What boat should we choose? 

(Lucy translation) 

When the decision was made to do a trip by boat (at the beginning of April), we didn’t even need to ask ourselves which type of boat to choose … it was obvious. We would set sail on a beautiful monohull of 45ft or more. We had our hearts set on a magnificent First 47.7 and checked out the Dufour 44 and 455 as back-ups

 

It was now time to ask others for advice. The answers were as diverse and varied as contradictory. It’s not easy to make a decision with so many diverging arguments! One thing we did agree on was that a 47.7 wasn’t at all adapted to our programme. It was hard to start looking again, especially since we’d found a rare gem in Scotland … financial crisis + weakened Pound Sterling + isolated boat + desperate seller …we were well on the way to success…

We started again from scratch and enjoyed an open day at the port of Crouesty in mid-April to look in the hope of finding “the one”. Enriching and frustrating: we were able to define our search criteria (minimum 45 ft, no barre d’ecoute in the cockpit, no of cabins, etc) but even that didn’t mean that we were limited to one particular model.

We were lucky to have the help of friends who started looking for us, Charly, amoung others, continuously sent us advertisements for boats. We never seriously checked them out but his propaganda bore it’s fruit … the seed of doubt was planted in spite what we’d read on blogs and in books, which summarised the problem as follows: those who’ve set sail on a catamaran would without a doubt set sail on one again, and the majority of those who set sail on a monohull would choose a catamaran if they could do it again … you just have to convince yourself that catamarans don’t all overturn, that they aren’t all ugly and that they don’t cost twice as much as a monohull.

In mid-May (already) we then started to make a 180º turn and started to seriously look for a duo hull. Without knowing anything about this type of boat and never having sailed on a multihull boat before, we decided to visit all the docks on the La Rochelle coast. After a full day’s viewing, we decided without a doubt that we needed a catamaran, but it had to be a marine catamaran (therefore quite big and not too heavy), not luxurious (which is unfortunately the case with these boats when they’re too big) and not a cata-caravan (catamaran used for tourist rides)…

We quickly limited our choice to the Outremer range http://www.catamaran-outremer.com/ (that has a reputation for having marine boats that are quick, simple and adapted to long trips). And so we headed off to La Grande-Motte to see an Outremer 45 and to visit other ports. There wasn’t a doubt, this was the boat of our dreams. It could only be this one … but it’s difficult to find second-hand catamarans in France, and even more so the Outremer 45 (only 40 have been built), and especially since our budget was already stretched beyond reason …