By Karen Harper and Hamish Smith featured in October 2011 Cruising Helmsman Magazine – My Boat section.
This is an informative article written by a couple who searched long and hard for the perfect boat. It runs through their decision process and gives allot of helpful advice for anyone looking to purchase a live a board multihull.
Karen Harper and Hamish Smith traded up from a trailer-sailer to a large catamaran and are making the most of all that extra space.
Purchasing Isis, a Fountaine Pajot Lipari 41, has been a 10-year journey in the planning and final execution. We started to fear that we 
were going to join the “Gunna tribe!” We wanted to buy a boat that we felt happy to bluewater cruise but that could also be handled by one person. We hope to be living aboard for the next 15 or so years.
Initially, we had always intended to purchase a 12m monohull. The two main reasons for this were that we had only really experienced sailing on friends’ monohulls (we didn’t count sailing our Hobie cat on dams in the Burnett Region as sailing on full-blown multihulls!), and 12m seemed to be a good size that one person could manage should something happen to the other person.
Then, by pure chance, we happened to be invited onto a catamaran while on our trailer-sailer holidaying in the Whitsundays. We had always intended to be liveaboard sailors, so the appeal of a catamaran with the larger living areas, galley up, and stability won us both over.
So the search was then on for what style of catamaran would suit our needs. Over the next few years we would wander through various marinas and boat yards as the opportunities presented themselves, looking at different cats and getting a feel for what was around and for what price.
Eventually our key criteria boiled down to a number of simple items:
To read complete story – click here for My Boat “Isis” – Fountaine Pajot Lipari 41 full story
