BOAT TEST
40 Can Leopard’s latest blue-water cruising cat really excel with just 40ft to play with?
When South African yard, Robertson and Caine, moved into the world of powercats, it went exactly the right way about it. It already had a fleet of Leopard sailing cats that had proven their worth in the charter market, garnering effusive applause from both punters and press. But rather than adapting its existing platforms for power, it resisted the temptation to cheat and set about designing new hulls from the ground up – and so it was that its Leopard range of power cats went on to receive a fresh slew of awards...
In 2020, its Leopard Powercat 53 won the Multihull of the Year award. It followed that up two years later with a smaller 46ft version, which also scooped the top gong at the Best of Boats Awards. And when its smallest powercat completed the hat-trick with the European Powerboat of the Year award in 2024, it became clear that all its hard work and investment was paying dividends. But can a beamy flybridge-equipped 40ft cruising cat really be as compromise-free as the acclaim suggests? We headed for St Raphael in the South of France to find out.
A BIG LITTLE BOAT
First thing’s first. The beam on this new Leopard 40 is massive. In fact, at 21ft 8in, it encompasses more than 54% of the overall length, which is way up in sailing cat territory. And interestingly, the vast majority of the internal space that the beam helps create is lavished on the external dayboating zones. In the absence of a central swim platform, the aft cockpit uses a set of tender davits with a transverse walkway behind the aft bench. Although that involves shunting the aft bench forwards, there’s still space for a set of freestanding chairs. On first acquaintance, the fixed cockpit table might seem like an odd choice here, but the shelter provided by the vast fly deck means this section of the boat was never intended for sunbathing. On the contrary, if you want to sunbathe, the bow deck is very much the place to be.
Accessed via a set of broad (but not excessively broad) singlelevel side decks with grabrails for both hands, the bow features a couple of occasional seats built into the forward guardrails, plus a pair of fold-up cushions that rest incongruously against the windscreen. It’s not likely to impress you much if you’re looking for a conventional bow lounge but there are some truly huge storage compartments here, thanks to the forward dip of the bridge deck, and there’s also a vast acreage of sunbed cushions that would have you believe you’re on a much bigger boat.
