The current Offbeat is latest in a long line dating back to our first cruiser racer, a Sigma 33 OOD which we bought in 1990. Subsequent boats included a Mumm 30 race boat, a Dragonfly 920 trimaran, a J109 racer/cruiser and most recently our first cruising catamaran a Nautitech Open 46.

We loved the Nautitech Open 46, which was a reasonably good performance 46 foot catamaran. We sailed some 11,000nm on her including our first Atlantic crossing (see the blog here: https://www.sailblogs.com/member/offbeat ). She was fast, comfortable, safe and easy to sail, but after 6 years and having sold our business there were a list of things we felt could be improved.

We had seen the Catana 53 at a boat show in 2018 just after she was first launched and loved her lines and the quality of the build and the equipment. When we started looking for the next Offbeat we considered the next generation Nautitech as well as the Catana, HH, MC (McConaghy) and Outremer catamarans.

The shortlist ended up being between the Catana and Outremer but in the end we quickly decided on the Catana 53, primarily as the C53 has better accommodation in the cockpit and the hulls; the lead times were too long on the Outremer and we felt the performance was similar for both boats with cruising loads.

The Catana 53 offers the following improvements over the Nautitech:

  • Better sail handling: the spinnaker is all managed from the foredeck; we like the double mainsheet system; better halliard and reef line management with direct runs from the mast to the aft bulkhead where these are all managed.
  • Stronger construction with carbon fibre bulkheads and cabin top and all cabinetry bonded to the hulls. This reduces hull movement and noise from wood movement.
  • The ability to have both a large genoa and self-tacking staysail providing easy to handle foresails for both strong and light wind conditions.
  • Daggerboards rather than mini-keels improves speed downwind (less drag) and better upwind performance, although we hope to avoid too much of that!
  • Slightly bigger boat means better offshore comfort and security and also more room for creature comforts (full sized washing machine, more fridge space, aircon and even a TV!).
  • The ability to sleep 4 couples which will be useful if our 3 adult children all appear at the same time.
  • New boat means we can have the latest sail tech (North 3Di Ocean sails) and carbon mast for both performance and durability.
  • Some ability to customize the boat means we can take some of the best ideas from the Nautitech but also to make improvements we had previously thought of or seen on other boats.

So far we have been extremely impressed with the design.