March 17, 2008

ORION - CATANA 87

ORION, CATANA's largest yacht produced so far, just passed through the shipyards doors (they had to enlarge for the occasion) on the 28 th of February in Canet en Roussillon (south of France). It is very hard to give you any precise information about this unit since very little came out of the shipyard during the building process and the only interior renderings available are in this PDF file . CATANA has done very little communication on its custom range, maybe ORION's owner ask so or they don't intend to insist on this range of production which is quite a different approach to boat building than standard or semi-custom, or maybe that is just their marketing strategy.
ORION was built for a South African owner, who already circled the world on a 58 ' CATANA, and features 200 sqm of living space. Built in composite to CATANA's high standards of quality and with a Christophe Barreau Design, she should be a great blue water catamaran with high performance. The official launching should take place in May. I hope we will get more information once she is launched.




CATANA shipyard has been founded in 1984 after a few ups and downs, it seems that it is now back on the right tracks. This shipyard has a great potential with really goods basics. You will find the information about the concept of CATANA in this section of their website which I developped and wrote while I was working there and part of the logbook I wrote while crossing a CATANA 471 during the Transat des Passionés 1998.
If you guys at CATANA have more information I can post on my blog just let me know.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Wonderful! A tour de force! Congratulations to Catana. I note that this magnificent 87-footer from Catana is destined to a customer in South Africa. This is remarkable because SA is where the fancy Gunboats with their forward cockpits are manufactured. I guess that more than 24 years of experience in catamaran design and construction and their technological know-how count for something. Catana is now a legend, a giant among giants. Thanks Sebastien, for keeping us updated on the latest.

Louis

Sebastien said...

Thanks louis,

It is well know in the yachting industry when you make a customer happy you have many chances that he will remain a customer, that his friens or business partners will become customers, and that most of the time he will upgrade so that makes your job much easier. I guess most of the shipyards now have understood that quality and service counted as much as marketing and communication (I should'nt write that).
GUNBOAT is building a 90 footer right now I looking forward to have more news on her.

Anonymous said...

I believe here are some more designs of the same project:
http://www.christophe-barreau.com/AC-21.htm

Anonymous said...

Very nice, Victor from Nauticlima