The sailing catamaran is a Bahia 46 which is a well built and relatively fast catamaran. The yacht was designed as a family yacht that could sleep 12 people. But that would be way too crowded for a long distance cruise, which is what she was ultimately purchased for. For the Round-the-World trip, whilst on the longer sailing legs, there will usually be no more than 6 persons on board, and never more than 7. Now, because of the equipment required for comfortable and fun long distance sailing, she is not as fast as when she was first purchased. But it is still pretty fast and stable. Great for cruising long-term.
The outdoor living space is plentiful, with a large shaded cockpit area with drop down canopies for sun and rain protection. There is easy access forward to the large trampoline where you can relax on one of the mats or hammocks under the sunshade. We have a Stand up Paddleboard, one set of kite surfing gear, scuba gear, dive compressor, tents, mosquito net hammocks, rain tarpaulins, fishing gear, water maker, spinnaker and two bikes, one with a trailer.
She has changed quite a lot since she was purchased in 2011. It now has a solar panel rack at the stern with 925watts max output and two wind generators outputting a max of 1000watts. The stern metalwork has also been added to, to make a fishing area with a gate that can be opened for scuba diving entry. The soft top bimini was replaced in 2018 with a hardtop made of honeycomb plastic sandwiched between glass epoxy and then gel coated. It was designed by Shawn to have 7 solar panels outputting a maximum of 1400 watts. This means she has 2325watts of solar and 1000watts of wind. To cope with this high input power, she also has 1200AH of Lithium Iron Phosphate (LiFePO4) batteries. These are one of the safest Lithium Ion batteries around. They are a lot different from the well know lithium ion batteries used in electric cars. LiFePO4 batteries don’t tend to have the well known thermal runaway issue that the electric car type have . As a result of the solar, wind and batteries, generally there is no need to run engines to charge batteries unless there are a coupe of very grey days. So she is one of the most green ways of traveling the world. Our carbon footprint is minimal compared to normal modern living.
