Power Catamarans: Leopard, Aquila, Fountaine Pajot MY and Horizon Compared

A power catamaran gives you a sailing cat’s platform without the rig: two hulls, a wide bridgedeck, a flybridge on top and a twin-diesel installation. This guide compares four builders – Leopard, Aquila, Fountaine Pajot and Horizon – with specifications from the builders, speed and fuel figures from named tests, the charter programmes that feed the used market, and what to inspect before you buy a used one.

Last checked: November 2026. Specifications are taken from the builders’ own pages and brochures; speed and fuel figures come from the tests named next to them and depend on load, sea state, engines and propellers. Asking prices are what sellers advertised on the day we checked, not what boats sold for.

What a power cat does better – and where it doesn’t

The case for two hulls under power comes down to three things.

Range at slow speed. Long, narrow hulls are easy to push at displacement speeds, and that is where a power cat’s fuel bill drops dramatically. When Motor Boat & Yachting tested a Leopard 40 PC with twin 370 hp Yanmars, the boat used 1.31 litres per mile at 6.1 knots and 4.68 litres per mile at 17 knots. On the same 1,400-litre tank that is the difference between a calculated range of 855 nm and 239 nm. An older boats.com test of the Aquila 44 shows the same curve: 4.8 nautical miles per gallon at 5.3 knots, 0.8 at 17.2 knots.

A fast cruise when you need it. Most of these boats will hold the mid to high teens, which is what you want for a 50 nm open-water hop or to get in ahead of weather. The cost of that speed per mile is three to six times what it is at trawler pace in the tests above.

A flat, wide platform. Beam is the point. A Leopard 46 PC is 7.34 m wide on a 14.13 m hull, and that width carries a full-width saloon, a flybridge with real seating and cabins in each hull. At anchor a cat doesn’t roll the way a single-hull motor yacht does.

The drawbacks are just as practical. That beam costs you in marinas: plenty of harbours charge multihulls a supplement or simply don’t have a wide enough berth. A cat that is heavily loaded runs with less bridgedeck clearance, and in a short head sea the underside of the bridgedeck can slam. And two engines mean twice the servicing. If you are still choosing between a sailing and a power cat, read our sailing vs power catamaran guide first.

The four builders

Leopard (South Africa)

Leopard’s boats are built by Robertson and Caine, sea-trialled off South Africa and designed with Simonis Voogd. The current power range is the 40 PC, 46 PC and 53 PC. Leopard certifies its boats both to CE and, via NMMA, to ABYC – useful for resale on either side of the Atlantic. On the used market you’ll also see the earlier 43 PC and 51 PC. The 46 PC and 53 PC come in three- or four-cabin layouts, each cabin with its own head.

Aquila (China)

Aquila is built by Sino Eagle in China. According to Multihulls World, the brand was started in 2012 by Lex Raas together with MarineMax chief executive Bill McGill and the Xiong family, after Sino Eagle built the Aquila 38 for MarineMax’s new charter business. The range now runs from the 28 ft Molokai offshore boats to the 70 Luxury; the cruising cats sit in the “Yacht” line (42, 46, 50, 54). The Aquila 44, which you’ll see a lot of on the brokerage market, isn’t on Aquila’s current model list. Aquila offers an optional foil system (“Hydro Glide”) on the 46 Yacht.

Fountaine Pajot Motor Yachts (France)

In 2021 the MY 40 was renamed MY5 and the MY 44 became the MY6, and the MY4.S, a 36-footer with a sport top instead of a flybridge, replaced the MY 37. In 2022 the builder announced that the Couach yard at Gujan-Mestras would take over production of the three MY models. When we checked in November 2026, the old Fountaine Pajot motor-yacht web address redirected to the builder’s yacht site, where the only power models were the power versions of the much larger Y70, Y80 and Y120. The MY models weren’t listed there, so treat them mainly as used boats and check parts and service support with a dealer.

