In this article, we explore the world’s top power catamarans, ranging from a 36-footer ideal for a cruising couple to a 78-footer perfect for entertaining friends and family. The propulsion options are diverse, including outboards, diesel inboards, hybrids, and even all-solar setups.

Top Luxury Power Catamarans

The following power catamarans are all vessels we’ve reviewed. They are listed in no particular order.

• Fountaine Pajot MY44: A family-oriented cat suitable for long-range cruising and aimed at owner-operators. 
• Silent Yachts 60: This is a catamaran that can cruise comfortably for long distances using emissions-free solar-electric propulsion.
• Horizon PC74: With interior and deck space like a much larger vessel, the PC74 is perfect for cruising the Bahamas and Caribbean.
• Aquila 36: This beefy 36-footer is an outboard-powered, express-cruiser-style catamaran.
• Lagoon Seventy 8 Powercat: A spacious design, this vessel fits the volume of a 130-foot-long monohull into just 78 feet of length overall. 
• Horizon PC68: This cat has a stable ride, long range, volume to spare and intriguing layout options.
• Two Oceans 555: An elegantly simple yet luxurious 55-foot custom with the space and amenities of a much larger vessel.
• Lagoon 630: From its open salon to its spacious decks, the Lagoon is a comfortable and luxurious platform.
• Fountaine Pajot MY5: A midsize cruiser with serious big-boat space for family and friends. 
• Prestige Yachts M8: The voluminous 65-footer lets owners customize onboard spaces.
• Aquila 47 Molokai: Calling all anglers: This cat has 60-plus-knot speed and is set up for serious bluewater adventure.

Fountaine Pajot MY44

The Fountaine Pajot MY44, a creation of Italian architect Pierangelo Andreani and French designer Daniel Andrieu, has a main deck that’s open from the aft-deck seating all the way forward to the starboard helm station. The sense of spaciousness is significant, for several reasons. First, four glass panels aft can all slide to port, creating an indoor-outdoor space with the aft deck and salon. In the salon, 32-inch-high windows extend for 12 feet down the sides of the yacht, with three sections per side, bringing in natural light along with the three forward panes that comprise the windshield. Finally, 6-foot-6-inch headroom provides vertical clearance, with a 21-foot-7-inch beam that adds interior roominess while keeping the yacht stable.

Quick Specifications

Silent Yachts 60

Solar panels, ocean-crossing range and self-sufficiency define the electric Silent-Yachts 60 power catamaran. If there was any question that the “Tesla moment” has arrived in yachting, the Silent 60 clearly provides a positive response. Consider, for a moment, crossing oceans in silence at 5 to 6 knots without consuming a drop of fuel and never needing to plan your course between fuel stops. Imagine sitting at anchor and running the air conditioning all night, not to mention all the galley appliances plus the washer-dryer, without the hum or fumes from a genset.

Horizon PC74

As founder and director of The Powercat Company, a Horizon Power Catamarans distributor, Stuart Hegerstrom had long believed that catamaran builders needed to design their yachts to more stylish standards.

“The boats were very boxy,” he says, based on his years of experience with cats in the charter market. He and his partner, Richard Ford, asked Horizon to produce models that had high-end finishes and looked good inside and out.

The Horizon team brought in mega-yacht designer JC Espinosa to work with its own craftsmen. The result aboard the Horizon PC74 is a catamaran with exterior styling, layout and functionality that should appeal to private and charter owners alike.

Aquila 36

The Aquila 36 is a departure from her sisterships in that she is an outboard-powered, express-cruiser-style catamaran, but she also adheres to MarineMax’s philosophies.

With a single main living level from bow to stern and a beam of 14 feet 7 inches, the Aquila 36 is like a bowrider on steroids. She has seating that can handle 20 adults for outings and barbecues, and there are two staterooms below, one in each hull, for family weekending. The staterooms have nearly queen-size berths, en suite heads, stowage and 6-foot-6-inch headroom.

Lagoon Seventy 8 Powercat

Lagoon is a division of Groupe Beneteau, the world’s largest builder of sailing yachts, and the Lagoon Seventy 8 Powercat is a developmental sistership of its Seventy 7 super sailing cat. The Seventy series yachts are built at Construction Navale Bordeaux in France, which had to add a new yard to construct these catamarans because they require separate stern molds for the power and sail versions.

Horizon PC68

Multihull yachts ride differently than monohulls, often counteracting the sea’s motion for a smoother, more stable ride. On the Horizon PC68, sharp hull entries make head seas seem gentle, and a Humphree stabilization system with blades reduces roll. Horizon uses SCRIMP construction for resin saturation that maximizes strength with an 111,112-pound displacement. And with a 5-foot-4-inch draft, the PC68 invites island cruising.

Two Oceans 555

With 27-knot speed, house-like volume, an on-deck master and top-tier tech, the Two Oceans 555 is a formidable power catamaran. Dave Jirikovic of HMY Yachts was on a quest. The sales broker was looking for the meanest, nastiest patch of Gulf Stream he could find to show a potential client what the Two Oceans 555 power cat could handle. And just as he had intended to show us, the broad-shouldered power cat didn’t even notice. He even dropped the single-lever throttles back to idle and left the 25-foot-wide Two Oceans 555 beam-on to another set of square-edged seas. The 55-footer brushed that off too. Jirikovic tried quartering into the seas—never a happy angle for catamarans—and the yacht drowsed through them.

