ST. FRANCIS CATAMARANS

Image Source: St. Francis Marine

Small but fine, that's how you could describe St. Francis Marine in a few words. Almost 40 people work at the St. Francis site. The COO Rob and CFO Morton welcomed us after registration. After a short introduction, Rob went straight to the sightseeing tour. It's not big, but it obviously has everything you need to build beautiful, high-quality ships. It was noticeable that the individual halls were built one after the other. Presumably to have more and more space for the greater demand.

Aside from the actual boat building, St. Francis also has its own carpentry shop where all the woodwork is done in house and even a sewing workshop. This is where all the pillowcases, trimmings, curtains and whatever else can be sewn are made. What we saw, all neat work.

All in all, St. Francis Marine makes a very good impression.

What I was able to learn from SF46 online and in conversations led us to make a down payment in May 2022 to secure a production window. Initially it should be a "non-refundable" deposit. But after I got out immediately - who buys a pig in a poke anyway - Morton agreed to a refundable deposit.

From then on we got access to our price sheet, an Excel file that was shared with us on SharePoint. Best of all, we were able to choose all of our options online and knew exactly what it was going to cost us. Our comments, which we were able to enter directly in Excel, were answered in exactly the same way. Very pleasant, easy and transparent for everyone involved.

Changes to the layout were also possible without any problems and at extra cost. For example, we had drawn a combination of workshop and utility room in the port bow instead of the shower and toilet planned there. The answer to that; "no problem".

In the end we were very pleased with the ship. We'd get a Semi Custom ship, built exactly to our needs, cool thing. So of course we were very excited about the visit to the shipyard.

Exact details on the SF46 can be found on the St. Francis Marine website. What made us decide to reserve a slot are the following key points.

Image source: St. Francis Marine

In both St. Francis models, the cockpit is slightly higher than the saloon. The older Leopards and, for example, the Mumby 48 follow a similar path. The biggest advantage is that, despite the elevated helm station, you have a very good panoramic view that is above all protected from the elements. The height difference is also a disadvantage, the saloon and cockpit feel separated.

Image source: St. Francis Marine

One berth in the direction of travel and one across, perfect for all conditions, we thought. Then we were able to convert the shower and the bathroom on the port side into a utility room. And we like the rest of it a lot, so actually everything is perfect. Or not?

Unfortunately, no. But you only realize that when you go there and take your time to look at everything. Then you realize that the SF 46 is an SF 50 that has simply been shortened. Yes, the superstructure was completely redesigned, but in my view, a hull that was developed as a 50-foot ship cannot simply be cut off.

You can see that in the picture below. Compared to many other catamarans, the stern just looks too short, cut off.

Unfortunately, no. But you only realize that when you go there and take your time to look at everything. Then you realize that the SF46 is an SF50 that has simply been shortened. Yes, the superstructure was completely redesigned, but in my view, a hull that was developed as a 50-foot ship cannot simply be cut off.

You can see that in the picture above. Compared to many other catamarans, the stern just looks too short, cut off.

On top of that. The molds for the hulls are from the SF 50, as I said. However, the shape of the bow of the SF 46 is backwards. The bow section is reworked manually after the hulls have been "cast" to create a more modern look. I works, no doubt. But from my point of view it get a little DIY touch.

That was our biggest disappointment. We were invited to see an SF 46 in various stages to get a sense of the dimensions and layout. However, everything we saw was only SF 50. From our ship there was a shell of the hulls and a dummy (positive form) of the saloon front. The two images below illustrate this.

At the end of the day, the points mentioned above persuaded us to cancel the preliminary contract and to ask for our deposit back. After Morton had initially ignored us completely for about 2 weeks, everything was clarified and we got our money back.

Another candidate removed from our list.