Bamba 50 Sail or engine: the choice is yours!

Half-way between a (blue water) cruising multihull and a pure trawler catamaran, the Bamba reinvents the art of cruising under power.

It is very hard not to find this Bamba 50 beautiful, with its grey finish, shown off by the low sunshine which gives Brittany such pretty colours. In the anchorage at Ster Vraz, on the west coast of Belle Ile en Mer, Christophe Laurent, the boss of the La Rochelle-based builder, Bamba Yachts, came ashore in the big dinghy belonging to this 50-foot trawler, the first example of which has just recently been launched. Trawler, you say, but it has a mast. Well yes, with the aim of saving fuel during ocean crossings, in the trade winds with the wind aft, the Bamba 50 will unroll its very big roller genoa, measuring nearly a hundred square metres. From the dinghy, access aboard is via one of the two gates on either side of the boat. There are two others at the aft end of the hulls. Enough to provide for all eventualities when embarking... For this test, we had planned to sail round Belle Ile, about thirty miles, with a few stops. So as not to distort our impressions, we hoisted the dinghy aboard. Here there are no davits, and as it is a yacht, it has a telescopic crane allowing the dinghy to be hoisted onto the flybridge. This crane is essential – don’t even think about moving this di...