HAPPY LUXURY CATAMARAN NEW YEAR - LUXURY CATAMARAN STATS

I know this is a "standard" thing but I really wish all of you a very happy new year for 2008. I am very happy this month for personnal reasons I am just the father of a second daughter and though this can not be compared to anything else, the Luxury Catamaran blog is doing great with according to statcounter 3 334 unique visitors which is a record for such a niche blog. I don't know if this is the result of all the work I have done but I have followed some advices from gourou daren problogger , thanks daren and also from Eric presse-citron in French. I also had hit records from the post about the RW 100 - Levi Design which is truly an impressive project. This post has been published on high quality and reardership blogs such as guizmodo.com; guizmodo.fr; superluxuryblog.com; intechnews.com; bornrich.org; powercatamaran; design alligator; ipodexpress.net; sorry if I forgot others and thanks to all the blogs (you can sea the complete list at my Technorati page). Sometimes people ask me why I write in english since I am french but I couldn't share my passion for luxury catamarans with so many people should I write in French. The coming years are very promissing for luxury catamarans, I have done some research on the web and I have counted 14 sailing luxury catamaran above 70 feet right now in production to be launched in the coming two years and around 25 built in the last 17 years (this counts only cruising catamaran not day charter ones) . Clearly the market is strongly increasing (I didn't count the motor luxury catamarans, I still have to work on that) since catamaran have many advantages other monohulls. You can keep in touch with the blog by suscribing to the rss feed through feedbliz on the right end side column, use all the widgets at the end of each post to send the post to a friends, stumble it, digg it, facebook it, deli.cio.us it... and do not hesitate to rate it. Please again do not hesitate to send me information, comment the post... Post to you next year, have a good one.

CURVELLE - YACHT CATAMARAN

Dramatically more stable...

The CURVELLE team go together in 2004 to create the first real range of mega power catamaran with two models the CURVELLE 33 and the CURVELLE 41. They think (just as I do) that catamarans have a great future among luxury yachts as they are more stable and efficient in terms of speed, fuel economy and range than monohulls. Thanks to stability and width, CURVELLE designers have been able to offer six spacious guests cabins on the main deck with a lot of windows and great view on the sea. Also thanks to width and stability the CURVELLE 33 for example offers an extra deck and as much space as a 40 meter monohull. Finally a very important marketing advantage the CURVELLE 33 costs half the price a monohull of the same size. CURVELLE are distributed by YACHTMARKETING a London based company founded by Luuk V. van Zanten who is also running a consulting company YACHTCONSULTING.

RW 100 - LEVI DESIGNS

I discovered this amazing project in the latest issue of Boat International, one of my favorite magazine. Like most magazines at the end of the year they publish design trends for the year to come. Martin Levi, from design studio levi, has designed this amazing yacht which starts as a catamaran and ends as a monohull !!!! Quote from Boat International on page 137 "This unique vessel's highly original hull geomtery is called a reverse tri-cycle".

This shape in fact is very logical: when the boat goes fast the air it generates enters the space between the two hulls and since there is an obstacle at the end, the air lifts the boat thus reducing wetted area resistance and increasing the speed. This yachts is supposed to achieve a range of 2000 nautical miles at 90 knots !!!! and 2 800 at 50 knots her cruising speed !!! What is the gaz tank capacity ?

An under cover deck will host twin helipad, swimming pool and relaxing areas. The RW 100 will also welcome a tender dock, a submarine and a motorcycle and car garage.

Levi is not knew to designing fast boats he has designed the Virgin Atlantic Challenger II for Richard Branson. Is this yacht for Brason too?

If you like boat design I recommend you to buy the January 2008 issue of Boat International. Most of the time I am not a real fan of motoryacht but there is a great article on SILVER a 73.3 m with a very narrow 10 m beam designed by Espen Oeino International and built at the Hanseatic Marine shipyard in Australia. Check their website the pictures of SILVER are really beautiful.

NAHEMA 120 MOULDS - AMAZING

Toby Whitfield, MouldCAM's managing director, walking in the mould of the NAHEMA 120.