Lagoon 630

Fitted with the optional twin 300-horsepower Volvo Penta D4 diesels, the Lagoon 630 MY burns only 1.64 gph total at 6 knots, giving a theoretical range of 2,952 nautical miles with standard tankage of 793 gallons. Hull No. 1 had an optional 502-gallon tank, giving it transatlantic range.

Luxury, stability and economy are all hallmarks of Lagoon’s return to luxury motor yachts. If you can take a ride, it will be worth your time.

Fountaine Pajot MY5

The flybridge deck on the Fountaine Pajot MY5 is a standout feature, offering virtually unobstructed 360-degree ocean views and an elevated beach club vibe. Aft of the off-center starboard helm is a spacious area perfect for entertaining, complete with a wet bar, refrigeration center, and ample seating. It’s the most popular space aboard according to the builder. And if the weather turns for the worse, a second helm station in the saloon allows the skipper to pilot the MY5 in climate-controlled comfort.

Prestige Yachts M8

How fitting it was that Prestige Yachts introduced its new M-Line flagship, the M8, at Portopiccolo, a picturesque yachting village outside Trieste, Italy. Formerly a quarry, the cliff-side area had been chiseled into a clean site rife with eye-catching vistas, much like the French builder’s 65-foot power catamaran and its nearly 3,000 square feet of usable real estate.

Aquila 47 Molokai

With every boat, there’s an origin story. In the case of the Aquila 47 Molokai power catamaran, it starts with MarineMax, which saw people renting boats for bareboat charters. MarineMax Vacations was born. After experimenting with several production yachts, the company decided to build its own: the Aquila line, designed for charter as well as for sale to owner-operators.

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Aromas from sizzling steak, local lobster and freshly caught mahi mahi wafted through the air as an inflatable Santa ballooned on the flybridge of Mark and Janeen Traylor’s Horizon Power Catamarans 52. The Georgia-based couple was in Marsh Harbour, Bahamas, preparing for one of their most memorable family Christmas dinners.

Coker and Cathy Price of South Carolina also had what they described as their “best family vacation ever” aboard a catamaran—an Aquila 48 they chartered in the British Virgin Islands.

These are just two examples of boaters who have joined the shift toward catamarans in the past decade or so. While a catamaran or two used to be an anomaly at a marina, an increasing number of boaters are embracing the volume and efficiencies that catamarans offer. Marinas along the US East Coast are now building docks with transient catamaran cruisers in mind, and some charter companies now focus on cats because an increasing number of customers prefer them.

The Traylors made the transition from 35- and 60-foot monohulls to a 53-foot Horizon power cat. The Prices owned several catamarans smaller than 30 feet long before buying an Aquila 36, christened Nauti Cat after Cathy.

“If you’re at anchorage, it’s much more stable. If you’re on a monohull, it just doesn’t take much at all to tip it from side to side,” Mark says. “It’s very family-friendly. As far as the amount of space that you get on it and having people be able to move around the boat and not feel like you’re right on top of each other, comparing it to a monohull, there’s just not much of a comparison at all.”

Coker also says there’s no comparison: “I don’t know why they even make monohulls anymore.”

Catamaran builders are seeing substantial increases in customer demand. Darren Henn, VisionF Yachts and Silent-Yachts sales broker for the United States, says that before the pandemic, Silent-Yachts sold four or five vessels a year. Since 2020, the builder has sold 15 or 16 hulls a year at an average price of $3.8 million to $7.6 million, he says.

Prestige Yachts, which launched its M-Line of catamarans with the debut of the M48 at the 2022 Cannes Yachting Festival, has sold more than 20 of the hulls and recently launched a new flagship for the line, the 65-foot M8.

The Silent VisionF 82, which made its global debut at the 2023 Fort Lauderdale International Boat Show, has a 32-foot-6-inch beam with an open-layout flybridge that, alone, could comfortably host upward of 20 guests. The 581-square-foot salon is dedicated entirely to socializing.

“I think it comes back down to usable space on the boats,” Henn says. “People want to be able to host parties. They want to be able to have friends. If you’re on any other vessel of similar size, you’re going to be able to put a fraction [of the] amount of those people. Once you see the bow of this vessel, you’re going to be like, ‘Man, you can put 100 people up in the front.’”

Other boatbuilders are designing catamarans to appeal to even more styles of boating. Aquila’s 47 Molokai, for instance, is a center-console sport-fisherman that can reportedly top out at around 62 knots and cruise at about 42 knots. It also has a cabin belowdecks for a couple to use on a long weekend. The wide-open, performance-centric design is much different from the first cats that came onto the market years ago.

“Traditionally, catamarans are boxes on the water, rectangles on the water,” says Alain Raas, Aquila brand manager for MarineMax. “You’re starting to see the more sporty look, the swept lines. And then you’re also getting up in speed now. All of our models, we’re really focused on semiplaning or planing hulls. We’re not just focused on going slow. We want to have the option to go fast for our clients.”

Another factor driving catamaran popularity is charter bookings. The Moorings now offers close to a dozen power and sail catamarans as part of its charter fleet. MarineMax Vacations specializes in power cats, and Regency Yacht Charters says it’s seeing broad demand for even bigger cats, such as the Sunreef 80.

