Renowned for building luxury yachts, the UK's manufacturers are still ploughing a furrow with monohulls whose outline has not changed in the course of a century: like oligarchs' palaces, but rounded off.
This one though is an all-European affair and collaboration between a French designer ~ who says conventional boats need to 'grow a pair' that we hope refers to pontoons (ed. no we don't) ~ Latvian builders, and a company run by a German with a woodwork background and a Dutch with an engineering.
Its designer claims the 180-foot yacht is between 40% and 50% more efficient than a monohull at speeds up to 28 knots. I have to ask myself why, as indeed you do.
I think it is down to that slender hull, which absent the outriggers would likely topple over given a broadside (of which I'm told there are many at sea).
Famous for maritime navigation long before Europeans, the peoples of the Pacific are renowned for outrigged canoes that suit the available materials and the calmer seas.
Such people arrived among islands of the Indian and Pacific oceans over five thousand years ago as often as not in rudimentary trimarans... so we may be coming full circle.
