What should you check before buying a used performance catamaran?

Buying a used performance catamaran is not the same exercise as buying a pre-owned production cruiser. On these boats, light weight is a design objective rather than a happy accident, and every kilo removed from the structure was removed on purpose. That single fact changes what you inspect, where you look, and how you read what you find.

What follows is the checklist as a shipyard runs it, in the order a surveyor and a yard manager would actually work through a boat. It covers structure, rig, appendages, systems and documentation, then the two steps nobody should skip: an independent pre-purchase survey and a sea trial.

What makes a used performance catamaran different to inspect?

A production cruising catamaran is built to a weight target that leaves margin almost everywhere. A performance catamaran is built to a weight target that removes it. Foam or Nomex cored sandwich, post-cured laminates, carbon reinforcement placed along the load paths, lifting appendages, a carbon rig carrying more sail area per ton of displacement. None of that is fragile. None of it is generic either.

The practical consequence is that the inspection has to follow the loads rather than a series-boat checklist. Where a heavy production hull tends to show its history cosmetically, a light composite structure shows it locally: around inserts and fasteners, at chainplates, at the top of daggerboard cases, at beam and bulkhead junctions. You are not looking for general tiredness. You are looking for specific, localized evidence.

The second difference is one of judgement. A boat that has been sailed fast has not necessarily been mistreated. Owners of these yachts tend to use them, and a well-used boat with a continuous maintenance record is a stronger proposition than a low-hours boat with no record at all. On this segment, documented care matters more than model year.

Hulls and structure: what to look for

Composite condition

Start with moisture readings, taken by the surveyor rather than reported by the seller, and taken on a hull that has been out of the water long enough to give a meaningful result. Delamination rarely announces itself: it is found by percussion testing across the panels, confirmed by thermography where there is doubt, and it usually appears where a panel has taken a point load it was not designed for. Osmosis is less of a concern on modern epoxy or vinylester infused hulls than on older polyester construction, but it is still worth looking for on any hull with an unknown early history.

High-load areas

The list is short and it is always the same: mast step and its supporting structure, chainplates and their bonding, forebeam to bridgedeck junction, daggerboard case heads, rudder bearings and the bulkheads carrying them, winch and clutch backing plates, and the attachment points for the longeron or bowsprit. Hairline cracking in paint or gelcoat around a fastener is not automatically structural, but it is always worth opening up. Ask whether the yard that built the boat has ever been asked to look at any of these areas.

Bridgedeck clearance and its consequences

Measure it, then look underneath it. A generous bridgedeck clearance is one of the design choices that separates a fast, comfortable multihull from a boat that pounds upwind, and the underside of the bridgedeck records what the boat has lived through. Look for repaired or refinished areas, and for evidence of repeated slamming around the forward nacelle.

What a repaired area should look like

A repair is not a defect. A well executed composite repair is scarfed back into the surrounding laminate over a long taper, cured properly, faired without excessive filler, and documented with photographs, laminate schedule and the name of the yard that carried it out. An undocumented repair is the problem, not the damage it addressed. If a previous grounding or impact appears in the boat's life and nothing in the file explains how it was fixed, that gap is the thing to resolve before anything else.

Rig, sails and appendages

Carbon mast and standing rigging

Ask for the date the standing rigging was installed, not an impression of its age. Ask for the last rig inspection report, and for the terminations to have been looked at by a rigger rather than from the deck. On a carbon spar, the areas that deserve attention are the terminations and fittings, the spreader roots, the gooseneck, the mast base, and anywhere hardware has been added or moved. If the boat has been dismasted at any point in its life, that is not a reason to walk away on its own, but the replacement or repair needs to be traceable: who engineered it, who built it, and what was done to the structure around it.

Daggerboards, centerboards and rudders

Operate everything, fully up and fully down, before the boat leaves the water and again afterwards. On the appendages, you are looking for play in the cases, wear on the bearing surfaces, condition of the board seals and uphaul systems, and any sign of grounding: compression marks on a board tip, repaired leading edges, hairline cracks where a rudder meets its stock. Rudder bearings should be checked for play in both axes. Boards and rudders are among the parts of these boats that reward careful design, which is why they are worth understanding before you inspect them: see our article on daggerboards on a performance catamaran.

Sail inventory

Count the sails, then ask how many hours are on each. A large inventory is only an asset if the sails are usable and if they suit the program you have in mind. Look at the laminate at the batten pockets, along the leech and at the head and tack, and ask when each sail was last serviced. A cruising buyer inheriting a full regatta wardrobe is paying for surface area that will spend its life in a bag, while a boat with two tired sails and a good hull may be the better starting point once the inventory is rebuilt.

Engines, systems and energy

Engine hours matter less as an absolute number than as a figure consistent with the rest of the file. Hours that do not match the log, the fuel records or the stated cruising history are worth a question. On saildrives, check service intervals for the seals and diaphragms, the state of the anodes, and whether the unit has ever been dropped for inspection.

