NEEL 43 Performance - Three-hull cruising in turbo mode

It was with great delight that I accepted an invitation from Jean-Noël Roux, NEEL-TRIMARANS dealer for France’s Occitanie region and owner of the brand-new NEEL 43 Performance, to deliver his multihull from La Grande-Motte to Port Ginesta for the Multihull Fest 2024, of which Multihulls World is a partner! I’m very familiar with the NEEL 43, having sailed one for a week in the Caribbean, and I was already impressed by the trimaran’s performance and user-friendliness. So, I was excited to get the chance to test the Performance version, taking my husband and 7-year-old son along for the occasion. To be honest, young Sam seemed much more enthusiastic than his father, who is an experienced mountaineer but still looking for his sea legs...

Jean-Noël warned me, “Be careful, it’s not the same boat!” Indeed, even though the Performance is built from the same molds as the standard NEEL 43, a multitude of visible and invisible details make this a completely different multihull: the structural bulkheads and mast in carbon, the fiber rigging and top-of-the-range fittings announced by the shipyard are accompanied by a host of details that make this trimaran a very pretty little toy.
The three of us arrived with luggage and all our gear, eager to get to grips with the Gulf of Lion, but unfortunately the weather had decided otherwise for the time being: southeast winds gusting to 45 knots, torrential rain, and heavy seas... conditions incompatible with family cruising! So, we took the opportunity to discover the trimaran in port while waiting for a weather window to open. First impression: the multihull looks much higher on the water than a “traditional” 43, as Jean-Noël confirms: “The multihull is 500 kg (1,100 lbs) lighter than a NEEL 43 equipped for cruising”.

Understated, uncluttered interior desi...