Bali 4.6 - The new successor

With its concept of open space and rigid foredeck, Bali has contributed much to the evolution of the cruising catamaran. The builder successfully continues to evolve the models in its range, with the brand new 4.6 taking over from the 4.5, the first model by the brand, launched back in 2014. We went for a test sail off Canet-en-Roussillon, in France.

Test location: Canet-en-Roussillon, France
Conditions : : slight sea, northwest wind 15 knots

For several years now, Bali Catamarans has been offering ingenious and uncomplicated specifications for family cruising catamarans and charter catamarans. One of the objectives is to always seek more space for the same surface area on the water. But beyond ideas that may seem as simplistic as they are radical, the builder puts much more thought into this than might appear. After precise analysis of the competition, Olivier Poncin and his team noted the avowed desires of boaters, but then went further, seeking out desires that are hidden or simply ignored or neglected – maybe because they disturb the right order of things? Until this point, only Lagoon had pushed the boundaries quite so far towards full-comfort, while remaining relatively traditional in terms of interiors. Bali has seriously shaken up everyone’s marketing certainties by offering multihulls that were unheard of in terms of ease of access. This excess of user-friendliness mixed with marine-based yet landstyle comfort first made the headlines, then took its place on the medium-size cruising catamaran market. In just a fe...