TRAVELING TO A WAR ZONE, TO BUY A CHEAP CATAMARAN 🤯 - (Episode 335)
19 October 2025 · 25 min · 525K views · Indonesia
Catamaran battles 50-knot storm fleeing Tunisia at night
What this video covers
A German sailor named Ferdinand bought a Fountaine Pajot Bahia 46 catamaran in Tunisia in 2012 for €130,000 — half the €260,000 asking price — by traveling to the country during the Arab Spring uprising.3:13 The seller, a French owner, accepted half price because the political situation prevented most buyers from reaching the boat.3:02 Ferdinand had only a seven-day RYA Day Skipper ticket at the time, so he hired a captain and crew to sail the boat out.4:00 The departure from Tunisia required leaving at midnight in a 50-knot storm, declaring a "maintenance drive" to avoid a formal checkout, and sailing directly to Malta once in international waters.4:30 Over the following 12 years, Ferdinand rebuilt the boat into a motor catamaran with kite-assisted propulsion after removing the 23-year-old mainsail and mast.8:11 He installed a custom carbon-fiber hardtop roof housing nearly 5,000 watts of bifacial solar panels, 44 kilowatt-hours of lithium batteries he built himself across three voltage banks (48V, 24V, 12V), and a chilled-water air-conditioning system running entirely on solar.11:05 The hardtop, engineered to lift 32 tons, also collects rainwater at up to 6,000 liters per hour into an 800-liter tank.13:10 Ferdinand works as an electrician for Octopus in Phuket, a Raymarine and Victron dealer.5:43 His next planned upgrade is replacing the diesel engines with electric motors connected directly to the existing sail drives.24:16
Boats in this video
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