Some of those charter clients, like the Price family, go on to buy power catamarans. They took delivery of Nauti Cat in January 2023. Its stability makes for an easy cruise from South Carolina to the Bahamas, they say, and its 2-foot draft allows for shallow-water approaches with family and friends aboard near Edisto Beach, South Carolina.

The Traylors say they’re not going back to monohulls. As of this writing, they were preparing for their first Abacos season aboard a new Horizon PC60.

“The catamaran charter market is just exploding,” says Bob Denison, president of Denison Yachting. “We’re going to continue to see the growth in the catamaran segment of the market take off, and it’s never going to be a trend. This thing is here to stay. I think in 50 years, catamarans are going to be just as common as monohulls.”

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John Vo knows nil about boats. He says it’s ideal for an e-boat builder. “People ask us what experience we have, and I say, ‘Zip. Nothing. Zero,’” says Vo, whose team at Blue Innovations Group is preparing to launch its first electric boat, the R30, this autumn. “But you can’t use the same people from the same industry to revolutionize themselves.”

Vo, the former head of manufacturing for Tesla, is just one among many minds trying to bring electric-powered boats into widespread production. So many longtime boatbuilders are transitioning from internal-combustion to electric power, and so many other builders are popping up anew, that the president of the American Boat and Yacht Council says his agency’s safety experts are being “bombarded” with requests about technology that’s changing by the day. E-boat prototypes and launches are coming from long-standing marine brands such as Chris-Craft (the Launch 25 GTe) and Four Winns (the H2e) at the same time that newer brands are promising everything from an electric dayboat (the Blue Innovations R30) to a catamaran with world-cruising capability, but without generators or fuel tanks (the Zen50).

And as the boats get bigger than about 30 feet length overall, trying to understand all the different ways they can work becomes even more of a challenge.

“I expect, in the nautical industry, we will have full-electric propulsion, but we can expect hybrid energy,” says Michael Jost, founder of eD-TEC, an electric-propulsion system that will be on the Silent Speed 28 tender at the Cannes Yachting Festival this autumn. “There will be smaller boats that can run fully electric, and the bigger boats will have fully electric propulsion but hybrid energy.”

Before joining the marine community, Jost was a manager at Volkswagen, helping to lead its transition to electric power in vehicles. He says the recreational marine industry today is where automotive was decades ago: filled with ideas and trying to learn what the broader marketplace solutions will be. The difference between automotive and marine, he says, is that with marine, you can go from displacement to gliding to foiling.

That’s right: Foiling technology that lifts boats off the water’s surface is also part of e-boat thinking today—so are wing sails, which most boaters recognize as part of the high-tech builds used for America’s Cup racing. And, of course, there’s ever more ways to install solar power, which can help recharge the banks of batteries that make electric boats go.

Every possible idea is on the table, Jost says, because the way cruising boats have always been built just isn’t efficient enough for the switch to e-power, which includes heavy batteries that weigh boats down. “The boats of today are not true,” Jost says. “If you have a bad boat, you don’t see it. You put more power, more gasoline inside, and then you are happy. But if you go electric, you are not happy because you don’t get the range. The boat has to be much more efficient than an internal-combustion boat—and the boat business does not want to change the hull. That’s why we are looking to support builders working with the hydrodynamic foils.”

Vo says his team at Blue Innovations Group is also trying to think differently about boat design: Forget about the hulls that traditional molds were built to create, and wonder instead about what might be possible from scratch. “In the old days, anybody who came to Tesla with a long automotive resume, we threw it in the trash,” Vo says. “Otherwise, you’ve got these people with a lot of experience, and they can overwhelm you. Instead of building your vision, they will try to assimilate you, and you revolutionize nothing. You just add another mediocre company. It’s difficult but necessary for us not to hire anybody with boat experience until we reach a critical mass and launch the product. At that point, we’d be stupid not to incorporate their experience into our process.”

Then again, brands with marine experience are also trying to lead. At Mercury Marine, vice president of e-solutions Perissa Bailey—who previously was director of technology at Ford Motor Co.—says it’s understood that electric boats are still in the phase of early adopters, with companies trying to figure out exactly what consumers want. One thing they know for sure at Mercury Marine, she says: “They don’t want to compromise the time they spend on the water. In the early electrification days in automotive, there were a lot of questions about range anxiety. It forced consumers to think about how many miles they drive a day and what’s the cost of ownership for an electric vehicle for that many miles. We’re going through that same learning curve in marine. Customers are saying, ‘If my leisure boating activity typically consists of this many hours on the water, I don’t want to compromise that just because I go electric. And if there’s a series of activities I do, if I’m [riding on a PWC] or fishing or whatever I do, I don’t want to compromise those either if I go electric. I don’t want to have to adapt my usage pattern to a technology. I want the technology to adapt to that usage pattern.’”

The trick is that the technological solution for a boater who wants to cruise to dinner and back is likely to be far different from the solution for a boater who wants to cruise off the grid for months, says Julien Melot, CEO and designer at Zen Yachts, which is preparing to launch the Zen50 catamaran. It has solar power, along with a wingsail, with the latter adding the long-distance range that previous models lacked. “The last boat was great for coastal cruising, but I would not have sold it to a family that wants to cross the Pacific. If it gets cloudy or overcast, the laws of physics apply, and you won’t have enough power to escape the storm,” Melot says. “On the Zen50, with the addition of the wingsail, that problem is solved.”

