up on the brokerage market.

If you can afford to, then pushing towards the 45-50ft length will buy you space, pace and that extra payload capacity needed to take all the items you’d want on your home afloat.

When looking at the best bluewater multihulls, the choice will come down to that perennial balance between comfort/space and speed/weight. Choosing a lighter weight performance design will obviously help you cover distance voyages more rapidly and potentially allow you to outrun weather systems. It means you can sail faster, with less sail up and less load and stress. But you’ll have to sacrifice some luxuries and need to be quite scrupulous about keeping weight down and centralised in order to maintain high average speeds.

For the majority of cruisers, however, it is the amount of space multihulls offer once you’ve reached your destination that really appeals. As well as the non-heeling living area and real estate they provide, they’re well suited to typical tradewind sailing .

If you’re considering your first or next multihull, we hope the following will serve as a taster.

Best bluewater multihulls for performance cruising

Outremer 51/55.

When you think of multihulls designed for bluewater cruising, Outremer will likely be one of the first names that comes to mind. Its heritage lies in building catamarans that can sail fast and are built strong enough to do laps of the globe.

The 51, the current version of which launched three years ago, is an archetypal example of what to look for in terms of blending speed and space is a dream design for a family circumnavigation.

The French yard’s new 55ft VPLP design may look boldly different from its past models, but the philosophy behind it remains the same. It is designed to match windspeed up to 12 knots and Outremer reasons that its ability to sail in 5 knots of breeze will allow it to sail for 95% of the time on a circumnavigation.

Read more about the Outremer 51 and Outremer 55.

Photo: Diego Yriarte

Seawind 1600/1370

For nearly four decades the Australian Seawind brand and its founder Richard Ward have been gearing catamarans around safe bluewater sailing, including performance, protection and ease of handling. Its Reichel Pugh-designed 1600, which launched three years ago, is an elegant looking cat with relatively low, long lines and some smart solutions for fast bluewater sailing.

Seawind also launches its new 1370 later this year, a staggering 60 of which have sold on plans alone.

This first 50 is built from a composite sandwich of basalt fibre, a cloth made from volcanic rock, and PET foam from recycled plastic bottles, which helps to reduce carbon emissions by nearly 50% when compared with traditional glassfibre methods.

This new 50 footer is perhaps a more appealing and practical prospect than Rapido’s previous 60 (with its significant fixed beam), particularly as the amas on this new model can fold to reduce beam to 18ft.

Infused carbon foam sandwich construction is used, along with beams, daggerboards and rudder in pre-preg carbon to keep displacement to 8,200kg.

Read more about the Rapido 50

This OC50 is designed as a more affordable cruising alternative, than the HH models which have preceeded it. This model targets ocean sailing.

It’s still stiffened and strengthened by carbon, but built in vinylester composites with a gelcoat finish. This adds an additional 300kg or so over a full carbon HH50, but cost savings are in the region of $400,000.

Read more about the HH OC50

Balance 526

The 526 launched four years ago, designed to suit short-handed sailors and families looking to sail long distances, hence it can carry large payloads and promises easy maintenance. It looks good too.

Berman’s Versahelm design is a key feature. The wheel cantilevers, allowing the helmsman to steer from outboard with clear sightlines or from the hardtop protection of the aft cockpit.

Photo: Christopher White

Atlantic 47

The A47 suits short-handed fast ocean sailing at an approachable size. Lengthening it to 49ft allowed for an aft cockpit. It is available as a sloop or with White’s patented MastFoil ketch rig – rotating aerofoil masts designed for easy short-handed cruising without sacrificing performance.

Read more about the Atlantic 47

A combination of sharp design from François Perus and high build quality brings plenty of appeal to this sporty Italian-built cat. The first example launched three years ago with a light displacement of 10.5 tonnes, thanks to an E-glass epoxy-infused build with carbon strengthening. The yard offers semi-custom construction and full hybrid packages.

Catana 53/Ocean class 50

Catana’s performance model from 2017, sports twin aft helms (which may not suit ocean sailors), reverse bows and carbon daggerboards. The high topsides help create good bridgedeck clearance and plenty of accommodation. Its new Ocean Class 50 seems more in the shipyard’s bluewater DNA. The light weight, and dynamic and modern shape with slim hulls and a relatively short nacelle suggests a seaworthy nature and high speeds.

Read more about the Catana 53

Best bluewater multihulls for pedigree performance

Veteran multihull designers Morrelli & Melvin designed this smaller model for the Gunboat range. It was built to be more manageable for an owner-driver yet still capable of up to 300-400 mile days.

The Gunboat 48 is something of a rare breed, just six 48s were built between 2004 and 2009. Oh, to have a spare €1.3m right now… one of them is actually on the market.

Read more about the Gunboat 48

At the start of the Millennium, Catana offered fully equipped boats as standard for long distance cruising. The Catana 471 or 472 (one or two helms respectively), represented at the time the optimum in ocean-going catamarans.

Chincogan/Lightwave

Tony Grainger has been drawing fast multihulls for 35 years, including racing trimarans and the Lightwave and Chincogan cruisers. The popular Lightwave 38 has admirable performance and comfort, and the Chincogan 52 (pictured) has the length to clock high average speeds.

Outremer 45 G. Danson

With its characteristic roof, narrow hulls and daggerboards, the Outremer 45 is a standout design which has become somewhat iconic. Despite a rather spartan interior, it has been a great success with fast cruising enthusiasts. On board, family ocean crossings at an average of 10 knots are the norm.

Best bluewater multihulls for family cruising

Photo: Nicolas Claris

The Lagoon 450 remains the most popular model in Lagoons already popular range. It exemplifies the VPLP/Nauta design partnership which has made these the very definition of modern mid-size cruising catamarans which can appeal to families and charterers alike.

Indeed the 450 marked the modern look of Lagoon and was the first with interior styling from Nauta. It originally launched over a decade ago as a flybridge design with central helming position (450F), before this ‘sport top’ option (450S) was offered with a starboard helm station and lower boom.

Read more about the Lagoon 450

Photo: Guilain Grenier

Fountaine Pajot Saona 47

The 47 has a modern shape, with straight bows and a reverse sheer line. It incorporates significant volume in the hulls below the bridgedeck to create room for the optional athwartships cabins. Cabin space is a prime selling point, particularly the owner’s suite to port, where there is also abundant natural light and headroom.

