A new yacht is probably more complicated than a new house. The systems on a Catana 53, like any larger yacht, are complex and as it is a low volume, high spec boat there is also some customization allowed so every boat is different.
Offbeat is #12 of the design so many improvements have come from the earlier boats but the manufacturing process is still highly manual as a result and there are lots of opportunities for snagging issues!
Some of these are manufacturing problems, some are third party product defects, some were items which weren’t delivered in time due to third party supplier delays, some are just things that weren’t built the way we expected them and some are problems caused by user error (!) as we work out how to run the new boat.
Offbeat was handed over to us at the beginning of April 2023 at the factory at Canet-en-Roussillon near Perpignan on the French Mediterranean coast near the Spanish border. We’ve spent about 10 days a month on board from April through August with the early couple of trips spent close to the factory so we could return if needed to address the issues which arose.
Although we did have a long snagging list most of these were easily fixed, either by the manufacturing team, by Catana’s after-sales Service team, by ourselves or sometimes by a local yard with direction from Catana.
