Rightboat Interview: Frank Bauguil on Leopard’s New Electric Catamaran

At the Cannes Yacht Show in September, Alastair Walton from the Rightboat.com UK Office talked about Leopard catamarans with Franck Bauguil, VP of Ownership and Product Development for Sunsail, Moorings and Leopard Catamarans. On display at the show was the new Leopard 40PC model, a power cruising catamaran in series with the Leopard 46PC and 53PC, designed by Simonis Voogd. The new model boasts 50% more space and 50% less fuel consumption than similar length monohulls, and it has the largest flybridge found anywhere on a 40-foot powercat. The brief conversation focused mainly on what’s next for the Leopard brand.

Franck Bauguil has been a key player in developing sail and powercats for Sunsail, Moorings and Leopard Catamarans over many years.

Alastair Walton: Tell us about the new 46-foot sailing catamaran and why electric? Do you think that we'll have more and more boats powered electrically over the future?

Franck Bauguil: We’re launching a new 46-foot model, so that's the biggest event for us. It's a new sailing catamaran that we developed over the last year and a half, and it's developed for Moorings, Sunsail, and Leopard Catamarans.

The first boat that we just tested in Cape Town is going to be at the Annapolis Boat Show, and it happens to be equipped with a hybrid pack with electric drives. That’s not going to necessarily be the case for all the boats, but on the first boat we have all the possible options on the boat under the Leopard brand. 

Also available with diesel engines, the first Leopard 46 Electric Drive will be powered by a hybrid pack with electric drives.

So, it's an important development for us, the first time that we are going full speed on this. We did build a diesel electric a long time ago, before we had lithium batteries and with the idea of a genset running all the time, feeding two electric motors. With another brand that we have, we also ventured into hybrid propulsion a few years back. But this package here is a lot more sophisticated and self-contained. The technology has dramatically changed: we have independent units on both sides of the boat, the capacity from the battery bank is increased dramatically, we have better solar energy, and better electrical systems. We even have the ability to regenerate power from the propellers on the sailboat. 

Walton: Will you build the electric 46 for all three brands?

Bauguil: The electric propulsion is Leopard-only for us—we're not venturing to the charter side yet for several reasons. One is that we have to be able to service the boats, which at this point we do not have the skills to troubleshoot this kind of system, even though the way you troubleshoot this can be remote, you have a SIM card on the board and basically you log into the system. Also, there's a premium on the price that is not necessarily accepted by the charter customer: Is the charter client ready to pay 15 to 20 percent more to have an electrical motor on board? Some of our competitors went full on with electric propulsion for charter boats, and we see that it's not working, it's not only difficult to sell it but also difficult to operate. For now, it's for the Leopard brand, the private sale division of our company, as an option on the 46. That’s a pack that some private owners can purchase. 

Now, if you're already looking at equipping a private boat with a lithium battery bank and a generator, which is the majority of our Leopard customers, the price difference shrinks quite a bit because you eliminate two diesel engines, you have a bigger genset, and the benefit is to be able to power quietly without any vibration or smell. You eliminate the element of noise under propulsion and you still have diesel on board to feed the genset, so obviously we have to deliver a safe boat where even though you can run batteries down, you can still power for a long period with the Gen set running to recharge the batteries. 

The world premiere for the Leopard 46 Electric Drive will be at the 2024 Annapolis Sailboat Show.

Walton: How fast do you see electric propulsion replacing diesel?

Bauguil: The whole transformation in the industry is towards less emission, more efficient systems as well, but it’s slow to come as the systems are not easy to put together. We are working with one supplier so the package is self-contained, and we don't have the different elements from different businesses. It's a company that's been doing this for over 10 years, and we've tested it extensively on the prototype we built before the first 46. So, we are going into it slowly because we want to make sure that the product we're delivering to the market is reliable. 

Now how will the market react to it? We still have to realize there's a significant cost associated with it, but we know that there's a desire from the owners to run that genset less—we’re already delivering more and more boats with lithium battery banks to reduce or eliminate the need to run the genset; once you anchor you can use a proper energy regeneration system that will come in part from solar panels and rely on a large battery bank to run all your “house” systems without starting the genset. 

As far as electric propulsion is concerned, that is newer, where you have this ability to run without any diesel engine for several hours and then you can put your sails up—which by the way, let’s never forget that a sailboat is as green as it can be. The sailing segment of our business in charter or for private owners is eco-friendly in the sense that if you have wind and you have a boat like the Leopard that performs well enough even in five or six knots of wind, you can always sail. With the 46, if you can get in and out of a marina under electric power, without any emission, that’s even better. 

The Leopard 40PC is the newest and shortest of the brand's series of 3 spacious powercats.

Walton: Leopard has had a fantastic history since 1997. How much of your market is in Europe versus the U.S.? 

Bauguil: We are an American company, and we started building the first Robertson & Caine boats in 1997; they were built for the Moorings, which is associated with the Caribbean and the American customers so historically we are more American if you like. Moorings was already a global company when we rolled out the Robertson & Caine cats worldwide at the very beginning. Leopard came a little bit later; we started Leopard in 2000 in the US and then we entered the European market in 2007. Is Europe a big piece of your business? Yes, because we have bases in the in the Med with Moorings and Sunsail, which merged with the Moorings, so by definition we have a big activity in a Med which is mostly European with some Americans. For Leopard, we dominate in the US where we are the leading catamaran brand in the US—No. 1 in sailing and power. In Europe, Leopard is a smaller business for us and we're competing with brands that have been around a long time and do a good job building boats as well.

Our yachts are built in the southern hemisphere in Cape Town, which is not necessarily the closest place to deliver into the Med but it’s still an important business for us and it’s growing, particularly on the power side where we have a dominance globally. If you look at power cats with inboard diesel engines, we are No. 1 globally. 

What we try to do is have an ecosystem between Moorings, Sunsail, Robertson & Caine, and Leopard and it’s an exclusivity with a builder that’s pretty unique in the business. We try to work as best together as we can through all the different events such as Covid and Hurricane Irma, which was a big thing for us. Coming out of COVID so we're not obsessed with growth but certainly our market share has been steadily growing in Europe. 

A view of the forward cockpit on the Leopard 40PC.

Walton: The Cannes Yacht Show marks the beginning of the boat show season, and you're launching the Leopard 40 power cat here. What does the rest of the show season look like for you?

Bauguil: We have the Grand Pavois La Rochelle, which is a bit more of a charter show for us, and Southampton, which I will be at this year. Then at the same time we have Newport in the U.S, which is a good show for us particularly for charter. And it will be at Annapolis where we're going to have the 46’s world introduction launch with the electric pack, followed by the Fort Lauderdale International Boat Show, FLIBS, where our powerboat business is becoming really healthy. We’re seeing more and more people coming from motor yachts into power cats and this is the big Florida power show, where we also have our office.

Walton: Congratulations and thank you, Franck. Best of luck.