Catamaran Adventure Planned

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If I understand You correctly, You are looking for a sailing catamaran and You do not want to start Your journey in the New York area with an Atlantic crossing to start with.

First question to start with is Your budget. Are You buying new or used? Except for this possible hired crew, how many people will be permanently on board during Your trip, which in my opinion is a great idea.

Also I am not the biggest friend of French built sailboats (for quality) but as far as sailing catamarans are concerned, the well known French Yards are the best on the market, especially if designed by the VPLP bureau. I am missing the Lagoon range of sailing catamarans in Your listing. They are presently the best in quality, design and sailing performance.

Never ever go for a sailing catamaran with an enclosed foward bridge deck between the hulls, if You want to sail on any larger bodies of water other than a little pond. The forward net prevents the slamming of the waves under the center deck. There were some british designed cats with a solid foredeck on the market. I have sailed on one of those misfits on the east coast of the UK and I was more than happy, when this sea trial was over.

On a 45 to 50 ft sailing cat, especially when designed with a flybridge and / or hardtop, there is plenty of area for flexible solar panels. When sailing in the Med and further south, they help a lot. Generating electrical power with shaft generators will only work with shaft drives of course. But boats in that size range will have quite often saildrives. Saildrives and shaft generators / alternators do not work together. But this type of power generation will not work, when being on the hook.

But as catamarans have pretty good sailing performance (fast), a twin engine sailing catamaran with a shaft alternator on each shaft or even a trailing alternator and plenty of solar panels will generate enough DC power while enroute. With a propper set of inverters and a decend battery bank, You might even do electric cooking without using a diesel generator. Air conditioning is a different story and needs a very good calculation. With just cooling down the sleeping cabins in the evening, it might work but I doubt cooling the complete boat, especially the big salon will work only with stored power.

I would not go with all of this fancy Lithium battery stuff. If You will need assistance or repair /exchange in the some remote areas on Your way to down under, You will run into problems. But do not plan without at least a little diesel generator.

Unless You want to go into charter when back home in Australia, do not try to crunch to many beds into a given layout. On most layouts, I have seen, the forepeaks in the hulls could be converted into bunks, if You find a person being able to live without any creature comfort. You will need space for sails, parts, provisions and I would highly recommend a watermaker. There are very reliable DC powered watermakers on the market. 20 litres of fresh (potable) water production per day, per person on board will be sufficient, when the showers can be switched for saltwater and freshwater use (with the special soap of course).

Anyhow, that sounds like a great plan to take a nice sailing catamaran on its own keel from the Med, through the Suez to Australia. I have done that rip only as a captain on one of my fathers large commercial vessels but in some areas there is still a pretty high danger of being attacked by pirats or other criminals, especially in the Eritrea and Dschibuti area. And going instead around the cape of Africa is not any better. Propper planning and going in convoy in the most dangerous areas will help a lot.

Good luck with You plans and feel free to ask more questions.

HTMO9

When going with family, especially with children, You should definately plan with a proficient crew on the first legs. You will need some indoor elbow space for the kids when playing. You cannot have them always play in their sleeping cabins. And when going across the pond, take the southern route and intercept the tradewinds at the optimum season. This will take You most likely to the Azores or the Canary islands. From there into the Med is fairly easy.

But for really easy tradewind sailing, You will need a rig, capable of carrying tradewind sails. And definately go for a trampoline boat. A sloop rig with multiple furling forestays, a park avenue boom and full button main sail will for sure do the job.

Lead Acid batteries are a thing of the past for larger house battery banks. I would go for AGM batteries. Safe with pretty high
energy density and much longer lasting. With on the hook, I mean, when on anker outside harbours.

There are some fancy saildrives, which can be turned around. When the prop is pointing to rear, the prop can fold for better sailing performance and when pointing forward, it unfolds and can drive an alternator. But I do not know, whether this hybrid gears can be retrofitted. If the boat of Your choise is equipped with standard saildrives You can add a drag generator or hoistable wind generator. But do not expect too much power output from those "toys".

With shaft drives, the implementation of hydrogeneration, even after delivery, is pretty easy. It is basically a wheel attached to the shaft, a belt and an alternator. The advanced part on the electricity is the power regulation and battery charging of all the power sources and of course the generation of AC power through inverters. But a constantly working airconditioning for comfort will easily ruin Your calculation.

One more point to concider are powered cooling boxes or freezers. Here I would go for the water cooled DC swing compressors with a mass sponge below the waterline as the heat exchanger. They have a pretty low power consumption. Under the bottom line, if You can live without a constantly running AC, Your carbon free sailing will be possible, especially with a fast sailing cat in sunny areas.

Attached some little pictures of my examples.


park avenue boom, where You just can drop the full button square head mainsail into. Much easier to handle, especially with kids on deck.



Very easy arrangement of a shaft generator


hoistable DC wind generator


A drag generator mounted on the pushpit.



A typical tradewind sail

It all depends on Your budget and whether You want to buy new or or second hand. With buying new, You can plan everything, when buying second hand, You have to make compromises. Have a look at Lagoon, Fontain Pajot, Catana and St. Francis from South Africa. They are solid boats with nice interiors and good sailing performance.

Swift, YouTube has Sailing Zatara. It is a series of videos about a family cruising a sailing cataraman all over the word and for sure in the Suez and Indian Ocean. I think you would find it very informative and interesting. I did.

Age will not be a problem, if well maintained. If hull and deck are not made with sprayed fiber reinforced plastic and You will be able to fly a tradewind sail on that rigg, that boat might be able to do the job, if Your family can get used to that internal design . The internal layout is interesting but will work. On an atlantic crossing and on the Indean Ocean with that large four burner stove top and gas powered stove, You will run out of bottled gas. You will need that burner and the stove exchanged with an electric version. For a minimum carbon footprint, You will need more solar panels and I did not see a watermaker. To integrate change over valves and pumps for using saltwater in the showers, is no big deal. But be advised, that multihull is not a raceboat. Crossing the pond will take its time.

I don't care for the layout. Sitting in the cockpit is like down in a hole, you can't see forward. The Bridge deck clearance is low, and as said previously, it is heavy and has fat hulls = not a good sailing vessel. Construction is average. I wouldn't buy a hurricane damaged boat!