Photo: Tui Marine

Leopard Catamarans, together with designer Simonis Voogd and builder Robertson and Caine, produce the archetypal dual-purpose owner-operator or charter boat in their modern catamaran range.

Key features of the 45 are the amount of light in the saloon and the incredible volume and space on offer in the cabins above the relatively narrow waterlines. Vast social living areas include the flybridge, saloon and dual cockpits.

Read more about the Leopard 45

Photo: www.jfromero.fr

Nautitech Open/Fly 46

During the 1990s and noughties Nautitech earned a good reputation for its elegant catamarans. The 441 is a timeless example and the 44 can be credited with the ongoing trend in hardtop biminis. While its acquisition by Bavaria seven years ago helped Nautitech implement industrial build techniques, the French brand has retained its DNA at its Rochefort sur Mer yard.

The modern Marc Lombard designs have tall rigs with generous square-top mainsails. Twin wheels in the aft quarters of the Open 46 offer a direct feel on the helm, however those spending long periods in the tropics may prefer the shade of the bimini-equipped flybridge option. The layout is also open, with a saloon more outside than in. Styling is clean, modern and simple, and the standard of build and finish are good.

Photo: Olivier Blanchet

First impressions of the Neel 51 are sure to centre on its sheer size and space inside. But as you’ll see from our review of the Neel 43 on page 83, when you sail one overriding impressions quickly centre on its performance.

These trimarans are becoming a popular mass production-built option.

Photo: Christophe Launay

The Excess 11 packs plenty of potential as the smallest yacht offered by the big production yards. A little like the Lagoon 380 of old, it presents a good value new entry-level boat for genuine cruising in a more sporty, modern and enticing design. Some may argue against aft helms for ocean sailing, but those coming from monohulls will appreciate the more direct steering they offer.

Broadblue 385S

Broadblue is a UK brand which offers a distinct line of cruising and Rapier performance catamarans. Its staple 385 packs a lot of cruising comfort into its length, including generous tankage, and has been sailed all over the world. Broadblue built its first electric drive catamaran 12 years ago and offers the only all-electric production sailing catamaran under 40ft in Europe.

Photo: Christophe Breschi

Bali Catspace

For those looking for maximum volume within 40ft, it’ll be hard to beat the Catspace – although it is more of a holiday apartment than a traditional bluewater cruiser. Bali’s garage style sliding aft door does help offer an enormous amount of enclosed (or open) living space.

Best bluewater multihulls for luxury cruising

Photo: Nico Krauss

Privilège 510 Signature

The 510 is designed to take a serious amount of cruising gear – up to six tonnes of it in fact. The excellent helm station now has a fixed windscreen and all lines lead to hand. Finish quality including the electrical installation is first class and Privilege’s trademark, an admirable full beam (26ft) forward cabin, is sumptuous.

Photo: Jérôme Houyvet

Garcia Explocat 52

Garcia Yachts has cornered the market for series-built aluminium monohulls and multihulls in the last decade and this new Explocat 52 is sparking real interest. We ran a full test report in our February issue, describing it as a go-anywhere cat with an enticing combination of space, pace and rugged construction.

Read our review of the Garcia Explocat 52

Built in Argentina, the Antares 44 is the ultimate evolution of a model launched 21 years ago. Entirely dedicated to bluewater cruising, it is the yard’s only model and is constantly being improved according to owner feedback.

Time seems to have no hold on this boatyard and, against the trend, the standard equipment of the Antares 44 is extremely complete

Photo: Richard Langdon

Discovery Bluewater 50

This luxury Bill Dixon design may be a decade old now and into its third iteration, but the concept behind its original appeal remains. For those used to sailing high-end thoroughbred monohulls, here is an option to consider for a comparative level of build quality and fit out when moving to a multihull.

Read more about the Discovery Bluewater 50

St Francis 50 MKII

With this latest version of its original model, this experienced South African builder has optimised a catamaran cut out for the unforgiving seas of the Indian Ocean and the South Atlantic. The MKII allows for an increased load capacity, an important point in long distance cruising.

Xsquisite X5

Intelligent features on the X5 include the protected helm station with glass windscreen, integrated rainwater catcher, UV-protective glass and generous tankage.

Best bluewater multihulls for size & speed

Mcconaghy mc52.

The MC50 (now MC52) was the first and promises some high speed sailing, but it’s the open plan main living deck which will attract the majority. It incorporates an intelligent centreboard system, which hardly affects interior space, but arguably its exposed helms at the aft end of the flybridge will not suit serious ocean cruising.

Photo: Florian H. Talles

HH in Xiamen is building some really impressive large, luxury fast cats up to 90ft. This was its second model to launch, a high-end, high performance Morelli & Melvin design capable of rapid passagemaking speeds and enjoyable regatta sailing. Features include C-shaped boards and central or aft helms.

Photo: Mike Jones/Waterline Media

Ocean Explorer 60

If Nautor’s Swan made catamarans, they may look like this… The Ocean Explorer 60 uses the same designer in German Frers and some of the same builders who worked at the famous Finnish yard to produce this world cruiser. The resultant quality shines through. A new OE72 is due soon.

Kinetic KC54

A young company with plenty of experience, Kinetic produces custom fast ocean cruisers, which can occasionally race. Its 62 is a serious performance vessel with carbon hulls, rigs and rigging, daggerboards or centreboards. With fast bluewater cruising the goal, carbon is used to minimise weight so features/toys can still be added. The swim platform and hardware on the newly launched 54 weighs just 90kg, and the generous sized tanks are all in carbon too. Views from the saloon and forward cockpit also look special.

Best bluewater multihulls for ultimate performance

Marsaudon ts4/orc 42.

Few catamaran builders produce genuine performance cruisers at this ‘smaller’ size: this one is kept minimalist and light weight (around 6 tonnes) – the yard’s philosophy is ‘simplicity, then add lightness.’ The 42 is a cruiser-racer with the ability to outpace most yachts across the Atlantic, win a regatta and still offer some space for island hopping. Standard tankage is minimal however. Marsaudon recently rebranded its TS range to Ocean Rider Catamarans (ORCs) and has an ORC 57 in build.