Energy is where these boats age fastest. Establish the real age and chemistry of the battery bank rather than the date it was declared, then look at charging capacity as a whole: solar, hydrogeneration, alternators and inverter. Watermakers need their service history and their membrane condition. Electronics need an honest assessment of obsolescence: a network that can no longer be extended or supported shapes what you can do with the boat afterwards.

The general rule on this segment is worth stating plainly. Bringing systems back up to standard is frequently a larger undertaking than anything the hull requires, and it is the part of a refit buyers most often underestimate. A structurally excellent boat with a tired systems package is a real project. A cosmetically fresh boat with a tired systems package is a more expensive one.

Service history: the document that matters most

A good file is continuous. It contains a maintenance log kept over the boat's life rather than reconstructed for the sale, invoices from identifiable yards and technicians, dated refits with a clear scope, rig inspection reports, engine and saildrive servicing, and a record of where the boat has actually sailed and in what role: cruising, racing, charter, or a mix.

What that file tells you is whether the boat has been maintained or simply used. It also lets you calibrate everything you saw during the physical inspection. A repaired panel with an invoice, photographs and a laminate schedule is settled. The same panel with no paperwork stays open.

One point deserves to be made clearly, because it is where buyers most often get it wrong. A racing history is not a defect when the follow-up is there. Boats that race are inspected more often, sailed by people who notice when something changes, and maintained to a standard cruising use rarely demands. What should concern a buyer is not the regattas. It is the absence of any record of what happened after them.

The pre-purchase survey and sea trial

Commission a marine surveyor who is independent of the seller and of the broker, and who is certified by a recognized professional body. Ask how much multihull and composite work that surveyor actually does: a generalist who mainly inspects production monohulls can deliver a competent report that still misses a carbon rig and lifting appendages.

A pre-purchase survey normally covers the structure as far as it is accessible, moisture and percussion testing, the rig from deck level, appendages, through-hulls, systems in operation and safety equipment. It is worth understanding what it usually does not cover unless you ask and pay for it: destructive testing, an engine survey by a marine engineer, a rig inspection aloft or unstepped, and tank or sail inspection in detail. Scope those extras deliberately rather than assuming they are included.

Insist on a haul-out. Appendages, through-hulls, rudder bearings, saildrive seals and any repair below the waterline can only be assessed properly out of the water, and a boat that presents well afloat can still be hiding the things that cost the most to put right.

On the sea trial, watch behavior rather than top speed. How the boat tracks and loads up upwind, how the appendages behave as pressure builds, helm response and feedback, vibration through the rudders or the saildrives, noise from the board cases, how the rig is standing and how the sails set. Run the systems while you are out there: charging, autopilot, instruments, and the engines under load in both directions.

Our advice - Never skip the haul-out, even when the boat presents beautifully afloat. It is the only point in the process where the appendages, the through-hulls and any repair below the waterline can be seen for what they are. Every buyer who regrets a purchase on this segment skipped a step that would have shown them something.

Paperwork and ownership

Establish VAT status early and in writing. On a boat that has changed hands internationally, the status attached to the hull travels with it and affects where and how you will be able to use it. Ask for the documentary evidence rather than a statement of what everyone believes to be true.

Then check flag and registration, that the details on the paperwork match the hull, the ownership chain including any corporate ownership structures, whether any finance or lien is registered against the boat, and the conformity documentation issued when the yacht was built. Verify that the CE or equivalent certification matches the boat as it stands today rather than as it left the shed, particularly if it has been modified.

None of this is legal or tax advice. On a yacht of this value, have the transfer handled by professionals who do it routinely in the jurisdiction concerned.

Buying a pre-owned Gunboat

There is one advantage that only the original shipyard can offer, and it is worth knowing about whichever boat you end up buying: build traceability. At Gunboat, each hull has a build record, and the team knows the individual boats rather than the model. When a yacht comes back for work, that history is what makes it possible to assess what has changed since she left the yard.

The yard in La Grande Motte carries out refit and service work on Gunboats, which means an owner can have structure, rig, appendages and systems addressed by the people who built them. With the owner's agreement, a prospective buyer can also ask the yard to look at a boat and get an assessment informed by the original build rather than by inference. That does not replace an independent pre-purchase survey: the two answer different questions.

If you are looking at a pre-owned Gunboat, our brokerage service lists the boats currently available through the yard, and our shipyard explains how the boats are built and serviced. For the technical background on the range itself, the 68, 72 and 80 series pages set out the design choices these inspections are ultimately measuring against.

A pre-owned boat is not a compromise when it is an informed one

Everything above comes down to one principle: on a performance catamaran, what the boat has done matters far less than what was done about it afterwards. Structure, rig, appendages and systems all tell you something, and the service history tells you whether to believe them. Add an independent survey, a haul-out and a proper sea trial, and you are buying a known quantity rather than a hope.