Looking for a long-range, comfortable power catamaran, an experienced cruising couple from Las Vegas have just bought a Longreach 44 in Australia. They plan to take delivery next spring and keep the boat in Seattle in the summer and San Diego in the winter.
The couple, Chad and Maren Schwartz, filmed a video with Longreach at the Sydney boat show. (A new company, Longreach is based just outside Sydney.) They said they originally wanted to cruise around the world, but had trouble finding the right boat. They decided they wanted a catamaran platform for its comfortable ride.
About four years ago, they said they had resigned themselves to a sailing catamaran, because they couldn’t find a power cat with the range they wanted. So they took a sailing course and then a week-long charter on a sailing cat in Greece. As it turned out, Chad said, there wasn’t much wind and they sailed for only two hours; they basically were on a motor yacht, he said.
Then they chartered a power cat in the Caribbean and realized that was what they wanted. They settled on Longreach, Chad said, “because it checked all the boxes.”
With its standard twin 230-hp Yanmar diesels, the Longreach 44 has a range of 1,700 nm at 16 knots; a range of 2,500 nm at 10 knots, and a range of more than 3,000 nm at 8.5 knots.
The boat is easy to live on; it has standing headroom of 6’ 8” in the salon and the cabins below. The owner’s cabin comes with a king-sized bed with lots of walking around space, a walk-in wardrobe, and a large en suite head. It also has four hatches for natural ventilation, plus AC. The boat has two guest cabins with en suite heads.
Longreach makes a 40 and a 58 power cat in addition to the 44. They have displacement hulls with minimal drag and an extended waterline forward with a reverse bow for efficiency.
The flybridge on the 44 is large and made for entertaining at sea. It has a wet bar, lounges, and a centered helm with two seats. It also has stairs that provide direct access to the foredeck.
In the salon, the galley is aft, so it can serve the large cockpit entertaining area. The galley has home-like appliances to make for easy living on long cruises.
Specs,: LOA: 44’1”; Beam: 21’3”; Draft: 3’9”; Disp.: 36,000 lbs.; Fuel: 634 gals.; Water: 317 gals.; Power: 2×230-hp Yanmar diesels.
Read: more at http://longreachcatamarans.com and see the video below:
