Boating, biking & boarding – in Southeast Asia

Southeast Asia’s first Multi 23 arrived at Changi Sailing Club a few months back and I was lucky enough to have had a few goes on it in a light breeze. First look at it and she looks right – eliptical amas, rockered main hull…blah, blah and it should she comes with a big pedigree having come of the design board of THE GURUS of large multihulls…Van Peteghem and Lauriot Prevost and if you haven’t heard of them – where have you been.

Van Peteghem and Lauriot Prevost have penned a beautiful boat and that she looks like the famous breed of big French multihulls is no mistake. Between this pair, they have designed every major record-setting multihull that exists. So it was in fact, a great honour to finally hop aboard one of their creations.

The lines are right, the proportions are perfect and the manner through the water – spot on! I like tri’s but only when they look right and go right! ‘Going right’ in French terms means…the ability to lift the mainhull, if you can’t…don’t bother!

So I am really happy to report that with only 14 knots of apparent breeze you can haul the maihull out of the water and yet the boat feels serenely stable and the view from the windward ama is rather breath-taking! Being bolted together, the overall weight of the platform has been kept to a minimum and at 360kgs all-up she’s light. 200% floatation exists ineach ama and that’s part of the secret of being able to lift the mainhull completely out of the water!

So far, we’ve sailed her 2 and 3 up although she’ll have no problem carry about 5 bodies as the wing space is rather vast and the long cockpit is a comfortable place to sit. There still a minor bit of tuning up to be done but by my reckoning, she’ll be fast enough to surprise many much larger boats. The Multi 23 accelerates like a high-powered beach cat and seems to go upwind a bit higher in true tri-fashion.

On the helm, she has a big-boat feel yet responds like a formula beach cat. It’s a nice combination that is fast yet feels super secure no matter how much she gets powered up. It’s an uncanny feeling sitting wide and high on the windward ama as the boat powers up. In about 12 knots of breeze she’ll really start coming into her own. We haven’t experienced the Code Zero or kite yet as things have still to settle down…BUT, it’s coming…

We’ve got a good tune up program coming so the next few months will see this baby get faster and faster.  More soon on this chapter…