Just a quick post since I couldn't wait to show you the pictures of the NAHEMA 120's hull moulds. They were taken at mouldCAM in Australia before the moulds were shipped in pieces on a cargo ship to La Ciotat in France. Right now they must be somewhere in between and will reach La Ciotat by the end of the month where the mouldCAM team will fly to put them back together at the H2X shipyard. If you like technical information check Mouldcam website and watch the Video of their computer assisted drilling process which is quite impressive.

LUXURY CATAMARAN - BLOGRUSH APPROVED

I am very proud Blogrush has approved my blog. Blogrush promotes a network of high-quality blogs by carrefully reviewing their content. I have added on the side bar the Blogrush widget so you can have links to high quality blogs.

This is part of the improvements I have recently done on the blog. As you can see at the bottom of each post you have different tools available to use. The Bookmark dropdown button enables you to add luxury catamaran directly to your favorite or to social networks such as facebook, do not hesitate to use them.

You can also use the email link to email the post directly to friends or sucribe to the feed or stumble it thanks the the Feedburner's tools.

Finally you can rate the posts using the Outbrain widget.

I recenlty read an article untitled is 37 to old to become a geek ? What do you thing. Any way, those tools have greatly increased the number of connections to the blog so if you like luxurycatamaran you can help me promote it. What would be the use of writing about a subject I like if it was not the pleasure to know many people read it.

Finally send me any comments on this blog and any news you would like me to post, any interesting links I could use. Also other blogger tips to promote luxurycatamaran are welcome.

I am planning to launch two other blogs by the end of the year so stay tuned.

By the end of the week a post about the NAHEMA 120 moulds with pictures --- amazing.

UBICA 40 by Ubica Disseny Nàutic

I recently ran over this motor catamaran concept the UBICA 40 by Barcelona based design team UBICA. This design team is working in very different fields such as interior and transportation (cars, equipment, motorcycles) design and is delivering very high quality 3DS as you can see in this post.
This UBICA 40 is quite an inovative design for a fast motor catamaran with many interesting features not found anywhere else.
She features a lot of confortable leaving spaces with great view on the outside and a lot of light inside. The hulls hosts confortable cabins in a very pure design with separate heads. The platform welcomes sports seats in a high glass covered bridge to enjoy the speed, sofas with a table in the fore deck and an open kitchen on the aft deck.
This unique catamaran will be powered by biodiesel honeywell multifuel turbines and and electrical turbines. Top speed should be 50 knots while medium cruising speed 29 knots and 10 knots under electricity in a quiet mode. I guess the designers wanted to combine performance while reducing the effects on the environement. If any one of you knows whether or not this unique yacht is currently being built please let me know.

SUNREEF 62 - 15 UNITS LAUNCHED

I just browsed again through SUNREEF website's (a very ergonomic and informative website) launched page . SUNREEF has launched 15 SUNREEF 62 catamarans, one SUNREEF 60 monohull, one SUNREEF 74 catamaran (the largest launched so far until the SUNREEF 102 DD is launched in 2009). This shows the success of the shipyard and specially of the 62 foot serie.

If you have a look at each one of the 62s you will notice that even if they feature quite standard hull and layout options, they really have very different interior design going from classic with MISTER T to modern with MOONSTONE, minimalist with DEPENDE IV (check the video on line) and quite suprising with TRIGGER. Hulls color are also quite customized and innovative. SUNREEF hosts its own design departement and can work together with the owners' designer. All the 62s have been launched between the 17 th of may 2005 and 16 of October 2007 with 6 this year: quite an impressive score. SUNREEF's team made the right choice to bet on the 62 foot size. All the 62s are in composite (expect the first MISTER T in aluminium) and the last one, HERENUI is the first being built using an infusion process. Luckily most of the 62s are available through SUNREEF charter which is a good way to try a boat before buying a new one. SUNREEF is a very active, strongly developing shipyard with an efficient marketing and PR strategy. They've well understood that in order to attract new customers they had to have a comprehensive offer of service such as charter, used boats and yacht management services and communicate efficiently on their specificites. More to come soon in 2008 with a SUNREEF 67 POWER and a SUNREEF 67 (sailing) and for 2009 with the launching of the mega sailing catamaran SUNREEF 102 DOUBLE DECK.