Rod Given 11.5m Cat

Let the party begin – a power cat with fun built into its character, and a colour scheme to match.

Sandra and Garry Elliott have been putting the fun into boating for years, first with their Ross 930 Wasted Away, then with the Ross 1066 Wasted Away Again and now with Margaritaville. As Garry jokes, it took them 20 years to get through one line of the Jimmy Buffett song.

But the time comes for all yachties to slip into something more comfortable, and for the Elliotts, it’s Margaritaville, their Ron Given-designed E-cat 11.5m, built by Craig Partridge Yachts in the Bay of Islands.

The powercat was built alongside Partridge’s E-cat, Taiaha Rua, which featured in the July 2016 edition of Boating New Zealand. The Elliotts saw Partridge’s own boat under construction and decided they wanted a bit of that – with a few modifications.

“It was good to see Craig’s boat half-built,” says Garry. “We had been thinking about doing something like this for three or four years, and when he was about four months into building his boat, we started to talk about what we wanted to do. Years of sailing have taught us what we really want in a boat.”

Garry’s been a sailor since the age of 12 but at 77, he says, he’s not getting any younger. Cruising on a yacht was becoming less convenient, and the idea of having more space and fewer ropes started to appeal. “If you’re going up the coast and it really freshens up, you have trouble reefing or getting the main down.”

Margaritaville is similar to Taiaha Rua, with a few modifications. The hulls are from the same moulds but are 750mm longer for more storage space in the saloon and a larger galley. Overall she’s also 250mm narrower, to fit into the Elliotts’ marina berth at Orakei. The boat also has a pullout roof over the cockpit, dubbed the ‘garage door’, and a liftup platform on the transom for storing the tender.

Partridge and the Elliotts worked together with designer Ron Given to make the tweaks as construction progressed. “Here we were: three yachties designing a launch,” laughs Garry.