Perry Design Review: Fountaine Pajot Athena 38

Big cruising cats are sure catching on. The Fountaine Pajot group is responsible for bringing us a series of well-thought-out and provocatively styled cats, and the company's newest is a big 38-footer, the Athena 38, designed by Joubert-Nivelt. The interior design is by O. Flahault.

The Fountaine Pajot Athena 38 lies quietly at anchor.

Keep in mind that profile sailplan drawings of big cats are deceptive. While the drawings show a stubby and exaggerated-looking profile, the photographs show a graceful and almost lean-looking vessel.

I think the most interesting aspect of this new design is the sculpting of the hull and deck intersection. In order to get headroom down in the hulls, most cats go for considerable freeboard, which can result in slabbish topsides. The Athena tucks in the sheerline with a large and soft radius, then steps up again to the true deck level. Of course there is some deck space lost in this styling device, but there is so much deck space on a big cat that the amount lost is irrelevant. The hulls terminate in another highly sculpted detail at the swim steps. This is a sexy boat.

When you establish the layers of heights you need to make a cruising cat work, you are left with a cockpit sole to cabintrunk top dimension that is considerable. This means that the steering station, in order to be able to look over the boat, has to be raised. But even with the elevated chair, visibility is a little like looking over a bus. There is not much you can do with this except provide a comfortable chair.

The D/L of this cat is 116. Note the low-aspect-ratio fin keel. Draft is 3 feet, 1 inch. The critical clearance between the connecting bridgedeck and the water appears to be 28 inches.

If the exterior of the Athena is too spacey for you, you are going to have trouble with the interior. Not only are the spaces quite foreign to a sailor steeped in monohulls, but Fountaine Pajot's style of interior finishing and decorating is certainly far from traditional. You just have to relax and buy the entire picture. The layout features four double berth staterooms, each in the end of a hull. Amidships in each hull is a head. The saloon has a large horseshoe-shaped dinette and a U-shaped galley. Evidence that these boats are designed not to heel is the fact that there are no fiddles on the galley counters. In fact, instead of a fiddle there is a large radius, which almost looks as if it were designed to help things slide off.

For an SA/D we are only given the SA with genoa, but that will be okay. I think we can also assume that the given sail area figure includes all of the main's roach, but that is also typical of cats. So, with our SA/D of 27.41, this should be enough horsepower to keep this cat moving in light conditions.

Two saildrive 20-horsepower diesels provide auxiliary power. There is tankage for 40 gallons of fuel and 80 gallons of water.

Four filled staterooms seems like a lot of people to cruise a 38-footer, but consider the deck space of this design. There is plenty of room to lounge on deck without any sense of crowding. The potential of good sailing performance coupled with the outstanding styling make this cat worth studying.

Fountaine Pajot's latest cushy cruising cat.

Boat Specifications