Forty years after the first Cap Camarat, there’s a new flagship and it’s the biggest boat ever to wear the badge. Does bigger mean best? We took it for a spin in the South of France to find out.
J eanneau’s Cap Camarat line celebrates its 40th birthday in 2022 and what better way to start the party than by launching the biggest Cap Camarat ever, the 12.5 WA (walkaround).
An incredible 36,000 Cap Camarats have hit the water since the range was launched at the 1982 Paris Boat Show, many of those a cheap and cheerful way for a family to find their feet out on the water. This new flagship is significantly different.
Not only is it nearly 40ft in length but with the option of twin or triple Yamaha outboards powering a hull designed by Michael Peters, it is a high performance machine with a 45-knot top speed and a price tag over €300,000 once you’ve added options and VAT.
This boat elevates the Cap Camarat range to a new level but does it have what it takes to go toe-to-toe with Axopar, Saxdor and a host of RIB brands that you could buy for similar money?
SERIOUS EXTRAS
If you associate the Cap Camarat range with comparable 6-8m fare, then the 12.5 at 39ft 1in (11.9m) feels like a properly grown-up boat from within its deep and well designed cockpit. This area is packed with functionality, from the folding table with its built-in handrails and cup holders to the dinette backrest which pops up and lies flat to create a sunpad. Then there’s the ubiquitous balcony, which is a refreshingly simple affair on the CC that lowers down on a couple of cords (much like the bathing platform of a Jeanneau sailing boat) to create a lovely vista from the starboard-biased dinette and another access point into the water with a slot-in boarding ladder.
The nice thing about it is that it doesn’t take ages to glide down into place once you’ve hit the button and you don’t need to waste time setting it up. Just drop it down, chuck the SUP in and off you go.
The main deck has all the key ingredients to make it a tremendous day boat. The wet bar is located amidships and has a whole host of equipment options, including twin sinks, a grill with optional ceramic hot plate (if you specify the generator), twin fridges and an optional bait well and ice maker. With the engines on the transom, the space where an inboard boat would mount its motors is left as an enormous storage void, accessed via a cockpit hatch.
FEATURE-PACKED
Forward, the asymmetric deck layout is biased to port and prov