As with some of the other brands in the e-boat space, Zen Yachts is seeing early adopters who don’t necessarily fit the profile of traditional boaters. “Our client base is not experienced sailors,” he says. “They are more attracted by the fact that you are self-reliant. If the world collapses one more time, they know they can take their boat out, and they’ll be fine.”

And some leaders in this space are already thinking past the boats. They’re focusing instead on where boaters will want to go, as more styles of e-boats take to the water. Silent-Resorts, which is affiliated with the catamaran builder Silent-Yachts, is now creating destinations to harness electric power and make recharging easy for all types of boats, no matter what comes next. The first location, in the Bahamas, is scheduled to finish construction later this year, with build-out starting on the second location, in Fiji, around that same time. “We’re talking with all the builders,” says Victor Barrett, CEO of Silent-Resorts. “We’re setting up in areas where cruising is popular, and we’re setting up the micro grid that connects the marinas, facilities and residences. If you have a house that’s not occupied, all that power is going into the central grid so the boats can plug in, charge fast and go. The boats can feed power into the island as well. We’ll be the first company in multiple locations to have Silent-Marinas ready to accept electric boats.”

All these advancements, of course, are far from inexpensive. The cost of a Blue Innovations Group R30 is about $300,000. The Silent Speed 28, Jost says, is likely to retail for about 500,000 euros (that was about $550,000 at press time). “The batteries are expensive,” Jost says. “You need new software. You have to develop it. And you have to make it lightweight. It might take about five years for the price to come down.” Until then, expect to pay as much as $440,000 to $660,000 for e-boats up to about 30 feet length overall, he adds. “It’s double what you pay for an outboard system, but the scale of combustion comes from the automotive industry, so if that industry loses scale by going electric, you will also lose that scale for the nautical industry on combustion.”

And the people buying e-boats right now often care more about innovation than prices. Melot says four Zen50 catamarans have been sold. The first and third are going to the East and West coasts in the United States; the other two are headed to Europe. Three of the four clients are Tesla shareholders. “Typically, the clients already have an electric car, they already have solar panels on their home, and the next thing they can buy is an electric boat,” he says, adding that for these folks, electric power is the top consideration. “They don’t want to hear about a yacht that has diesel on board.”

Deep Blue

Torqeedo’s Deep Blue 100i 2500 is an inboard system that provides 100 kW of continuous power for planing powerboats. It’s made with the same type of lithium batteries that are now found in some cars, but with components that are waterproof and that come with monitoring to guard against short circuits. The company offers a nine-year warranty for boats in private use, with the hope that the long guarantee will help customers feel secure about the type of power. Torqeedo also markets Deep Blue as low-maintenance and emission-free.

Taking Orders Now

Blue Innovations Group is taking reservations for the R30, which is expected to cost about $300,000. Customers who put down $5,000 can get one of the first 100 hulls. For $1,000, customers can be next in line after that. As of this writing, more than 50 reservations were in hand.

For Day Cruising

While some e-boat builders are trying to solve design challenges for long-distance cruising, Blue Innovations Group is starting with a dayboat. The 30-foot R30 will have the capacity to carry 12 people with an estimated run time of eight hours and a top hop of 39 knots.

Even Stronger

Swedish e-boat builder X Shore recently announced a partnership with the German company Bosch Engineering to improve the performance and efficiency on the drive system aboard the 21-foot X Shore 1. Bosch’s background is in passenger cars, commercial vehicles, RVs, rail, ships and other industries. This partnership marks Bosch’s first foray into the world of e-boats for leisure use. The goal of the partnership is to share series production experience as well as proven high-performance components from the automotive world.

Floating Solar Concept

The team working on creating Silent-Resorts is talking with government officials in Fiji about deploying a floating ring that collects rainwater and generates solar power as an eco-friendly way to address two of the biggest challenges that hamper island development. Eventually, a similar system may also launch in the Bahamas.

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Silent-Yachts, which is based in Mallorca, Spain, started building its fleet of solar-powered electric catamarans in 2016. The Silent Tender 400 is the company’s first tender, and another, larger version is already on the drawing board. The DNA is obvious: The ST400 employs lightweight carbon fiber and an efficient hull shape to deliver a sporty-looking ride. 

The tender can be ordered with an owner’s choice of an electric outboard or an electric jet drive; customers can also choose a 16-kilowatt-hour lithium battery or upgrade to a 20 kWh battery for longer reach. The boat purportedly allows for two hours of run time at 10 knots, and it can be fast-charged in two and a half hours. 

The 13-foot ST400 accommodates up to six passengers but weighs only 198 pounds, excluding propulsion. The boat is a center-console that borrows aesthetic choices from the company’s 60- and 80-foot catamarans, including angular lines, a distinctive black-and-white finish and stem-to-stern chines. The ST400 also carries a practical yet stylish rubber stripe that helps protect its carbon-fiber topsides from docks, davits and poor docking decisions.

Whom It’s For: Boaters who want a high-tech, lightweight and performance-minded tender that can do 20-plus knots sans a traditional internal-combustion engine.

Picture This: You and your family are cruising Cape Cod, Massachusetts, aboard the solar-powered Silent 60 catamaran. You tuck into Provincetown for the evening. The mooring lines are secured, and you and the troops cruise over to Long Point Light Station in your ST400 before making a harbor tour and then heading to the Lobster Pot for dinner and drinks.  

