SUNSITE

As most people who know us are familiar with; I love sailing! The fact that I hold the Round Iceland sailing record could be a hint and the story of how I met Suze could be another. For the reading pleasure of those who share my enthusiasm I am going to start putting sailing related articles on this site. Some written by me and some stolen from around the web. For this first article in this new category “Boats” I am going to discuss my favourite double keel boats, genarally known as catamarans, the Schionning Catamarans.

Jeff Schionning the founder and main owner of the small family outfit Schionning Designs was born in South Africa. Jeff started building boats with his father as young man and went on to start up his own boatyard in Knysna, South Africa. The yard specialised in cold moulded and composite yachts, building a number of boats between 20′ – 45′ feet. In 1986 Jeff moved to Australia with his two sons where he met his current wife, Lorraine.

In Australia Jeff soon started building Australian designed catamarans with his sons, which later led him to start making his own designs. In 1994 after building several of his own boats Jeff decided to specialize in designing leaving the boatbuilding to his sons. This was the start of “Schionning Designs“.

Schionning Catamarans are among the most beautifull catamarans in the world and though I havent experienced it my self yet, they are reported to handle excellently. A large proportion of the Schionning cats are built by amature home builders but none the less their boats are fetching really high resale prices, when they are available. Professionally built Schionning cats of about 40-50 feet are selling for as much as a million Australian dollars.

“The success of our designs I feel, stems from the practical commonsense approach of a boat builder, coupled with many years of live aboard experience and 50 – 60,000 sea miles in some of the worst conditions in the world. This experience makes you aware of the power of the sea and the need for a boat to be able to survive these conditions, protect her crew physically and psychologically as well as being a fast comfortable vehicle for all the good times”, says Jeff Schionning on his website.
The hallmark of the Schionning cats is their livable layout, safety and excellent performance. After looking all over the web for the perfect catamaran to suit our future sailing needs I finally decided on a catamaran designed by Schionning, more specifically the Wilderness 1230. I first noticed Schionning on a Finnish website of a home builder who is building a Schionning Cosmos 1100. The first thing I noticed was the beautifull design and after reading the builders praise I looked up the designer.

On the Schionning website I found all the details of his designs. After reading about his design philosophy I started looking at the details of some of them and found that they fulfill all the requirements I had been creating in my head. None of the other cats I have seen do that, even though many come close. The look, the layout, the performance, the emphasis on safety and even the price, if I can learn to build a boat and set a side 5 years for building that is.

Schionning also dares to be different. Theirs was the first “Batwing” catamaran for the home/production builder that I have seen. The idea to stick two masts on each hull rather than having one in the middle makes a lot of sense. The idea that two hulls should have two masts seems so logically correct that it begs the question why others havent done it a long time ago. Radical Bay has now been built and sailed by a fair few people and their reports on the concept have been very positive. Amongst he qualities they reportedly have are increased security, smoother sailing and easier handling [3]. These are all qualities that I appreciate and Schionning have reported that they will design a dual rig version of all their most popular designs. The first of which was the Wilderness 1230. The first customer to decide on building the dual rig Wilderness 1230 were Paul and Jo in western Australia. They are building Mahna Mahna and estimate she will take 5 years to complete.

I have allready bought the study design of the boat we eventually want to build but to be honest it will be a fair few years before we can start building. In the meantime I am planning on building my building skills by starting with a smaller boat but more about that in my nest article.

Schionning at Multihull Maven [1]
Schionning for sale [2]
“Are two rigs better than one” at Multihull Maven [3]