Dazcat 1495

Dazcat builds fast, seaworthy cats from its Multihull Centre in Cornwall. The 1495 is a true ocean cruiser-racer, which is stiff and rewarding to sail, with direct steering linked to carbon rudders. The 1495 can hit 20+ knot speeds with relative ease, but it is the consistent high average speeds which will attract those looking to cover serious miles. Weight is centralised including engines, tanks, and systems all located amidships to help reduce pitching. Dazcat has a semi-custom build approach and creates all sorts of weird and wonderful craft for all abilities.

Dragonfly 40

Dragonfly trimarans are known for their high quality construction and ability to delight sailors with their ease of planing speeds. For those who can live without the space of similar length cats, the new flagship 40 is large enough to offer cruising space, while folding outriggers and retractable appendages mean you can dry out where others wouldn’t dare.

Looping 45/Freydis 48

These two designs by Erik Lerouge both offer a high-performance vision of ocean cruising. The Loopings were built individually and the Freydis in small series, and on both you can sail as fast as the wind in complete safety. Interior quality depends on whether finished by an amateur or by a shipyard.

Swisscat 48

An attractive combination of luxury, comfort and performance, the S48 is a stiff, go-anywhere premium cat that is easy to manage single-handed. The lightweight build (11t) is in epoxy infusion with carbon reinforcement.

Schionning Designs

Jeff Schionning has catamaran design in his blood. His designs exude performance and seaworthiness with flowing, even aerodynamic lines. On all tradewind routes you’ll find a G-Force (models from 12m to 23m) or an Arrow (12m to 15m) sailing more quickly than the rest. His latest venture is with Current Marine in Knysna, South Africa.

Best bluewater multihulls for pedigree cruising

The long-time best-seller from the world leader in catamarans, with more than 1,000 produced over almost 20 years from 1999. With its characteristic vertical windows, the 380 and its big brother the 410 made the purists scream when they were presented. But the 380 proved a pioneer of its kind. Safe bow volumes and light displacement (7,260 kg) helped its seaworthy behaviour. The high number of boats on the market makes this the most affordable bluewater cruising multihull for its size, even if price range is as wide as condition is variable.

Casamance 44/46

Between 44ft and 46ft depending on the year of construction and the length of its transoms, the Casamance was an impressive catamaran on launch in 1985. The design by Joubert/Nivelt offered good volume and load capacity. Of the 490 units produced, many joined the charter fleets. The exterior of the Casamance is dated, but the interior in grey ceruse oak has retained plenty of charm.

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CatamaranReviews.com

Seawind 1600 catamaran.

The Seawind 1600 is a blue water cruiser designed to have a balance of sailing performance and cruising comfort. It is built with the latest techniques using a composite construction, and a great effort is made to save weight, making this catamaran fast and practical.

Table of Contents

DESIGN – INTERIOR & EXTERIOR

The Seawind 1600 was designed by renowned naval architects Reichel Pugh and built by Seawind , an Australian based company that recently moved its production facilities to Vietnam. Designed with performance and weight saving in mind, it’s hulls are narrow and reinforced with Kevlar and carbon. The interior has a minimalist design and is offered in two finishes, “European” and “Traditional.”

The retractable rudders and daggerboards give a maximum draft of 8’6″ / 2.6 m down to 2’1″ / 0.54 m, which is ideal for accessing shallower areas typically reserved for smaller boats and allow beaching on the sand if needed. The engines are easily accessed, and the excellent space in the engine room makes performing maintenance very comfortable. Locker lids on the deck are solidly constructed, as is the walkway between the trampolines and should last the owner many years. Solar panels on the roof are recessed and designed with a guttering system to collect fresh rainwater, adding to the practicality of this boat as a blue water cruiser.

Visibility from the twin helms is exceptional, though taller sailors may find the hardtop a little low when standing. Being located outboard with such excellent visibility also means the helms are slightly exposed to the elements and can make the captain’s life uncomfortable when on watch in wet weather. Having engine controls in this position at each helm makes docking and maneuvering safe and easy.

The large opening lockers on the floor and under seating provide adequate storage space. The cockpit coffee table folds out into a dining table with the wrap-around L shaped lounge providing accommodation for eight people. A huge triple sliding window allows access from the galley to the cockpit lounge, making communication and delivery of food and drinks a breeze. Features such as bracing points, handholds, and attachment points are in good supply in the cockpit for added safety and security.

The Seawind 1600 is a performance catamaran with daggerboards, but conveniently don’t protrude through to the deck. This makes moving about on top much easier and safer, especially when offshore. The mechanism for operating these is in the cockpit for ease of use and safety. All lockers and hatches are well designed and finished flush to the deck. The main sheet is controlled by winches on either side of the rear seat in the cockpit. Also, for safety and practicality, most other lines are controlled by a power winch in the center of the cockpit, with the lines tailing into bins, keeping the area neat and uncluttered.

Moving from the cockpit to the saloon is unobstructed, through a good-sized sliding door and down two steps. The interior is bright and minimalist in design. Four forward-facing opening hatches provide good ventilation, and combined with wrap-around windows, the sailor has exceptional visibility. The navigation station is located up and forward on the starboard side. From this position, you have excellent 360-degree visibility all around and are also able to see the sails. The outstanding visibility makes the saloon suitable and safe for being on watch during poor weather.

A large U shaped lounge offers plenty of comfortable seating for up to eight, with a coffee table that folds out, converting into a dining table. The large flat-screen TV makes this space great for movie night. Communication with those outside is easy through the extra-large window adjacent to the galley. While the cabinetry could have slightly larger rounded corners for safety, they’re all solidly constructed with quality materials.

The galley is mounted up in the saloon on the starboard side in an enclosed U shaped configuration, suggesting it would be a safe, secure space during rough weather. With a large amount of bench space, deep double stainless sink, three burner stovetop, 130L front-loading fridge, and 90L top-loading freezer, this is a practical cruising galley.

ACCOMMODATIONS

Two accommodation configurations are available in the Seawind 1600. Four cabins with two in each hull, or three cabins with the entire starboard side allocated to the owner’s berth. The forward guest cabin is quite small and is a single berth, which is a compromise given the narrow hulls of this performance catamaran. Although the master cabin is quite comfortable with four opening hatches for natural sunlight and ventilation. The master has a vanity with a chair that can be used as a desk and a good number of drawers and storage space.