Take the next step: silent-yachts.com

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Silent-Yachts upped the ante on submersible tech for superyachts in January when it announced that the new Silent 120 Explorer will have solar power to recharge a U-Boat Worx Nemo sub, along with an Xcraft XP4 aircraft—what the builder calls “two of the latest must-have toys for remote voyaging.”

The first Silent 120 Explorer is under construction now, with delivery expected in 2024. “We build catamarans, which means more beam and more space,” says company founder and CEO Michael Köhler. “We also build our boats with solar power and electric propulsion, and that means we don’t have to give a lot of space to an engine room, which means we gain room for things like a gym or extra tender storage.”

News of the Silent 120 Explorer comes at a time when submersible companies continue to announce news of their own. U-Boat Worx says it’s planning to deliver 15 Nemo submersibles this year from the Netherlands. One- and two-seater models are available, priced at about $593,000 and $642,000, respectively. The company’s goal is to have 1,000 submarines in operation by 2030.

Triton Submersibles, meanwhile, has welcomed Bridgewater Associates founder Ray Dalio and Academy Award-winning filmmaker James Cameron to the company. Dalio is the founder of OceanX, which helps scientists explore the oceans. Cameron, in addition to having made blockbuster films such as Titanic and Avatar, is an underwater explorer who has visited some of the world’s most challenging underwater spots.

“More than 80 percent of our oceans are unexplored,” Cameron said. “There are mysteries to solve, new discoveries to make and critical knowledge to acquire.”

U-Boat Worx Nemo: A Truly Personal Submersible

The Nemo from U-Boat Worx is available in one- or two-person configurations. It can dive to 330 feet at a speed of up to 3 knots underwater, and it weighs about 5,500 pounds, making it an option for superyacht owners who want to explore below recreational scuba depths without engaging in more intensive underwater expeditions. The helm is set up so a trained pilot can temporarily hand over controls to anyone.

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Few mousetraps better lend themselves to innovation than boats, and countless brilliant minds have devoted rich careers to making boating better, safer and more enjoyable. Each year, Yachting hails some of the most beyond-the-box thinkers with its annual celebration of innovation. Meet the Class of 2023.

Donald L. Blount 

As a boy in Roanoke, Virginia, Donald Blount dreamed of designing steam locomotives. He enrolled in Virginia Tech’s engineering department in 1954, but while he was there, Norfolk and Western Railway switched to diesel engines. Blount instead landed an internship at David Taylor Model Basin, one of the world’s largest ship-design test facilities, with ties to the U.S. military. Rather than returning to college, he accepted a full-time, non- degree technical position there in 1956.

By 1959, Blount had tested into a job as a naval architect. By 1963, he had completed his mechanical-engineering degree at The George Washington University. He spent the next 27 years researching and directing programs centering around emerging hydrodynamic technologies for the U.S. Navy.

In 1988, he founded Donald L. Blount and Associates, which provided naval-architecture and marine-engineering consulting services relating to specialized, high-speed motorized vessels. Some of the best-known yachts he was involved with include the 222-foot Fincantieri Destriero, which plied the Atlantic at a pace of 53.09 knots in 1991, and the 136-foot Izar Fortuna, which clocked 68 knots during sea trials.

Gibbs & Cox acquired DLBA in 2015, the same year Blount was recognized with a medal from the Society of Naval Architects and Marine Engineers. He died last July at age 87.

Evoy and Flux Marine 

Electric propulsion is making inroads, and two companies on opposite shores of the Atlantic have been developing this power solution for outboards.

Evoy is based in Florø, Norway. The father-and-son team of Gunnar and Leif Stavøstrand started the company in 2018. Evoy’s Polarcirkel 860 demo boat launched in summer 2019. By that fall, its 400 hp inboard electric motor raised international eyebrows by hitting 55 knots. Evoy’s first products reached consumers in 2020, and the company now produces inboard and outboard motors. It also produces high-performance, liquid-cooled batteries that are available in 63, 126 or 189 kWh packs. The latter two are available in 120-plus, 200-plus, 300-plus and 400-plus hp packages that can power vessels ranging from 15-foot skiffs to performance-minded 50-footers.

Flux Marine, based in Bristol, Rhode Island, was founded by Ben Sorkin, Daylin Frantin and Jon Lord. The idea to build electric outboards came from an engineering project that Sorkin started at Princeton University (Class of 2017). The three earned grants, including from The National Science Foundation, and investors that allowed them to turn concept into consumer product.

The company currently offers three outboard motors, available in 15, 40 and 70 hp models. Alternatively, customers can purchase boat packages that sport up to 100 hp and deliver up to 75 nautical miles of range.

FarSounder 

While mariners have long enjoyed the ability to scan horizons with radar and probe the depths with sonar, the civilian marine world had a serious blind spot in front of the bow. This started changing in 2001, when University of Rhode Island professor James Miller and Matthew Zimmerman, then a student of ocean engineering, started exploring ways of using sonar to prevent accidents. The two proved their concept with a model of a forward-looking sonar in 2002, and then spent two years refining and developing it before offering FarSounder’s first commercial product in 2004.

The FS-3 had a maximum range of about 1,000 feet, a 90-degree field of view and a two-second refresh rate. Today, FarSounder offers three products—the Argos 350, Argos 500 and Argos 1000—with ranges of around 1,150 feet to 3,280 feet, fields of view of 60 to 120 degrees, and refresh rates of roughly one to three times per second.

