Leopard 42 Catamaran Reviewed in 2025

Leopard 42 Key Features

Exterior Lounge Space

If the Leopard 42 stands out among its competition for one thing, it’s probably exterior lounge space. The Leopard is the only boat in the 42-foot class to feature a full lounge atop the coachroof.

Where the Lagoon 42 and FP Astrea 42 have sun pads, the Leopard features an L-shaped seating area built around a square table.

But it doesn’t stop there. The Leopard also features two large sun pads on the foredeck, easily accessed through the water-tight forward salon door. The cockpit, or, as Leopard calls it, the “aft entertainment area,” has a traditional U-shaped setee around a large table but also has extra seating aft of the helm steps. The aft part of the dinette U has a swinging back, allowing you to face forward toward the table or aft to enjoy the view.

Leopard has said that the 42, which brings features of the new 50 and 45 down into a smaller boat, is an entertainment-forward design. The amount of seating capacity and places to hang out certainly make it perfect for having guests aboard.

On the one hand, the design shows Leopards bread-and-butter market–building charter catamarans for the Moorings and Sunsail fleets. These boats need to hold lots of people and keep them comfortable for a week or more at a time.

Unique Salon Layout

You can’t look at new catamaran designs without taking note of the Leopard cat’s unique profile. All of their designs now feature a forward-facing door in the salon, making it easy to walk from the helm and cockpit to the foredeck without going along the boat’s sides. It makes some things, like anchoring, easier since you can get forward faster and you can have better lines of communication with your deck crew.

To add even more light and an open-air feeling, Leopard has added an enormous skylight over the salon. An integral shade can close it off to keep the heat down on hot days.

But that’s just the beginning of what this seemingly small design fixture does. It also fundamentally changes the salon in a big way. Where traffic flows in nearly all catamarans are T-shaped, where you travel from hull to hull or aft into the cockpit, now the traffic flow goes four ways. To make the furnishings in the salon work, the result is an open floorplan with lots of room.

The inside dinette now faces forward and is immediately forward of the outside dinette. The galley faces forward, with extra counter space all the way aft. Some of that floor space has cleverly been used for storage bins, which is a great addition to the boat’s galley.

This ties in nicely with the boat’s entertainment focus. You can have 8 or 10 people moving around this boat and not be in each other’s way. The door means guests can walk to every point on the boat with ease. The big door is also a welcome addition when at anchor in mild conditions–you won’t find a catamaran with better airflow than this one.

New Construction Techniques

With every design evolution that takes place with Leopard catamarans, the company learns more and more about what the cruising public desires. Remember, the company is the sole provider of boats to the Moorings and Sunsail charter boat fleets, so plenty of feedback is given. A majority of it, however, does not come from private owners.

But Leopard still does a great job of providing boats specked out and customized for families.

So, what do boaters seem to want? According to Leopard, Simonis Voogd Designs, and Robertson and Caine boatyards, they want bigger windows with more light and visibility, fewer bulkheads and living space, no steps, and as much open-air feeling as they can get. Making all of this happen is a tall order, both from a naval engineering perspective and from a production and manufacturing one.

Start by looking at something seemingly simple, like the bulkheads. Catamarans are placed under enormous loads as their hulls are twisted by the forces of the ocean acting independently on each separate hull. The bulkheads keep the whole boat together. If you look at a cat built in the 1990s, you’ll find sturdy bulkheads breaking the boat up into sections, with small doors leading through. Bulkheads were traditionally thick plywood glassed to the hull.

While walking around a new Leopard 42, you’ll be challenged to find an obvious bulkhead. They are built entirely of fiberglass with stainless H-frame supports. The interior furnishings almost entirely hide the structures. This increases headroom and walking space in the boat and provides unobstructed visibility from one end of the interior to the other.

Sailing Performance and Specs

In order to maintain performance on a large, heavy cat like the Leopard 42, it needs a big, powerful rig. Naval architect and designer Alex Simonis has commented that, while other companies (Lagoon, for example) are using smaller mainsails and self-tacking jibs, Leopard doesn’t believe that the penalty in performance with a smaller sail is worth it. In order to make such a rig work, it needs to be taller, which increases weight aloft.

To that end, the Leopard features a large, full-roach, fully battened mainsail with an overlapping genoa. During sea trials off of Cape Town in high winds, the boat maintained 8 to 9 knots easily, sometimes surpassing 10 knots when pushed.

All control lines on the boat are led to the compact helm station, which is elevated on the starboard side of the coachroof. It’s easily accessed from the cockpit or the side deck. It has a line of sight and easy talking to the rooftop lounge, but it is separated from it.

One number that does stand out when comparing the Leopard is its draft. At 4.7 feet, the draft of the Leopard is almost half a foot deeper than its nearest competitors. While still under 5 feet, and much less than a majority of monohulls with 6 foot sword keel, having a shoal draft is one of the key benefits of sailing a cat. The extra keel surely helps the boat on course, but it would be enough to push some sailors towards Lagoon or Bali if they’re looking to squeeze into the skinniest waters. The Bali 4.2, notably, has a draft of only 4 feet.

Price/Quality

Leopard is one of the only yacht makers that have readily available price information right on their website. The 2023 base price for the Leopard 42 is $569,000, which includes sea delivery and commissioning in Fort Lauderdale, Florida.

However, there are many great options that most owners will want, including rigging for running downwind, the coachroof lounge, the genset and extra solar, the watermaker–well, the list goes on. When this reviewer finished specking out his Leopard 42, with air conditioning, 6 kW genset, and many other options, the total price shot up to just over $750,000.

Leopard has always made good, robust vessels built to take the abuse immediately thrown at them in their home waters off of Cape Town. No one can argue that the Leopard 42 is not a continuation of this stout and seaworthy tradition.

But, like all production charter catamaran makers, the company has its share of quality issues. Pushing the technological bounds with each design evolution is a learning process, and surprises pop up. A quick scan of the Leopard owner’s groups on social media is educational into the sorts of issues that may make up your life after taking delivery.

A new boat with a warranty does not ensure cocktail-and-sunset, trouble-free cruising, after all. Are these issues enough to put an owner off? Probably not, since all of these production boats have similar issues.

Do We Recommend the Leopard 42?

The beautiful Leopard 42 exemplifies what a modern cruising cat can and should be. The boat is comfortable, whether moored or at sea. It performs well, is easy to sail, and has a great layout for short-handed sailing. Of course, the ultimate choice of which catamaran is right for you will come down to which one feels right. But you can’t go wrong with a new Leopard 42 if you want a smaller cat with a lot of living space that can sail the Caribbean as well as the Med. And the Leopard 42 provides good value doing this. Ask the thousands of passengers that have enjoyed a charter trip through Moorings.