All cabins have recessed fans, which are a practical solution to ensure good ventilation. The separate showers have 2 meters, standing headroom, and the thoughtful opaque windows in the ceiling illuminate the area well but, most importantly, provide privacy from those on deck. The lighting is aesthetically pleasing and useful throughout, with recessed LED lighting utilized in many places. Although this catamaran doesn’t have the luxury of production cruising catamarans, the accommodation is functional and practical.

TECHNICAL SPECIFICATIONS

• Overall Length: 51’8″ / 15.74 m
• Waterline Length: 51’6/ 15.7 m
• Beam: 25’10” / 7.9 m
• Min. Draft: 2’1″ / 0.54 m
• Max. Draft (boards down): 8’6″ / 2.6 m
• Displacement: 28,000 lbs / 13,000 kg
• Diesel Saildrives: 2 x Yanmar 57 hp / 43 kw
• Fuel: 200 US gal / 750 litres
• Fresh Water: 155 US gal / 600 litres
• Mast Height: 71’ 8” / 22.8 m
• Steering System: Lewmar Mamba
• Underwing Clearance: 2’4″ / 0.75 m
• Upwind Sail Area: 1,558 sq ft / 144.5 sq m
• Mainsail: 1,080 sq ft / 100 sq m
• Jib: 478 sq ft / 44.5 sq m
• Screecher (optional): 990 sq ft / 92.5 sq m
• Spinnaker (optional): 2,370 sq ft / 220 sq m  

PRICE RANGE

The Seawind 1600 starts at $889,000. Although after adding some of the optional extras, the price rises up to $990,000, which is comparable to other catamarans of similar size and type.

With a thoughtful design such as a recessed daggerboard that doesn’t impede in the interior or deck and a minimalist interior, this catamaran suits the sailor who wants to be able to make fast passages while in comfort. This is a fast, performance cruiser, and some volume for storage and living space is compromised with the narrow hull widths to achieve the increase in sailing performance.

With a large cockpit and saloon that has many opening windows provide superb visibility from the helm and saloon for convenience and ease of communication. The forward-facing navigation station is a safe location when on watch, with the amazing visibility to see both the headsail and mainsail. Overall, the Seawind 1600 would suit those who want to travel fast and are happy to compromise space for performance and sailing ability.

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Seawind 1250

• By Mark Pillsbury
• Updated: December 9, 2011

Introduced to the United States in 2007, the Seawind 1160 quickly won _ Cruising World_’s Boat of the Year honors for Best Catamaran. The new 1250 hasn’t yet made it to the States, but when it does, it will arrive with many of the same well-thought-out design details, but in a 41-foot package that’s 3 feet longer and about a foot wider than its predecessor. The result is a boat with a bit more powerful rig, higher water clearance, a little more speed through the water, and a roomier living space that comes with a revamped bimini over the aft deck and locates helm seats and two steering stations to either side of the cockpit ( see the complete photo gallery here ).

What remains unchanged is an open interior that flows aft to the cockpit thanks to a clever tri-fold door that folds up and stores under the bimini, a galley-up or a galley-down design (the latter of which creates immense space in the saloon but still lets the chef remain a part of the action), and a three- or four-cabin layout that you choose depending on your sailing plans.

Seawind is Australia’s largest catamaran builder, and its owner, Richard Ward, builds boats to suit local conditions that can be quite boisterous at times, such as when a southerly buster delivers 40-knot gusts and the consequent impressive waves. Luckily, we avoided those in our two-day test sail through the Whitsundays, but still we found conditions varying enough to give a good inkling of how the 1250 holds up in a squall and keeps moving when the breeze drops to near nothing. The boat is intended by the builder to be a true bluewater cruiser.

With the boat under power, Seawind’s director of sales, Brent Vaughan, used the twin 29-horsepower Yanmar diesels and saildrives to deftly move us off a tight dock and out into the waters off Hamilton Island. With sails soon set—the main was spun up effortlessly from its boom pouch using a self-tending electric winch near the port wheel—we sailed along quite comfortably at 7 knots or better in a breeze that hovered in the mid teens. When a front passed through later in the afternoon and sent gusts into the 20s, we picked up a knot or better of boat speed, but the ride remained smooth as could be. The little tacking we did do was simplified thanks to the self-tending jib set on a roller furler. Twin wheels mean you can steer from where the visibility’s the best, and the location of the wheels allows you to sit outboard on either hull, where you can enjoy both the breeze and see the telltales. Windows forward of the wheels can be removed, which means you can also stay under the bimini and out of the weather but still have good sight lines forward.

Evening found us anchored in an open cove in which swells rounding the point had nearby monohulls rolling, though we sat flat and calm and took advantage of the Aussie-style barbecue that’s incorporated into the stern rail and seats that span the transom.

Our boat was a four-cabin model from Charter Yachts Australia. The two aft cabins and an athwartship forward double to port all shared a head and shower amidships in the port hull. The galley, with natural light pouring in through the hull ports, was amidships to starboard, with a fore-and-aft double and en suite head and shower forward.

In the saloon, a versatile—and nicely finished—wood table can be rotated to accommodate crews of various sizes, or it can be dropped down to provide a huge lounging area, double berth, or comfortable place to spend a night watch. Large, opening windows provide fresh air when the boat’s anchored. A daybed just to port of the table is a comfortable place to escape the sun.

Seawinds are built in a new plant in Wollongong. Hulls are sandwiches fashioned from resin-infused glass and Divinycell, which means that weight and strength can be closely monitored. Divinycell is also used in the deck and other components for weight savings. The finish throughout the boat we sailed was clean and well crafted. And the attention to detail, both below and on deck, was well evident. Few builders these days offer triple lifelines, but with Seawind, safety is clearly paramount.

Seawinds aren’t the least-expensive catamarans on the market—the French will likely stake this claim for the time being—but still, the company is hedging for the future. It recently bought Corsair, and Ward has outlined his plans to begin taking advantage of certain cost savings by manufacturing at least some Seawind components at the Corsair facility in Vietnam. In the meantime, Seawinds dominate Australian waters, a good proving ground for bluewater cats that can roam the globe.

• More: 2011+ , 41 - 50 ft , catamaran , Coastal Cruising , multihull , Sailboat Reviews , Sailboats , seawind catamarans
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Seawind 1600 Passagemaker - Reviewed, updated, improved!