These products allow mariners to thread carefully past Caribbean coral heads, negotiate poorly charted anchorages, tiptoe past high-latitude ice and more. FarSounder’s forward-looking-sonar systems have become go-to equipment for many expedition-grade yachts.

Today, FarSounder is also working on software that lets customers create their own 3D cartography. 

Gary Burrell and Min Kao 

Theirs is a classic story of foresight. In the early 1980s, Gary Burrell, an electrical engineer, was working at King Radio Corp. in Olathe, Kansas. He headhunted Min Kao, a younger electrical engineer who had been working for a defense contractor. The U.S. government was then building what would become the Global Positioning System, and after 1983’s Korean Air Lines Flight 007 disaster, President Reagan signed legislation making GPS publicly available.

Burrell and Kao saw the potential of civilian GPS and founded ProNav in 1989. They rebranded to Garmin in 1991. Their timing was impeccable: The GPS100 hit chandlery shelves in 1990. Four years later, Garmin delivered the first combined chart plotter and sonar, and the first color GPS chart plotter.

As the market shifted, so did the company. In the late 1990s, Garmin began making a GPS-based navigation system for cars, culminating in the Nüvi systems of the mid-2000s. In 2013, the company introduced GPS-based smartwatches.

And the company continued investing heavily in marine electronics.Garmin’s current product portfolio includes onboard audio, multibeam sonars, 24-inch touchscreen multifunction displays, radars with Doppler technology, and more.

Scout Boats 

Boatbuilder Steve Potts joined the marine industry when he was 14 years old, starting on the ladder’s lowliest rung. He scaled his way to plant manager at American Sail before starting his own company in 1988. His first creation was a 14-footer based on a classic 1960s boat called the Scout that he had worked on.

Potts’ first keel-up design was a simple, capable fishing boat with a high level of finish. Potts began gaining traction with dealers in the Carolinas, but then Hurricane Hugo demolished his manufacturing operations in 1989, forcing him to rebuild from the ground up.

It paid off: Scout has become an innovator in top-quality center consoles and has obtained several patents. Scout’s innovations include a reverse-shoebox hull/deck design, which purportedly prevents water ingress at the hull/deck joint; and the Air Assist, NuV3 and Scout Stepped Hull Technology hull forms. Patents include the company’s T-Top/Glass Enclosure, which increases helm visibility; there’s also a patent-pending Electronically Actuated Articulating Rocket Launcher, which raises or lowers the boat’s hardtop-mounted rocket launchers; and the anchor camera.

Scout currently builds center consoles from 17 to 53 feet length overall.

Silent-Yachts 

Heike and Michael Köhler know life offshore. That happens when you amass 75,000-plus nautical miles over some 6,000 days of cruising. One major conclusion they derived was that boaters needed a better, cleaner way of locomoting and generating DC power than by burning fossil fuels.

The couple spent 2004 to 2009 experimenting with and evaluating a range of alternative power sources that would generate self-renewable propulsion and onboard electricity. In 2009, the duo built the Solarwave 46, which was the world’s first electric-powered bluewater catamaran that could produce sustainable juice via solar panels. A vigorous shakedown was required, so the Köhlers spent the next five years cruising and proving the concept.

Once convinced, they founded Silent-Yachts. The company launched the Silent 64 in 2016. In 2018, that boat crossed the Atlantic in 16 days at a steady and emissions-free rate of 6 knots.

Today, Silent-Yachts offers all-electric yachts from 60 to 120 feet length overall, an 82-foot hybrid catamaran and a 13-foot electric tender. Additionally, the company collaborated with Ed-TEC to create the Silent Speed 28, which reportedly delivers 60-plus-knot speeds with innovative features such as foils controlled by artificial intelligence.

Silent-Yachts is also working to create Silent-Resorts, a Bahamas destination that will cater to electric vessels.

Future Potential

Sampriti Bhattacharyya, Reo Baird and America’s Cup-winning naval architect Paul Bieker are advancing the concept of vessel hydrofoils with the Navier 27. This all-electric foiling powerboat has a reported range of up to 75 nautical miles at 20 knots, with autonomous navigation capabilities. The Navier team is helping to change hydrofoils from being thought of as oddball America’s Cup stuff into being nearly mainstream technology that should increase efficiency.

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If there was any question that the “Tesla moment” has arrived in yachting, the Silent 60 clearly provides a positive response.

Consider, for a moment, crossing oceans in silence at 5 to 6 knots without consuming a drop of fuel and never needing to plan your course between fuel stops. Imagine sitting at anchor and running the air conditioning all night, not to mention all the galley appliances plus the washer-dryer, without the hum or fumes from a genset.

During my time aboard the Silent-Yachts 60, the electric yacht cruised easily at 8 knots. When I whipped out my sound meter, it barely registered 52 decibels, which is about the sound of a dishwasher. The Silent monitors at the helm showed we were charging our 286 kWh lithium batteries at more wattage than we were using to spin the 340 kW motors, so we were ahead of the power-usage game—and this was in South Florida rain under a solid cloud layer. Had we upped the ante to the yacht’s top speed of 20 knots, it would have been drawing from rather than adding to the batteries, but the speed capability gives skippers the option to outrun weather (or just get to the best moorings first).

