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Racing/Cruising Cat Coming to Bay

A sistership to Vamanos screaming off Cannes. Although built for high performance, the SIG45s are also comfortable cruisers.

© 2012 Le Breton Yachts

The America’s Cup boats aren’t the only big catamarans that will be flying a-hull on San Francisco Bay this summer. You can add Vamanos, an all-carbon SIG45 built at Westerly Marine in Southern California, to their ranks. She’s hull #2 of the design created by multihull specialists VLVP in France with input from multihull great Bruno Peyron. For an idea what kind of performance can be expected from this extremely light but stiff cat, check out this video of hull #1 sailing off Cannes.

 

 

We have no idea if Vamanos was inspired by the America’s Cup cats, but wouldn’t be surprised if she was. Despite being a very high performance cat that we expect to see ripping along on a reach between Treasure Island and Alacatraz in excess of 20 knots, Vamanos has basic accommodations for six. Primarily a daysailer, she has a massive open cockpit, with a couple of unusual solid biminis, and is steered by tillers on either side of the boat.

Vamanos’s bimini was put to good use in La Cruz.

latitude/Richard
©2012 Latitude 38 Media, LLC

Two days after her recent launch by Westerly, she was sailed down to the Marina Riviera Nayarit in La Cruz. Captain Javier Cabildo tells us La Cruz will be the cat’s home from November to June of each year. She’s an ideal boat for Banderas Bay. But the current plan is to bring her to San Francisco Bay to do some racing.

Naturally you want to know who owns a 45-ft cat such as Vamanos which, based on the resale asking price of hull #1, easily cost in excess of $1 million. We’ll give you a couple of hints. First, he’s a Silicon Valley tech guy who, according to Fortune magazine, ran the fastest, third fastest, and second fastest growing company in the United States in ’99, ’00, and ’01. More recently, he was named #5 and #3 of the world’s top philanthropists. And even more recently, he was nearly crushed to death by a charging elephant in Tanzania.

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Beau Geste at the start of the Sail Noumea race. © Richard Gladwell / Sail Noumea The 18 crewmembers aboard the Hong Kong-based Farr 80 Beau Geste should be in the process of being rescued off their vessel as this is being posted.
If you don’t sign up soon, fleet members of the recently announced SoCal cruisers’ rally will be waving ‘ta-ta’ without you.