Article published on 21/06/2021

By Emmanuel van Deth

published in n°SP16 aug. / sept.

Four years after it was first launched, Seawind’s flagship catamaran has undergone some particularly significant upgrades.

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Seawind 1370 Review with Nick & Terysa of “S/V Ruby Rose”

• Post author By Diane Selkirk
• Post date April 9, 2021
• 4 Comments on Seawind 1370 Review with Nick & Terysa of “S/V Ruby Rose”

We talked with Terysa and Nick of Ruby Rose, and they have an interesting story about how they are coming to their catamaran. They are working with Seawind Catamarans to design the first Seawind 1370.

They have a tremendous following on their YouTube channel , so please check their videos out and subscribe. They video taped their search for their catamaran and reviewed many different catamaran models on the market.

Could you start off with telling us how you got into cruising, and then what took you from monohulls to catamaran?

We started sailing back in the UK. Nick started about 15 years ago and I started when I met Nick, so 10-11 years ago. We were just weekend sailors. We used to be part of a club and we would do weekend cruises and races, and it was all very low-key, just fun. We were, at the time, thinking about making a lifestyle change and perhaps doing some traveling, taking a sabbatical.

We lived in London at the time, so we wanted something that would give us a little bit more time to ourselves, and be a little bit more authentic to what we thought was important in life. The two kind of merged into one idea, which was that we would move onto our boat and sail. At the time, we would sail around Europe, and that plan progressed to perhaps sailing around the world.

We bought Ruby Rose, which was a Southerly 38 boat, monohull, in order to see this plan through. At the time, we were monohull sailors. We had always sailed monohulls, and everyone in the club, almost everyone in the UK, has monohulls rather than catamarans. It never really occurred to us to look at catamarans, it wasn’t even on our radar. The marina that we actually kept the boat in capped out about at 42-foot and there was no catamarans in there. There were only canal boats, so good catamarans were not even part of our decision-making process when we bought Ruby Rose.

In 2015, we finally set off and we sailed Ruby Rose down from the UK across the Bay of Biscay down the Atlantic Coast of Spain and Portugal. We ended up in Morocco and the Canary Islands. Then in November that year, we crossed to the Caribbean, so we did our first Atlantic crossing. We then spent two years sailing, essentially from the Caribbean up to the US East coast and then back down to the Bahamas and then up to Bermuda.

We kind of went up and down a little bit and then in 2018-19? It was two years ago, I think lost track of time. We crossed back to Europe three years ago. We have been sailing in Europe since.

We sold Ruby Rose in September last year, and the reason why we decided to sail back to Europe was because while we’re on the East coast, we were at a crossroads where we could either continue going West and go to Panama across the Pacific and kind of continue with this original dream that we had of sailing around the world, or we could face reality and accept that the boat that we had was not really ideal for that purpose.

She was a great boat, she was fantastic for what we had done so far, but we knew that going to more remote areas, continuing to do these long ocean crossings, the boat was perfectly capable, but it wasn’t the purpose that the boat was built for. Therefore, there were compromises to be made. We had to decide whether to continue to live with those compromises, or sell Ruby Rose and buy something that was built for the purpose that we actually wanted to use the boat for.

During that decision-making process, we decided to go from a monohull to a catamaran, not because catamarans are inherently more suited to long-distance cruising or anything like that, but partly because we had been on board so many catamarans by that point, because we’ve been in the Caribbean for several years, and there are so many catamarans there.

We’d go for sundowners on a friend’s beautiful catamaran, and we thought to ourselves, “Wow! They really know how to live!” These big cockpits and everything just seemed so spacious and stable. Then we’d dinghy back to our boat and think, “I’m not so sure that we’re doing this right.”

We had the opportunity to change the boat, of course, and we thought, “why not change to a completely different type of boat?” Both still sailboats, I guess, but it would be a different experience going from a monohull to a catamaran, and we just really wanted to embrace the opportunity to try something new. That’s when we started our research into catamarans and we thought it would be easy. We thought we’d just jump on board one and think, “oh yeah, this is nice,” and away we’d go. It turned out to be so much more complicated than that, and I’ll let Nick pick up on that.

Can you tell us, what did your research look like? How many catamarans were involved? Then just sort of walk us through a little bit about what that was like?

We actually started with zero knowledge, which is a pretty good place to start, because you learn as you go along. We ended up putting 19 reviews out, probably one for each major brand on the market. I think we filmed about 22 boats, and we didn’t put three reviews out because they were almost doubled up a smaller version of one model.

The thing that kind of struck me, is a couple of things.

Firstly, when you go to a boat show, you see these beautiful white machines. They look amazing on the dock. But you scratch the surface, and the gulf between one brand and another brand is huge. There are certain brands of catamaran, which will remain nameless during this interview, that I think are just really really poorly made. Not just individual models, or individual hull numbers, but just across the brand. These boats in many cases, are just more suited to charter, and that essentially means that they’re not meant to do big ocean passages, they’re not. While they may be category A-rated offshore vessels, they’re not really built for doing these big passages.

If you go into the owners forums, a couple of things becomes apparent. There’s a very big gulf between what boat you get from the factory and what you have to do to the boat to make it livable, or to make it get to a level where you’re happy to take it offshore. Upgrading blocks, tackle, lines, sails, because what gets shipped is shipped to make the boat cheap, but not necessarily a quality boat.

The other thing that became patently obvious to us is that some brokers don’t actually sell boats that are of benefit to their customers. The brokers sell the boats that benefit the brokers. We found this across the board through people telling us this, but also by talking to brokers. There was a time before people really knew who or what our channel was. Our following was about 50,000 subscribers when we started this journey. But you’d have phone calls semi-anonymously with brokers and they will tell you essentially a pack of lies about what was required.

We had a litany of examples that I can give you on this. For example, we were in a marina in Western France, in La Rochelle, which is where a couple of brands of catamarans are launched. We met a really lovely Canadian couple who had bought a boat from a European broker, because when they went to the US broker, the US broker, and I’m trying to avoid keeping the name of the catamaran out of this interview, said the minimum size you need for two people to live aboard is 50-foot. You need a 50-foot catamaran, you need to have ABCD and E, a large eight-and-a half kilowatt gen set, and all these other things which, to me, were completely unnecessary. What happened was, I think they were both commercial pilots, and very experienced, they turned around and said, “actually no, we don’t need this at all.”

