Cannes, France — This week, the largest builder of catamarans over the last three decades introduced at the Cannes Boat Show a brand-new Lagoon 60. The company, based in Bordeaux, France, has built more than 6,000 cruising catamarans and has staked its future on the strength of its brand and a persistent impulse to innovate. Lagoon is owned by Groupe Beneteau.
The 60, with a flying bridge and upper cockpit, a huge one-level indoor-outdoor main cockpit and saloon living space that will astound, and a spacious forward cockpit, offers the living spaces of a 120-foot mono-hull.
Lagoon now has models from 38 to 82 feet, with the designs for a brand new 38 and 82 being announced at the Cannes show for debuts in 2025. But the 60’s debut this week gives us all a good look at where the company’s vision and passion is taking it, driven by an impressively close relationship with its thousands of owners.
It is worth noting that 2024 is Lagoon’s 40th year in business. To celebrate, the company’s management has been staging parties and events for owners and friends at every boat show it attends and creating more bonding experiences between builder and owner. That’s good business.
But this year they had the imagination to work with dealers and owners to stage a three-day worldwide Lagoon rendezvous in 40 different locations all simultaneously according to the movement of time around the plant. More than 400 boats and their owners got involved and in excess of 2800 people celebrated the occasion. In our estimation, this was a huge achievement.
At Cannes, the Lagoon 43 also had its world premiere. We’ll get back to that next week.
The 60 is a kind-of maximum couple/family’s cruising boat and the 60 on display was built for a family that intends to sail it around the world. Here are some highlights of what one could call a mega-yacht in a manageable package:
The hull design and rig are pure current generation Lagoon with narrow waterlines and large volume hulls and a moderately powerful rig that can be handled from the bridge helm.
Moderate displacement cruising cats are motored a lot so the 60 is equipped with twin 150-hosepower Yanmars and 360 gallons of fuel.
The design is committed to indoor-outdoor living –the enjoyment of the sea—so it has a huge cockpit and a direct connection to the water via the cockpit-wide hydraulically lowering and raised aft platform. This doubles as a dinghy platform cum davit when offshore.
There are two large dining tables, one inside for six to eight and one outside for eight to 10. This is similar in a way to the arrangement at a summer beach house in a wonderful summer community. The different is, you can sail this one around the world.
Lagoon has a long history of building both cookie cutter production boats and large complex custom yachts, so in a boat of the 60’s size, many of the owning families unique requirements for living arrangement, systems and aesthetics can be accommodated.
Lagoon, like its competitors, has made a commitment to building eco-conscious yachts and to goals of reducing carbon emissions and building sustainability in all its yachts going forward. The new 60 reflects that philosophy and commitment in many way, including huge solar capabilities and a large lithium battery bank.
This is aa offshore quality boat not to be trifled with by a leader in the field. Read more.
https://www.catamarans-lagoon.com/boats/lagoon-60