Horizon (Taiwan)

Horizon Yacht was co-founded in 1987 in Kaohsiung, Taiwan, and its PC series sits a size class above the others here. The PC52 and PC60 have twin Cummins diesels of 550 and 705 hp, two Onan generators in the specification and fuel tanks of 3,028 and 3,785 litres. These are heavy boats: the builder gives the PC52’s displacement as 33.3 tonnes and the PC60’s as 40.09 tonnes.

Specifications compared

Model	LOA	Beam	Draft	Fuel	Engines (standard)
Leopard 40 PC	12.19 m	6.61 m	1.10 m	1,400 L	2 × 250 hp Yanmar (320 hp optional; test boats had 370 hp)
Leopard 46 PC	14.13 m	7.34 m	0.94 m	1,800 L	2 × 250 hp Yanmar (320 or 370 hp optional)
Leopard 53 PC	15.40 m	7.67 m	1.00 m	2,130 L	2 × 370 hp Yanmar
Aquila 46 Yacht	14.36 m	7.10 m	1.24 m	1,800 L (+800 L optional)	2 × 320 hp Volvo Penta D4
Fountaine Pajot MY5	12.91 m	5.96 m	1.12 m	2 × 700 L	2 × 300 hp Volvo IPS 400
Fountaine Pajot MY6	14.00 m	6.60 m	1.31 m	2 × 1,000 L	2 × 380 hp Volvo IPS 500
Horizon PC52	16.21 m	6.75 m	1.35 m	3,028 L	2 × 550 hp Cummins QSB 6.7
Horizon PC60	18.78 m	7.47 m	1.46 m	3,785 L	2 × 705 hp Cummins QSM11

Sources: builder pages and brochures; the Leopard 40 PC figures are from the Motor Boat & Yachting test that Leopard publishes on its own site. The FP figures are from the builder’s 2023 motor-yacht brochure, where the MY5 and MY6 are also quoted with a range of up to 1,000 nm. Note the drive systems: the Leopard 40 PC that MBY tested runs on straight shafts, while the FP MYs use Volvo IPS pods. Pods give you joystick docking; shafts are simpler to service in remote places. That choice matters more on a used boat than a few centimetres of beam.

Speed and fuel: what the tests found

Builders’ cruise speeds are measured on light boats. Use them as a ceiling, and look at independent tests for the shape of the fuel curve.

Boat (test)	Slow cruise	Fast cruise	Top speed
Leopard 40 PC, 2 × 370 hp (Motor Boat & Yachting)	6.1 kn, 8.0 L/h, 855 nm calc. range	17.0 kn, 79.6 L/h, 239 nm	23.0 kn
Leopard 46 PC, 2 × 370 hp (Power & Motoryacht, 2022)	8 kn: about 1,000 miles (Fort Lauderdale to Annapolis) on one tank, per the tester	17 kn: about 550 nm, light ship	21 kn
Aquila 44, 2 × 225 hp Volvo D4 (boats.com)	5.3 kn, 1.1 gph	17.2 kn, 22 gph	just over 17 kn
FP MY4.S, 2 × 250 hp Yanmar (FP brochure)	–	14.5 kn, 12.2 gph, about 340 nm with 10% reserve	21.4 kn
Horizon PC68, 2 × 850 hp MAN (Yachting, 2023)	10 kn, 12 gph, 1,417 nm	19.7 kn, 52 gph, about 644 nm	24.8 kn

Two things stand out. First, the efficient band on all of them is well below planing speed – single-digit knots on the smaller boats, around 10 knots on the Horizon. Second, top speeds in the tests come in under the builders’ claims: Leopard quotes 23.5 knots for the 46 PC and 24 knots for the 53 PC, while the testers saw 21 and 22 knots. When Power & Motoryacht tested the 53 PC in 2020, Leopard put its maximum range at about 2,000 miles, a figure that only works at slow speed.

For your own planning, take the slow-cruise figure, add your real load (water, tender, provisions, people) and keep a reserve of at least a fifth of the tank.

From charter fleet to private owner

Most used power cats in the 40–53 ft range started out in a charter fleet, often under a different name.