They ended up going to the European broker because the European broker said no, you don’t need a 50-foot catamaran. A 40-foot catamaran will be exactly what you need. You don’t need a gen set and you can go with renewables, and because they weren’t treated as idiots by the broker, they went to the European broker and had the boat shipped to Europe.

There’s a lot of misinformation out there, and honestly, I think from our point of view our, our allegiance is to the 130,000 people that follow what we do, not to the brokers.

Unfortunately, there is no way of going around this process without making some ripples in the world of boating. As we did these reviews, there are a lot of features, and let me just make this absolutely clear, I’m not an expert and nor am I a surveyor, this literally is my opinion. But if I was to say, look at the tie-rod system between rudders between 10 boats of different brands, I can tell you which one looks inferior to me, in my opinion. This isn’t us filming and saying, “well I can see this, this, and this,” after the fact. We are literally just taking a camera around and videoing what we can see in boats at boat shows.

At this point, there was some interest in us working together with catamaran manufacturers, and people were starting to become aware that as we brought these reviews out, they were making a stir in the market, so we got talking really organically with Seawind Catamarans about this ( Editor’s Note: We did an interview with Shane Grover of Seawind Catamarans available on CatamaranSite.com and embedded below.)

They said, “look, we can see what you’re trying to do,” and they have a 42-foot catamaran on the market, and they have a 52-foot catamaran on the market, neither of which were going to work perfectly for us. The 42 was a little bit too small for what we wanted to do, which is sail remotely for months at a time. The 52 is too expensive, and I’m also pretty aware that we operate a system that the boat should be completely manageable short-handed if you have no electronics, if you get hit by lightning or you get your battery compartment wet. When you get to a 50-foot catamaran, you’ve got some big systems to contend with to get that boat sailing. ( Editor’s Note: We also did an interview with YouTube stars Harbors Unknown onboard their brand new Seawind 1600 . )

So we were looking sub-50-foot. They said, “we don’t have anything, but we’re working on something, we’ve got a 45-foot catamaran,” which for us was the sweet spot because it’s about size, waterline, speed, safety, the lack of hobby-horsing, all these things that make for a fast, comfortable passage. They said, “we watched your 19 reviews and you’ve obviously got a lot of input and a lot of things to say and you’ve lived onboard for five years, so why don’t you partner up with us and tell us what you want to see in a catamaran, because we’ve got this brilliant design but you’ve got a lot of ideas, both of you.”

If you go onto any catamaran owner’s website, whether it’s Nautitech, whether it’s Lagoon, Fontaine-Pajot, anyone, the owners will all be telling you stories of, we had to modify this to get this to work, we had to do this because this wasn’t quite right. We figured, why not just get everything into the boat straight away? Why not just not have to deal with certain aspects of this, not swap things out and and make it right, initially? Obviously, there will be fine tweaks.

Seawind are a pretty progressive company. They’re very progressive, their young management understood where we were coming from, understood that things were changing in the marketplace. I might just add that Seawind had a track record of having very good, close relationships with their customers, partly because they have not always been a massive company. They started off quite small in Australia, under Richard Ward. It was up until quite recently, where Richard, the CEO, knew the names, and knew in-person, almost all of the owners, so it was this really fantastic relationship that we thought represented what their values were like. The fact that they had this fantastic two-way relationship with their customers was really important because it showed how much importance they placed on A. customer service, but B. just having that continuous conversation with their customers to try and build a catamaran that was best suited to the customer’s needs.

I was gonna ask you if you can go into some of the specifics of things that you really felt needed to be on the Seawind. Give us some ideas about things that jumped out to you?

We went to Seawind with wants and needs for the live-aboard challenge. We are not naval architects so this has got nothing to do with performance. It has everything to do with how a live-aboard should be, what a live-aboard should look like. From our point of view, we didn’t want a gen set, so we had to work very hard, very well with renewables. Power management was a whole section. Other things, for instance, Terysa’s five-foot two, I’m five-foot nine. You very very rarely find a helm seat or a helm position that will accommodate both those sizes.

So you’re looking at these boats, you’re getting these boats, and I’m like, “this is a nice home position.” Terysa’s like, “I can’t see.”

You can’t see above the cabin!

On long passages when you’re short-handed, you have to accommodate both sets of people. You have to have a bed you can get out of both sides. You have to have USB ports on both sides, so if you’ve got anchor alarms attached to phones, you can plug those in. You should have recycling chutes. You should have a chute to the sea, so offshore, you can throw organic matter off. You should have a workable rain catchment system that uses the guttering on the hard top to make sure that everything goes. You get a max amount of water from Caribbean rainfall that it all goes to a filtration system before it goes into your water tanks.

It’s easy to clean, hopefully.

Exactly. As Nick says, there were kind of big issues such as the power management systems that we wanted. We wanted it to be completely run off solar or renewables, which in this case is solar. But there were also little details as well, that we had found just living on our monohull, that we saw in other catamarans. As we did these quite detailed reviews, we thought that’s a really good idea. Even just simple things like having cup holders next to the helm seat. I mean it sounds so stupid, and yet you need to have somewhere on passage where you can pop your flask or your bottle of water or whatever, because dehydration on ocean crossings is actually quite common.

I completely agree with that. Trying to find the right place where your cup isn’t going to go flying at you.

That’s right. You need a way to put something so that you can continue to keep yourself hydrated, and have your hot cup of tea in the middle of the night or whatever. Like a bracket, so that you can put your fishing rods underneath the bimini brackets for holding a paddle, not that we’re gonna have a paddleboard, but that kind of thing, essentially places to put things that you’re gonna be needing or using a lot.

Well, these are certainly the things that once you have a boat, you comb through those owners’ groups to find out what people have done and what clever ideas have come up with. So much of that knowledge gets buried and lost after a generation or two, or owner or two.

The other thing is, there’s a lot of things that we wanted to build into this boat that couldn’t be retrofitted, or would be difficult to retrofit. One thing we did come up with, which it drives me nuts, is that the transoms of catamarans, the sterns of both hulls, you end up chipping the gel coat because when you come, you hit with the V of your tender. You end up hitting it every now and then, and eventually you’ll start chipping the gel coat.

So we just said to Seawind, why not just put a rubber gasket, a fat little mini-fender on the lip so that you literally have protection against docking. They’re like, “yeah, we’ll do that, brilliant idea.”

