Catana Oceanclass catamaran: Maximum luxury for couples travelling the world
Johannes Erdmann
· 17.11.2022
The French shipyard Catana was founded in 1984, making it a pioneer in catamaran series production. The brand quickly made a name for itself with its lock-crowther designs for high-quality, lightweight performance cruisers.
For a long time, the shipyard held back on major new developments and was relatively busy building the Bali line. With the new Oceanclass, however, Catana now wants to continue on its old path and is targeting the concept of its new 50-foot catamaran specifically at couples who need a lot of space and like to have friends on board. A performance cruiser that scores with good sailing characteristics and a surprisingly good weight thanks to carbon infusion technology in many components.
In the three-cabin version that we tested, the Catana Oceanclass costs from 1,036,700 euros (plus VAT) and already comes with a very extensive range of seaworthy equipment. As an extra, the ship can be fitted with a total of 1,800 watts of solar panels on the superstructure for around 35,000 euros, which should make it completely self-sufficient at anchor (in conjunction with a watermaker).
Components such as the entire superstructure, the two main bulkheads, the bulkhead in the stern and the mounting points for the shrouds on the Catana Oceanclass are made of carbon fibre using the infusion process, which gives the boat extremely good rigidity and completely eliminates creaking noises in rough seas. The only thing that bothered us about the boat was the steering position, which is mounted on a stainless steel pedestal and tends to sway a lot when the waves come against the hull. This is a problem that the shipyard will certainly rectify in future models.
As such long-distance catamarans usually spend most of their time in the tropics anyway, the shipyard has taken a similar approach to the design of the saloon as it did with the Bali catamaran: the seating area with the dining table is outside, but can be completely closed off by a number of sliding doors.
Further information on www.catana.com
