Thanks to Thibaut and Herve from Excess Catamarans for sharing the designs and thoughts behind their new model: the Excess 14.
Like her smaller sister the Excess 11, the 14 has been developed from the ground up by Excess along with VPLP and Nauta design. She’s a completely new design. You can read our Excess 14 review on Katamarans.
First Impressions
They have followed the sporty look of the 11 with aft helms and a low boom for maximum sailing feel on the water. Some of the innovations we picked up on include:
Asymmetric hulls.
According to Thibaud, they have spent a lot of time modelling the hull shape to get the best balance between speed through the water and living space. The cross section profile of the hulls is asymmetric.
Overlapping Gennaker
The 14 will be powered by an overlapping genoa. Like the 11, the 14 will be available with a standard rig or powered up with a Pulse Line rig.
Deeper Keels
One of the other areas they have been looking at, is the depth of the keels: modeling sailing performance for different depths of fixed keel. The starting point was daggerboards, but have stuck to fixed keels and gone slightly longer. The draft will be just over 1.4m.
2 Bowsprit Options
There are 2 bowsprits you can go for, both are part of the structure of the boat rather than being bolted on- a configuration similar to high performance brands. The standard bowsprit takes the boat length from 13.34m up to 13.97m. An optional longer bowsprit will take the total boat length up to 15.99m (including davits)
New Helm Seat Design
The helms remain aft, but Excess have developed a new design for the double helm seat on each side of the boat. I’m looking forward to seeing more details on those.
Flexible Living Space Down Below
It looks like they have developed some very interesting options in the forward cabin where you can flex the space between 2 single berths and a walk in wardrobe.
Weight
It sounds like the Weight Police have been busy on this boat. Projected weight will be between 12-13 tonnes. It’s not an area that they are obsessing over to gain (for example) half a knot, but at the same time, the idea is to design and produce a comfortable cruising catamaran with good sailing sensations.
More details to follow when we have them!