Why don’t you have a workshop if you live on board? You spend so much time doing repairs on your boat, doesn’t matter if the boat is new or 10-years old. You are always fixing something.

PDQ 36 had a workshop in one of the back hulls initially, for the same reason.

This is the thing, this is what a lot of owners do. They convert an existing cabin to work. For example if they bought a charter boat like one of those four-cabin, four-shower room heads, arrangements, they convert one of those areas to a workshop. But we didn’t want to do that, because we wanted to protect our master hull, and we wanted to protect our two other cabins, because we wanted to be able to have two other couples, or at least four people who are happy to share a bed, as crews.

So on long ocean crossings, we are able to take more crew, and therefore get more sleep and be less tired, and that kind of thing. We wanted the workshop to be an independent area that didn’t encroach on any other part of the boat, because years of Nick literally having to upend, you know probably what I’m talking about, the entire content of the boat just to get to like one spanner or one item, one replacement item, or whatever. It was ridiculous, and the entire boat’s in a mess.

So from our point of view, designing a workshop, building a workshop into an existing cabin, there’s a series of compromises that have to occur. Building a workshop initially, and the workshop in our boat, and it’s going to be is rolling out to all the boats, is the forepeak of the starboard hull. It can work as a as a single berth, but essentially, there are things that, for instance, are super useful. It’s at a height that you can sit down and work well.

Seawind said, “do you want to sit down or stand up and work?” I said, “really, most of the work that we’ve done on the boat over the last 10 years has been fiddly work.” It’s not big work with a hammer, it’s soldering broken components, it’s fixing a clock, trying to put a barometer back together. I need to be able to solder, I want power sockets in the right place, I want a good lighting source, and that to us means two articulated lights, one on each side, so that you don’t cast shadows, so you can see what you’re doing.

They have then taken that and said, “what we’ve done is, we’ve rolled, we’ve made a little recess, like a little gutter in the floor, like a pan, so if you do spill fluid, like if you are taking apart something, it all holds so you’re not going to end up washing hydraulic fluid, or oil around.” Rubberized matting, a vice, small height drawers to keep tools in, things that are needed from a workshop; to try and retrofit a cabin to do that is is pretty difficult.

The best example I’ve ever seen on that was on a Maverick 440, that actually had a workshop in it. But that then rolls into other things that you need. You need dedicated tough crate storage. You see so many boat owners that take one of their redundant cabins and put tough crates in to store things that they don’t need, but there’s no need for that, because if you design a boat that can take tough crates initially, either in a recess under the bed, because as you know from owning a catamaran, there’s a lot of dead space. If you work with a dead space initially to take a standard tough crate, you are not encroaching on your living space.

One of the great things about this kind of collaboration with Seawind is that we had these ideas, and they were both things that we knew we wanted from living on a boat for five, six years at that point, and also things that we had seen on other catamarans that we were like, “that’s genius, why isn’t that on every boat?” like the rain catchment system, for example. We submitted these ideas with no real idea of how they’d be implemented, just leaving up to Seawind, and they have come up with some absolutely fantastic, genius solutions that never would have occurred to us. This is what is so great. It feels to us like a true collaboration that they have come forward. They’re really clever. They have their ideas and we have our ideas, and they kind of come together to create something that we think and we hope will be well received, and well-suited to all the owners that are lining up to buy this boat.

Have you got a sense of how it performs? Have you been involved in that aspect of things?

Not the performance. The performance is done by the naval architect. They’ve managed to get a two-tonne payload into this boat, we can load it up with two tonnes. We’re not going to get anywhere near two tonnes. It’s designed as a performance catamaran, so we’re looking at fine hulls, pretty lightweight, strong foam core, vinyl ester on epoxy. She’s going to be light and fast. We did a whole series with the naval architect on how to make a strong, reliable catamaran.

Again, once we got past this stage, we then moved on to trying to understand what they were building for us, and why they were building it in a certain way. We’ve passed all this on to our followers.

To what Terysa said before about intelligent design, Richard Ward is a really innovative designer. He started building these boats 30 years ago, but even today, you look at things that he put on to a boat 30 years ago, why is no one else doing this? Why is no one else doing something so simple and so clever?

For example, when we first got on the Seawind 1260, on one of the stanchions, at the top of the stanchion, there’s a little stainless-steel, kind of like a loop, like a U-bent, like an inverted U, and I just said, “what is that for, why have you got that there, is it a hook for something?” He said, “no it’s the breather. It’s the breather vent for the fuel tank, so we actually run them.” You just think, “well, it’s just clever, it’s such a clever thing.”

Then when we went to them and we said to them, “I know it sounds decadent, but we’ve lived on board for five years. We want a washing machine on this boat.” As you know, you live on a boat, doing your laundry is a whole day thing, it’s day of your life.

It’s a project, yeah.

You wash them like once every three weeks. You’re living in dirty clothes for weeks on end, until you can get to a laundromat, or washing them.

And they cost a fortune.

Absolutely. They’ve got to try and find a space for a washing machine, and they built it in one of the heads, which is where most of the washing machines live in on catamarans. But what they did, there’s a shelf that kind of sits up in front of the washing machine, which then folds down onto a ledge to give you a laundry folding shelf. Number one, when you take your laundry out, it goes onto this shelf, which is folded down. But secondly, that shelf is above the heads so that you if you drop something, it doesn’t go down the side of your toilet, it literally is there.

You just think, “how intelligent is that to think of a solution to a problem that you don’t even know exists,” and that is why we love them. Going forward to what you asked was, how has this all worked out for us? Seawind essentially said, “we’re giving you our marketing budget to to work with us.” That was the print, the quid pro quo. “You work with us, we showcase this boat, you tell us what you want.” They took a huge risk on doing this.

We signed with Seawind in November 2019 to form this partnership. In January 2020, I went to Dusseldorf to talk to the managing director of Seawind, amongst other things, and I said to him, “we’re going to announce the boat that we’ve chosen in July, so six months from now, and then it’s gonna be another 14 months until our boat is built. So between us announcing the boat and us getting our boat, you have been doing this for many years. How many boats are you gonna sell? How many hulls are you going to sell to people?” He said, “we’re going to 14 hulls, we’re good.” That’s brilliant.

