In August 2014 we took a brand new Lagoon 52 on a sailing trip to Dublin and Cork before handing over to the new owners in September. While in Dublin the Lagoon took many trips around Dublin Bay after it came from Cork, where it also gained a lot of attention in Kinsale.

The Lagoon 52, the latest model developed by the world's leading builder of cruising catamarans, marks a whole new era in the design of such boats, as indeed did its predecessor, the best seller Lagoon 500. The self-tacking genoa makes this big yacht very easy to handle with a small crew. The decision to locate the mast further to aft directly comes from the designers' racing experience and has many advantages on a cruising catamaran

With its diamond-shaped vertical bows, bevelled hulls, levitated deckhouse and tall rig, the Lagoon 52 is no ordinary catamaran, but its originality goes a great deal further than just its "outer" appearance, or even its interior layout.

This Lagoon 52 is the result of lengthy discussions between the architects at Van Peteghem-Lauriot Prévost (VPLP), the Italian Nauta Design agency and the Lagoon design department. These discussions led us to make some important and sometimes radical choices, while remaining faithful to what we believe in, in terms of elegance, comfort, safety, user friendliness and, it goes without saying, performance under sail.

Read the Lagoon 52 test report in this month's Afloat - read the article here!

Click on the thumbnails to see a larger version of the pictures below!