The Silent 60 is a catamaran design for several reasons. First, the twin hulls are easily driven to minimize the power needed. Second, with nearly 30 feet of beam, there is enough deck area for the solar panels needed to create power.

Buyers can choose as many as six staterooms, each en suite with stall showers and nearly king-size berths. The salon also uses that beam well, providing bowling-alley space under 7-foot-6-inch headroom. With the Silent 60, the interior is basically a blank sheet, allowing buyers to tailor the layout to their cruising needs.

As for the engine rooms, NASA could take a page from Silent-Yachts: Everything is precisely labeled, placed for easy access and surgery-suite spotless. Externally, the Silent 60 is striking, with reversed bows and black graphic slashes on the topside that conceal dark-tinted windows (which provide bright, airy interiors to the staterooms). What catches the eye most, however, are the 42 solar panels that cover every inch of the cabin top as well as the hardtop over the flybridge. Produced by SunPower in California, these panels feed power to a lithium battery pack reportedly good for 3,000 charge cycles—or an estimated 35 years of normal boating use.

The Silent 60 I got aboard, which was Hull No. 3, had a four-stateroom layout. A larger stateroom forward in the starboard hull served as the master, with an athwartships berth, settee and built-in vanity. This yacht also had a walk-through Dutch door forward in the salon next to the helm, leading to settees on the foredeck as well as providing salon ventilation. Another benefit of the door for short-handed cruisers is quick access to the anchor gear under the foredeck.

Owners can sacrifice the forward door in favor of a forward master stateroom with a king berth just a couple of steps below the salon and an en suite head in the starboard hull. An intriguing design feature is the two outward-facing “window seats” indented into the stateroom on each side deck, which would make a wonderful spot at anchor with a good book.

The salon has a fixed dining table that easily seats eight people on the wraparound settee. There also are loose chairs and a pad just forward for lounging. The helm is raised one step and has twin Simrad multifunction displays plus the Silent systems monitor, all easily understood.

Aft and to port, the U-shaped galley has a dishwasher as well as a full-height fridge to starboard. The fridge setup may change to a pair of undercounter drawer fridges on future boats for easier access and to eliminate a blind spot for the skipper.

Abaft the galley, a window slides open for easy pass-through to the cockpit to serve whatever the cooks have prepared using the Hafele four-burner, two-zone cooktop.

The Silent 60 is a work in progress, and additional changes might be on the way, such as the addition of twin berths that slide together, and a different location for what is now the midsalon washer-dryer (in a console abaft the helm). This hull was built in Thailand, but production is moving to Italy.

Still, the yacht has exceedingly clever design ideas, such as the hinged hardtop on the bridge. The top lowers electrically to seal off the bridge from the weather as well as keep the solar cells from being shadowed. The bridge itself is conventional, with a double-wide helm seat to port that reverses to create wraparound seating for the dining table, and double lounge pads for relaxing, not sunning, since the solar panels take up every bit of sun space.

The cockpit has a settee and an L-shaped table. A hydraulic swim platform is available in varying widths to handle up to a 13-foot tender without impinging on the platforms on either hull. Silent-Yachts also gets points for good walk-around decks protected by toe kicks as well as welded stainless-steel rails.

The Silent 60 is on the leading edge of a greener yachting experience. For cruisers who are looking to lessen their carbon footprint while enjoying some quietude at sea, this yacht is worth serious consideration. 

Built for Safety

Future Silent 60s from Italy will have fully resin-infused fiberglass sandwich construction with carbon reinforcements in high-stress areas. Each of the hulls has watertight bulkheads, sealed floors and three collision compartments for enhanced safety. The foam sandwich core provides thermal and sound insulation.

Kite Sailing

One option available on the Silent 60 is a kite-wing propulsion system using a collapsing mast and hidden winch to fly a 140-square-foot sail. (By comparison, a Laser sail is 76 square feet.) With open ocean breezes of 17 to 21 knots, the builder says the kite can power the Silent 60 at 6 to 7 knots alone, or it can bump the speed with motors to go faster than the usual 8-knot cruise speed. 

Big Sisters

In addition to the Silent-Yachts 60, the boatbuilder has 62-, 80- and 120-foot electric power cats available for owners looking for something bigger. Additionally, it recently started work on the hybrid-powered Silent VisionF 82. 

Take the next step: silent-yachts.com

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Silent-Yachts and VisionF Yachts have collaborated to create the former’s first hybrid-powered boat: the Silent VisionF 82. It’s an aluminum catamaran with three driving modes: electric, hybrid and power. A fully electric model is also available; there are 34 solar panels atop the 82. Top speed is reportedly 13 knots.

In terms of size, the 82 is most comparable to the Silent 80: The 82 is 6 inches longer than the 80 while surrendering about 3.5 feet in beam. According to the builder, on the 82, more space is allocated to the foredeck and its “sunken lounge area” with a table, an L-shaped settee for four to port and an overhead shade from the extended flybridge deck. There’s also space for four personal watercraft or a variety of modular-furniture arrangements.

Moving inside, there’s a 581-square-foot salon, which is nicely connected to the aft deck and its alfresco dining around a table for eight. The 82 has several layout options: two galley-up versions and a galley-down option. In the galley-down option, there is one crew cabin with a V-berth forward in each of the hulls. The 94.7-square-foot galley is aft and belowdecks in the portside hull.

