2020 Balance Catamarans 442

Balance founder, Phil Berman, prides himself on delivering a balance (pun intended) of excellent performance and easy living. The Balance 442 is the work of Du Toit Design and like all Balance catamarans, she’s built in South Africa. You may think it’s easy to create a duplicate of an existing boat that’s just scaled down, but nothing could be farther from the truth. Delivering all the systems, comfort and sailing gear on a smaller platform is very difficult indeed but the new model pulls it off.

Balance cats are built for performance and strength with a vacuum infusion construction and the use of e-glass and carbon fiber reinforcement in structural elements. Since these cats tend to venture off the beaten path, they also have crash boxes in the bows to prevent catastrophic results in case of collision. Fixed keels are available, but the tapered dagger boards (finished with graphite to help them slip up and down more easily) are a Balance trademark and will likely be spec’d by owners looking for performance and high pointing ability.

Spar craft rig carries 1,205 square feet of upwind sail area between an easy self-tending jib and a square-top mainsail. All lines are led to two Harken winches and nine Spinlock clutches. Specifying a third winch will help with line handling.

Making full use of the dagger boards for our upwind progress allowed us to point up to 40 degrees apparent wind angle (AWA) where we held onto 6.5 knots of speed over ground on the mostly flat waters of Chesapeake Bay in 16 knots of true wind. Sailing as high as 40 degrees is a big deal on a catamaran. When we eased to 70 degrees AWA, we ticked up to 11.2 knots and the fun really started.

The self-tending jib is a snap but it was the screecher that made the boat fly and we were pleased to see it worked well all the way up to 60 degrees AWA so it’s not just a downwind sail. A cruising couple can easily manage the jib/screecher sail combination even in a blow.

Our test boat was equipped with the upgraded 45-hp Yanmar diesels and we motored back to the marina at 7.4 knots at 2200 rpm. You can add a knot to that at full open throttle, but it will cost you at the pump and won’t really get you home any faster. We hoisted the dagger boards almost all the way up when motoring because there was no sea state to speak of and because we wanted to reduce drag. You don’t want to raise them completely however or the hulls won’t track since there are no keels. Keeping the boards down at rudder protection depth – just under four feet – works well. For best results, keep them at the same depth when manoeuvring in tight quarters because you’ll have counter-intuitive results with uneven appendages below the waterline.