Fountaine Pajot Isla 40

The Isla 40 took over from the Lucia 40 as Fountaine Pajot's entry point, and the brief was simple: bring the vocabulary of the bigger boats below the twelve-metre mark. Berret-Racoupeau carried over the inverted bows and the low nacelle of the Elba 45 while holding light displacement under nine tonnes, which is modest for a cruising catamaran of this beam and shows in how readily the boat accelerates. Ninety-five square metres upwind is enough to keep her moving in light air, and that is not true of every rival in the class. The trade-off is plain: the standard 2 × 20 hp is marginal once you have to push into a short sea under power, and the 30 hp option is close to essential. Stowage is that of a forty-footer, not a forty-five. On the used market the Isla 40 turns over quickly, because charter demand at this size still outruns supply.