Technical

At a glance

SWIFT is an Outremer 45, built at the yard in Lorient, France. This page collects the main technical facts about her. It describes the boat as ordered.

Length: 14.6 m (48 ft)

Beam: 7.15 m

Draught: about 2.05 m (yard figure)

Weight launched: a little over 9 tonnes (with tender)

Maximum loaded: about 12 tonnes

Cabins: three

Engines: two Nanni N4.38, 38 hp each, on saildrives

Mast and rigging: aluminium mast, stainless rigging

Sails and rig

The sail wardrobe is by Incidence, in Hydranet cloth. The mainsail is a square-top design and the solent is self-tacking, so a small crew can sail upwind with very little work on the sheets.

Mainsail: 69 m square-top

Solent: 41 m self-tacking

Code 0: about 80 m, on a bowsprit furler

Downwind gennaker: about 135 m, furling

Heavy spinnaker: 122 m, with a sock

Winches: five Lewmar, two of them electric

The bimini and bulkheads are carbon, which saves weight high up and low down in the boat. Steering is mechanical, with a carbon tiller and a helm seat on each side.

Engines and range

Two Nanni N4.38 diesels drive folding three-blade Gori propellers through saildrives. The propellers and saildrive legs are treated with Propspeed, and the hulls are coated with Coppercoat to keep marine growth off.

Diesel: 336 litres

Fresh water: 407 litres, plus a 40 litre hot-water tank

Watermaker: 100 litres an hour, 12 V

Holding tanks: two of 63 litres each

Cooking is by gas, with a two-burner hob and oven.

Power

The boat runs on 12 volts. There is no generator; the plan is to live on the sun and the batteries, and to run an engine only when needed.

Batteries: two Mastervolt lithium batteries of 6 kWh each, 12 kWh in total

Solar: 1,750 W, made up of 910 W on the bimini and 840 W on the davits

Inverter-charger: 3,000 W, Mastervolt

Alternators: a second 170 A alternator on each engine

Switching: Mastervolt CZone digital switching

Air conditioning: planned, two 12 V units, one in each hull

We have modelled a day's use hour by hour. At anchor in the Mediterranean the solar panels alone cover a couple's daily use. On an ocean passage the panels cover most of it, and we expect to run one engine for roughly an hour and a half a day to make up the rest. We will publish real figures once she is afloat.

Navigation and electronics

Navigation and instruments are from B&G. There are two independent autopilot systems, each with its own computer, compass, rudder sensor and drive, so a failure of one leaves the other ready to steer. The back-up holds a compass heading only.

Chartplotters: two B&G Zeus 3S, 9 inch at the helm and 16 inch at the chart table

Instruments: four B&G Triton2 displays and a Triton Edge sailing processor

Autopilots: two B&G NAC-3, with a changeover switch

Radar: B&G Halo 20+

VHF and AIS: B&G V100 VHF and a V3100 Class B AIS transponder (5 W)

Distress beacon: ACR GlobalFix V5 EPIRB with AIS

Connectivity: Pepwave 5G router, with Starlink Mini mount and cable fitted

On deck

Main anchor: 25 kg Spade, with 50 m of 10 mm chain

Second anchor: Fortress, with its own rode

Windlass: 1,600 W electric, with a remote at the helm

Tender: Highfield rigid inflatable on davits

Liferaft: Plastimo Transocean, 8 person

We have asked the yard to change the tender to the 3.4 m Highfield with a 20 hp electric-start Honda outboard.

Living aboard

SWIFT has three cabins and two electric heads. The galley has an Isotherm 130 litre fridge and a 63 litre freezer, and there is a washing machine in the starboard passageway. The interior floor will be Flexiteek, a synthetic teak that is light and easy to keep clean.

Weight

Weight matters on a performance catamaran. Our own load budget puts her at about 10.3 tonnes for coastal sailing and about 11.1 tonnes fully loaded for an ocean passage, with full tanks. That sits comfortably inside the roughly 12 tonne maximum.

More to come

This is a first summary. As the fit-out and our first sea miles teach us more, we will add detail and what we learn, including how the power system performs in real use.