This week, multihulls from around the world will gather in the south of France at the maritime resort La Grande Motte for the annual Salon de Multicoques – Europe’s only multihull boat shown. In Europe, this is the show that often sees new multihulls introduced to the continent.
One special boat that will be making its European debut is the new Balance 442. This will in fact be hull number six but the model has not been in France before.
Balance Yachts are the creation of multihull impresario Phil Berman who is working with South Africans Anton du Toit, designer, and Jonathan and Roger Paarman, builders, to deliver some of the finest cruising catamarans on the market.
Phil has been in the multihull business for a long time and has sailed and sold and had built every type of multihull imaginable. This deep well of knowledge informs every Balance design and build.
The Balance concept sounds simple but it isn’t. Phil’s mission has always been to create cruising cats that are a sweet balance between sailing and seakeeping performance and comfort and safety afloat. To achieve this, he and his team have developed many interesting built techniques that combine the best practices of cored, vacuum bag infused construction. And they have refined their dagger board shapes and systems.
The 442 performance numbers are excellent for a cat of this size. Upwind, with her dagger boards down she will sail as close to the wind as any performance monohull and will make up to nine knots or better. Off the wind, with reaching sails deployed you will see in excess of 10 knots regularly with many bursts of speed over 13 knots. The word for this small cruising cat is “spritely.”
And they have brought some serious innovations to their cats, such as the articulated steering wheel and allows the helmsperson to drive the boat from the raised helm, as usual, or to fold the wheel down into the cockpit where he or she can steer in the protection of the hard top and cabin. When you see it for the first time, you’ll have a head slapping moment. Why was this not thought of before?
The 442 comes in either three or four-cabin layouts. The two primary sleeping cabins in each hull have been placed forward of amidships instead of in the sterns, so they are over the boat’s center of gravity and thus will be comfortable for sleeping at sea or at anchor without undue hull motion.
The owner’s three-cabin version has the master suite in the starboard hull and the guest cabin aft in the port hull. The four-cabin version has the second guest cabin aft in the starboard hull.
Built in South Africa, the boats are finely finished and elegant yet always up for a passage and always easy to maintain and keep clean, on deck and below.
I’ve had the good fortune to have visited both of the yards in which Balance yachts are being built and to have sailed most of the new designs. So, I know that the balance Phil was seeking from the start is there in every boat. The 442 will definitely be a star at La Grande Mote this weekend.
Check out the Balance 442 here.