Anyway, fast forward a few months to COVID, fast forward a few months, no boat shows. We announced the boat, I think, on the 9th of July, 2020. There was a huge buzz about it. Everyone was really anticipating, there’s a lot of online betting about what we were doing. They sold 30 hulls in a week.

That’s amazing!

Then it slowed down a little bit, because essentially, Seawind were going to build six boats a year. By the time they sold 30, that was their five-year allotted target. They’re like, “we can’t get you a boat for five years,” but it didn’t stop. They’re now up to hull 55, and no one has seen this boat. They’ve got 55 hulls, and already deposits paid for all these people signed up, because people understand the value of intelligent design going into a boat, that is designed for live-aboards.

I’m not knocking anybody, but if you buy a production catamaran off-plan, you buy a new one, you’ve got to probably put another hundred-thousand into it to get it livable. That’s what everyone accepts.

The other thing is, it, this incenses me. There was a brand of catamaran, which will remain nameless, where I went through the options lists of buying the new boat. The generator set which people tend to want, was 30,000 Euros, plus tax, so that’s another 20 percent, you get 36,000 Euros. If you try and price match that gen set and buy it yourself, it’s 9,000 Euros, so the mark-up is 20,000 Euros. Essentially a gen set, you need two skin fittings, and a marine electrician, and somewhere to put it. But the mounts for it are probably already installed in the molding, so you’re in a position where you’re thinking, “why are you charging so much for this?” One of my bug bears with gen sets is that of all the anchorages we’ve been into, all the friends we’ve got in sailing, there’s always at least once a week someone will say, “gen set’s playing up, gen set’s chewed through an impeller.” They’ll always be on the back of the boat, sweating, covered in grease, trying to fix their gen set. It is the number one repair that people are doing because they’re so reliant on gen sets.

When Seawind said, “we’ve got a boat you don’t really need a gen set.” We’re like, “how do you not need a gen set?” They said, “we’re designing it from scratch. The technology for solar panels has changed massively, so now we have extended the hard top back a little bit by about, I’m not sure how much, but we can now get two kilowatts of solar panel onto that roof.”

So you think, “two kilowatts, okay, that’s good.” Then number two, Mastervolt have got these new systems, these new alternators that knock out 200 amps. All you’ve got to do with two of these, one on each engine, and in catamaran. If you’ve spent half an hour motoring into an anchorage, motoring out of an anchorage, you’ve got an hour of that a day. That’s 400 amps, plus two kilowatts of power from your solar. Even if you’ve got 50-percent power because you’ve got shadowing and other things, you’ve still got six hours a day, because that’s the way the Caribbean is. You’re working say, nine ’til three with with good sun, you’re still charging your batteries.

Just don’t do laundry that day!

But the point is that we’ve done that we’ve done the calculations. The washing machine runs at 1400 watts, so you can run it with full solar. You can run it. Or what you do, as we used to do with Ruby Rose if you want to run something that’s pretty intensive, you just put the washer machine on when you’re motoring into your anchorage. ‘

There’s a lot of new technology which is super reliable that’s coming forward, which isn’t a safety thing, but for instance, aircon. A lot of people say to us, “how can you have aircon on a boat?” You know from living on a boat, what’s actually the power spike from air conditioning is when it starts up, you’ve got this huge current draw, which as you start up is like 20 amps, but now the new systems don’t have that anymore.

So we can run aircon just using lithium batteries. It’s the point where you know we’ve got this new boat, electric oven, microwave, anything, we’ve got three-and-a-half kilowatts of inverters, so we can run most DC systems, AC systems. There’s no need for a gen set, no need for the expense, no need for the weight, no need for the frustration with maintenance. I think from our point of view, everyone, all these customers, sat there went, “yeah ,you’re right, you’re right.” I said 55 hulls deposits paid, Seawind literally last week, opened a new factory in Vietnam to upscale production.

I was gonna ask, how are you gonna get them all done?

Literally, they’ve got a brand new factory. You can’t buy any Seawind now for five years. It’s completely booked up. It’s a brilliant journey, we’re still on part of that journey, we’re nowhere near the end. We will take delivery of our boat at the end of this year. Our plan is to showcase this boat, refine any little bits, and show it to the world.

It sounds like it’s going to be a fantastic journey. I’m really looking forward to seeing the boat and following along. Thank you so much for talking to us about it today, appreciate the time.

• Tags Catamaran Interviews , Catamaran Reviews

By Diane Selkirk

I love to travel and have spent the past seven years sailing with my family aboard our 40 Woods Meander catamaran - traveling from B.C.'s north coast, to the west coast of the US, Mexico, the South Pacific, Australia, New Zealand, South East Asia, across the Indian Ocean to South Africa and on to St Helena, South America, the Caribbean and Central America.

4 replies on “Seawind 1370 Review with Nick & Terysa of “S/V Ruby Rose””

What are the details concerning hobbyhorsing that this new catamaran won’t do that?

And then came the HH44, and the rest is history.

The 1370 suddenly became dated, old school and traditional.

From the reviews of the different models, it’s clear that Terysa and Nick were going to choose the right cat for extensive blue water cruising. Their conclusions of the different brands were very much aligned with what we’ve found out talking to cat owners.

If we make the shift to a cat, certainly Seawind will be amongst our shortlist, plus one of the major builders who has generally happy owners and which we’ve had good feedback on from some of the boat maintenance yards around the world.

Great interview, thanks! Fil SY Tranquilo

Saloon kitchen or down kitchen. What preferences for the 1360.

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LET'S GO SAILING!

41-footer to cruise the world.

After the Annapolis Boat Show, Nick and Terysa joined us for a Seawind 1260 test sail. Let's look at how the Seawind 1260 performs and why it's a sailors' top choice!

RUBY ROSE ON THE SEAWIND 1260

The Remarkable Seawind 1260 loved by Sailing Yacht Ruby Rose. Check out the video to see why the Seawind 1260 got top marks in their critical review series!

SEAWIND 1600 WINS INAUGURAL REVIEW SERIES

By sailing yacht ruby rose.

Nick and Terysa said it all! The Seawind 1600 is “such a worthy winner” – beating a large and diverse field of catamarans, some of which are far more expensive. And this award is particularly remarkable due to the voting system used – it was the public vote that placed the 1600 first. The Seawind 1600 is undoubtedly the class leader, not just by sales success, but as regarded by the public.

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