There is a particular moment that almost every sailor knows. The engine is puttering you home toward your berth, your jacket still damp with salt spray, and someone asks what the next step looks like. For a growing number of New Zealanders and Australians, that question keeps getting the same reply: two hulls, an open coastline, and a life that has been quietly assembling itself in the imagination for longer than most people care to admit.
Multihull ownership across the South Pacific has been on a sustained upward curve, driven by a generation of sailors hungry for more from their time on the water. More room to move. More stability underfoot. More capacity to handle a capable boat with just one other person alongside them. Shorthanded sailing, which once belonged almost exclusively to hardcore offshore racers, has become the unremarkable daily reality of coastal cruisers, and the boats coming out of the design sheds have kept pace with that shift in ambition.
Nowhere is that evolution more visible than at this month's Sanctuary Cove International Boat Show, where Multihull Central will be on Marina D/E Pier presenting two of the most compelling examples of the modern performance cruising catamaran: the newly released Seawind 1160XL and the award-winning 1370. Anyone within reach of the Gold Coast between 21 and 24 May would do well to make the trip.
The entry point: Seawind 1160XL
The 1160XL is better understood as a beginning than as a boat in isolation. Released in April 2025, it takes Seawind's most successful model and revisits it from the waterline up, incorporating a broader beam, taller freeboard, and more than 30 design refinements developed in collaboration with naval architect Stuart Bloomfield. The finished boat carries ISO Category A offshore certification, a rating that confirms it is built for open ocean conditions at their most unforgiving.
Those offshore credentials are genuine, but the 1160XL earns its keep in far more familiar waters too. The design is oriented around the weekend anchorage, the school holiday run up the coast, the kind of afternoon where the trifold saloon door swings back and the boundary between inside and outside simply dissolves. That shift from sealed, seaworthy passage-maker to sun-warmed open-air pavilion takes only seconds, and it changes the entire character of the boat in an instant.
At 11.83 metres on deck with a beam of 6.6 metres, the XL offers genuine volume. Three private double cabins sleep six comfortably, whether that means a family making use of the full boat or two couples sharing passages and splitting costs. Headroom below decks is 1.96 metres throughout, and the galley-down layout is something you can actually live with, not merely endure.
Upright saloon windows follow the horizon and draw natural light into spaces that would feel cramped on a monohull of equivalent length. The wider hull form means wider cabin doors and level cabin soles, details that feel trivial on a day sail but become significant during a week aboard.
For families weighing up the commitment carefully, the safety features are worth a close look. Lifelines reach 800mm, side decks are broad enough to walk confidently in a seaway, and a dual-helm arrangement under weather protection keeps whoever is on watch comfortable and in control. Twin Yamaha 25hp high-thrust outboards handle manoeuvring, while 269 litres of fuel capacity and 700 litres of fresh water storage provide real range for extended time on the coast.
The 1160XL is not something you outgrow quickly. It is a platform that grows alongside you.
The progression: Seawind 1370
Ask someone sailing a 38-footer what they would buy next and they tend to say something bigger. Push them a little further and the answer sharpens: they want to go further, with less strain, without the feeling that they have had to sacrifice something important to get there.
At 13.7 metres, the 1370 meets that need directly. Built for couples serious about extended cruising, the kind measured in months and ocean crossings rather than long weekends and local anchorages, it comes from a fundamentally different design brief than the 1160XL. Where the XL is the natural beginning for a family stepping onto two hulls, the 1370 is built for the owner-operator who regards sailing not as a means of arriving somewhere but as the destination itself.
Hull and deck are vacuum-infused with strategic carbon reinforcement, producing a structure that is stiff, light, and displaces 12,300 kilograms. Mini keels replace daggerboards, striking a workable balance between responsiveness and the shallow-draft access that opens up anchorages throughout the Pacific. Two 40hp Yanmar diesel saildrives sit in each hull, and the running rigging leads cleanly aft to twin protected helm stations, making single-handed sail changes a practical proposition rather than an exercise in controlled unease.
Below decks, the galley-up layout places the cook in the middle of everything, part of the conversation and part of the view outside. Three double cabins sleep six, which makes the 1370 equally well suited to a couple's bluewater passage or a family adventure with older children along. Panoramic coachroof windows and the same trifold door system found on the 1160XL produce a living environment where the distinction between cockpit and saloon all but disappears.
High-capacity solar integration and 520 litres of diesel give the 1370 the ability to linger in remote anchorages that other boats simply cannot afford to. With 600 litres of fresh water and headroom of 2.1 metres throughout, it does not ask you to trade comfort away in exchange for capability. It is, plainly put, a home that sails.
The Multihull Central difference
Buying a catamaran is nothing like buying a car. The choice shapes how you spend your weekends, your annual leave, and in time perhaps your years. Getting it wrong carries consequences that reach well beyond the financial.
Multihull Central is built around that reality. As the South Pacific's leading multihull specialist, the company covers the full span of ownership: accredited training programmes that give newcomers genuine confidence on two hulls, charter experiences that let you test life aboard before any commitment is made, then the purchase itself, the handover, the warranty period, and eventually the resale when the next chapter calls. It is a thorough operation, and the advice on offer is grounded in direct knowledge of what happens long after the paperwork is signed.
Their presence at Sanctuary Cove follows a well-received showing at this year's Auckland On Water Boat Show, where the Seawind 1170 drew strong interest and solid enquiries. The Gold Coast show brings a wider Australian audience together with the two newest models in Seawind's lineup, a pairing that does not often appear in one place at the same time.
At the show, Multihull Central can be found on D/E Pier.
The catamaran life is not some distant aspiration. For many people, it is one honest conversation away.
