Multihulls Quarterly - April 2018

http://www.MultihullsQuarterly.com 41

After sailing the Lagoon 50 along Miami

Beach for an hour or more, we switched over to the
new little sister for a sail trial on it. The Lagoon 40 is very
much a smaller clone of the 50. She shares the same
overall modern look with the powerful VPLP hulls and
the rakish angled cabintop.
The rig follows the same pattern as the 50 so the mast
has been moved aft to be over the boat’s center of
gravity. With the smaller square-top mainsail and larger
self-tacking jib, the boat is set up to be very easy to sail.
7KHUROOHUIXUOLQJUHDFKHURU&RGHFDQEHÁRZQIRUZDUG

of the jib and can be left rigged and ready when you

are cruising. The reacher adds a ton of sail area and

greatly adds to the boat’s sailing performance.

The 40’s helm is in the usual raised position to star-

board where the visibility forward is very good for any-

RQHRYHUÀYHIRRWWHQLQFKHV7KHIRUZDUGVORSHRIWKH

cabintop exposes the port bow so docking on that side

is going to be a lot easier than it is on boats without this

feature.

All lines, sheets and halyards run to the helm station

where they are controlled with line stoppers and elec-

tric winches. On a boat of this size, manual winches

can be manageable, but for those over 50, electric

ZLQFKHVDUHVRPXFKPRUHHIÀFLHQWDQGHDVLHU

After sailing the 50, the 40 seemed smaller, lighter,

more nimble and maybe a little quicker on her feet.

With the mainsail raised and working jib rolled out we

chased the 50 along Miami Beach for a while and

the bigger boat did not walk away from us. But, we

couldn’t catch them, either.

At 60 degrees to the true wind of 15 knots, the 40 was

able to maintain speeds over seven knots and we saw

a few eights in the puffs. We put the 40 through a series

of tacks and found that it turned through the wind eas-

ily and maintained her speed reasonably well.

Great things

sometimes

come in small

packages

Lagoon 40