The Katama 30, A Close Cousin

The Katama 30 is a Wasque cousin, a more modern family boat in the same New England style.

In 1999, a client contacted C.W. Hood Yachts asking for a 30-foot, commuter-style tender for a large sailing yacht. It would be powered with a jetdrive and be capable of 30-knot speeds, with overnight accommodations. “I was intrigued,” says Hood, who sketched some profiles. Standard propulsion would be a Yanmar 440 diesel coupled with an Ultrajet jetdrive, and it would be called the Katama 30.

The boat’s name came from Katama Bay, on Martha’s Vineyard. “I always enjoyed sailing Dyer dinghies there as a kid,” says Hood. “It’s a shallow bay. We had this shallow-draft jetboat, so that’s where she got her name.”

And the boat’s look was still New England. “We wanted to keep the teak windshield and toe rails, the nice proportions,” says Hood. “And, again, make it easy to service and maintain.”

Though the client changed his mind, Hood liked what he’d drawn up. “I thought I had a pretty good boat, and we decided to build it ourselves,” he says.

Hood showed the renderings to prospective customers. “I sold three boats with those pretty pictures,” says Hood. “And that’s how it started.”

The boats were built in Gdansk, Poland, known for its ship- and boatbuilding heritage, using vacuum-bagged, cored construction and vinylester resins. Hood insisted on using U.S.-made gear and accessories, right down to bilge pumps and varnishes. “I wanted to make sure a mechanic in the U.S. could get into the boats and see all familiar equipment,” he says.

The prototype Katama 30 was delivered just before the Newport boat show in Rhode Island, where it debuted. Then came the terrorist attacks of 9/11. “The world was upside down. We didn’t even know if there would be a show,” Hood recalls. “We forged ahead, got to the boat show and sold it.”

More than 25 have been sold since then. “We’ve had great success with it, and a lot of happy customers,” says Hood. And the Katama remains a “Vineyard boat, an island-hopper and a great family boat.”

SPECIFICATIONS

LOA: 30 feet BEAM: 11 feet DRAFT: 1 foot, 9 inches HULL TYPE: deep-vee PROPULSION: single 370-hp Volvo Penta diesel TANKAGE: 110 gallons fuel, 28 gallons water SPEED: 28 knots cruise, 34 knots top