The Moorings offers two power cats, the 403PC and 464PC, through its yacht ownership programme, in which it handles maintenance, management and bookings; its ownership page quotes up to 12 weeks of owner holiday a year. (The Guaranteed Income and Option to Purchase programmes it names are described for its sailing yachts; ask which terms apply to the power models.) A “Moorings 464PC” on a listing is a Leopard 46 PC in Moorings charter form. When the term ends, many are sold through Moorings Yacht Brokerage.
MarineMax Vacations in the British Virgin Islands runs Aquila-built boats under its own model numbers (423, 443, 464, 505, 545). Terms run from 12 months to five years. Owners pick a fixed monthly payment of 6–9%, with MarineMax covering dockage, insurance and routine maintenance and owner use of up to nine weeks a year, or a share of net charter revenue, in which case the owner pays those costs but has no cap on owner use.
Aquila also lists Cooper Boating (Pacific Northwest) and Cumberland Charter Yachts (Whitsundays) as charter partners running the Aquila 44.

What this means for prices: on 9 November 2026 Moorings Yacht Brokerage listed 19 power cats, all with asking prices in US dollars. Six Leopard 43 PCs from 2017–2021 were asking $279,000–$460,000; three Leopard 46 PCs from 2023–2025 at $899,000–$1,149,000; four Leopard 53 PCs from 2021–2022 at $949,000–$999,000. The one Aquila 48 (2016, Tortola) was asking $349,000. Several were marked “sale pending” or “reduced”. The gap between a 2017 43 PC and a 2023 46 PC reflects age and charter hours as well as size. Weigh up the owner’s-version vs charter trade-off with our guide on ex-charter vs owner’s version catamarans.

Buying used: what to check

Engines and drives

Get the service history and hours for both engines and compare them. A big gap usually means one engine was replaced or rebuilt; find out why. Ask for an oil analysis on each engine and a sea trial at full load that holds the boat at cruise rpm for at least half an hour – watch the coolant temperatures and look for smoke. On IPS boats, check the pod service records and the bellows and seals; on shaft boats, cutless bearings, shaft seals and engine mounts.

Generators and electrical systems

Air conditioning on a charter power cat often means the generator ran most of the day. Check its own hour meter (separate from the engines’), its service history, the exhaust elbow and raw-water system. Look at the battery banks, inverter and shore-power installation, and test every air-conditioning unit from cold.

Flybridge and hardtop structure

The flybridge carries the helm, a lot of people and often a solar array, a dinghy davit system or a hardtop extension added later. Look for stress cracking where the flybridge joins the coachroof, around stanchion and seat bases and around the helm console; feel for movement in the stairs and rails. Ask if anything heavy was added after delivery, and check the payload against what’s now on board.

Hull and bridgedeck

On the hard, look at the underside of the bridgedeck for repairs or fresh fairing, check the props and rudders on both sides, and look for grounding damage on the keels, especially on boats that have spent years on the shallow Bahamas banks. Hire a surveyor who knows multihulls; our catamaran survey guide lists what the survey should cover.

Storm history and paperwork

Ask whether the boat spent hurricane seasons in the Caribbean, where it was kept, and whether it has had an insurance claim. Check the tax status: a boat that has been in a charter regime outside the EU may owe import VAT if you bring it into the EU.

Which builder for which buyer

For a first power cat to cruise on, we’d start with a used Leopard 43 PC or 46 PC. There are plenty on the market, the prices are public, parts and service networks are established on both sides of the Atlantic, and the dual CE/ABYC certification helps when you sell. Pick an Aquila if you’re in the US or the BVI, where MarineMax runs Aquila charter fleets and sells used ones. A Fountaine Pajot MY makes sense for Mediterranean owners who want IPS pods and joystick docking, as long as you confirm the service support first. A Horizon is a different budget and a different kind of boat: more weight, more engine and more systems, closer to a long-range motor yacht that happens to have two hulls.

Browse power cats in our catamaran marketplace, check the Leopard 46 Powercat and Fountaine Pajot MY 44 model pages, or list your own catamaran free – no commission, online for 12 months.

Related guides

Sources

Cover photo: Héctor Mavare on Unsplash.