M'80 by Christophe BARREAU & Frédéric NEUMAN

This is a new project of a smart, fast and easy to sail 80 footer by Christophe Barrault, the historical designer of the CATANA range, and his partner Frédéric Neuman. Christophe Barreau has designed many catamarans including the CATANA range since the beggining. He is an experienced sailor having sailed extensively on his own designs and is the first one to cross the 80 th parallel on a cruising catamaran. All his designs are easy to sail with a small crew thanks to their self-taking jib and feature retractable daggerboards reducing the draft from 3,5 m to 1,7m.

Jean Yves Carteret from Linea Concept has designed 3 different interior layouts all for six guest in independant suites with a crew of 3.

ORION - CATANA 87

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.

CATANA 87 - ORION

I found this video of the building of the largest CATANA up to date the CATANA 87- "ORION". It show how the hulls are built using female moulds and state of the art technology. ORION belongs to the custom range of CATANA catamarans. This shipyard has been famous for building safe and seaworthy catamarans from 43 to 65 foot. One of their customer rounded the world with a 58 and asked for a larger easy to sail catamaran. Designed by Christophe Barreau the CATANA are fast and reliable blue water catamarans. One CATANA's website you will find a lot information on their philosophy as well as logbooks and links to catana owners websites.