Alternatively, the galley-up options have the galley either in the starboard after corner of the salon or along the entirety of the starboard side. A crew cabin is where the galley is located in the galley-down option. Owners can choose two stowage spaces forward in each hull, or stowage in the portside hull and another crew cabin in the starboard hull.

Regardless of the layout, the 82 has four staterooms for the owners and guests. The 190-square-foot master stateroom is located in the starboard hull with eight hullside windows to illuminate the space. Its en suite head has his-and-her sinks and a 21-square-foot shower. Each of the forward guest staterooms is 91 square feet, and the portside, amidships guest stateroom is nearly 97 square feet. It can double as an office for boaters who need to get in a little work before snorkeling.

The 82’s flybridge has space for lounge furniture in various arrangements, or it can be utilized as an alfresco gym for fitness buffs. Regardless of the amenities here, the flybridge will always have 145 square feet of forward-facing sun pads, and there can also be four more aft-facing sun pads on the after part of the flybridge.  

Take the next step: silent-yachts.com

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Silent-Resorts and EcoIsland Development are building Club Ki’ama Bahamas, a zero-carbon, solar-powered yacht and residence club on Elizabeth Island near Great Exuma.

According to Silent-Yachts, Club Ki’ama Bahamas will be the world’s first equity club to offer “ultra-sustainable solar residences and carbon-neutral solar yachts as a co-ownership model.”

Construction on the 36-acre property is scheduled to start in June, with design of the community, residences and facilities by Silent-Resorts CEO and founder Victor Barrett. There will be 16 four-bedroom residences and eight 60- to 80-foot yachts, in addition to eight whole-ownership residences that include a share of a Silent-Yacht.

Owners can access at least five weeks of annual vacation time, including 10 yacht days. The location will have a 2-acre marina, six private beaches and mostly undeveloped land to create a natural habitat for guests.

The introductory ownership price is $525,000.

“Club Ki’ama represents the future for sustainable residential and resort development,” Steve Dering of EcoIsland Development stated in a press release. “It’s incumbent on us to protect Elizabeth Island’s ecologically sensitive environment while thoughtfully creating comfortable spaces where our owners and their guests can enjoy the best of the Bahamas. Our equity club provides abundant owner use while consuming less land with fewer homes and adds an incredible yacht experience.”

Will these eco-friendly residences be ready for hurricane season? The developers say yes. Residences will be single-story structures designed to withstand Category 4 storms.

Take the next step: Go to silent-resorts.com

The post This Zero-Carbon, Solar-Powered Yacht Club Is in the Works appeared first on Yachting.

Eco-friendly cruising ideas, products and options are now popping up everywhere in the marine world. From yacht construction to engine manufacturing, some of the biggest-name players are making announcement after announcement about ways they’re working to make cruising greener.

For instance, take Heesen Yachts, the Netherlands-based mega-yacht builder that started construction on the 164-foot Project Oslo24 in October. That yacht will reportedly have a hybrid drivetrain that can operate on diesel, electric or a combination of both.

“We were the first shipyard who dared to take the financial risk of building hybrid yachts on speculation, and today, all our yachts are available with hybrid propulsion as an option,” Heesen chief commercial officer Friso Visser said in announcing the build’s start. “‘Be the change you want to see in the world’ is our mantra.”

That phrase could also be the mantra at Hynova Yachts in France, which is developing electro-hydrogen yachts. The Hynova 42, shown above, is now in the prototype phase with several versions available for preorder. They are intended to be used as stand-alone boats or as tenders to superyachts.

Also taking center stage right now is MAN, the big engine-maker, which this past September unveiled its Smart Hybrid Experience. The technology that MAN created can be combined with all the MAN marine engines in the current V-12 D2862, V-8 D2868 and inline six-cylinder D2676 series. According to the company, this makes MAN the first engine supplier to offer a complete hybrid system from a single source, arguably making it easier for boatbuilders to offer and install these kinds of systems.

And then there is Silent-Yachts, which recently announced the sale of Hull No. 1 of its flagship model: the Silent 100 Explorer. Between that yacht’s solar-electric drivetrain and battery-bank capacity, the company is projecting a top speed of 14 to 16 knots with world-cruising capabilities.

“This new sale coming after the sale of three of our 80-foot models in rapid succession confirms the market’s interest in the superior comfort of catamarans and solar energy for propulsion needs, as well as all the household appliances on board,” Silent-Yachts founder and CEO Michael Köhler said when announcing the deal to build the boat.

He might be right. But, for sure, no matter whether we’re talking hybrid-electric, electro-hydrogen or solar-electric yachts, the eco-conscious future is making its big entrance onto the yachting scene.  

Good Thinking: MAN Smart Hybrid Experience

MAN says its Smart Hybrid Experience components can be positioned on the diesel engine in front of the marine drive as well as separated from the diesel engine by an electromagnetic clutch. This setup lets yachtsmen switch operating modes without stopping the engine. The components work with the smallest inline six-cylinder engines and the most powerful V-12s.

A Look Ahead: Future Possibilities

Commercial tech tends to trickle down into recreational boating, so it’s notable that Torqeedo teamed with Italdraghe to create outboard, retractable propulsion for commercial vessels on inland waterways. The system combines Torqeedo’s Deep Blue lithium-ion battery with Italdraghe’s azimuth thrusters, allowing for emissions-free power with directional thrust.

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