You want to cross an ocean, and you want the people aboard to still like each other when you arrive. On most fifty-foot catamarans that means somebody sleeps in a cabin they have to walk through another cabin to reach. The Aquila 50 Sail answers that with four, five or six cabins depending on how you specify it, each one with its own entrance.
This is Aquila's first sailing catamaran to reach the water, and it arrives carrying the deck and systems thinking the yard has spent years developing on power catamarans. A 45 Sail is scheduled for September 2026 and a 65 Sail for 2028, so the 50 is the start of a range rather than a one-off.
Who It's For
The 50 Sail is for the owner who intends to go long. Not weekends within sight of the inlet, but passages, seasons aboard, and anchorages that take a few days to reach. The certification says the same thing the layout does: CE Category A, the ocean rating, for twelve people.
It is equally a charter platform, and the cabin options make that explicit. Six cabins with six heads is a charter specification. Four is an owner's boat with room for guests who are not sharing a bathroom. The hull, the rig and the systems are the same in either case, which means the decision is about how you will use the boat rather than which boat you are buying.
If you are coming from a monohull, the trade is the familiar one. You get volume, a level platform at anchor and a shallow draft, and you give up the way a keelboat feels going to windward. This is a cruising catamaran with a moderate rig, not a performance machine, and Aquila has not marketed it as one.
Design & Layout: Cabins With Their Own Doors
The private-entrance layout is the headline, and it is the kind of decision that only looks small until you have lived aboard with a full boat. Four, five or six cabins, each with a matching head and shower, and an optional forepeak cabin on top of that. The boat sleeps up to fourteen and is certified for a maximum of thirty aboard. There is one utility room — useful, but it is a utility room, not crew quarters, and it should not be read as accommodation.
Forward, there are no trampolines. Aquila has put a solid foredeck cockpit up there instead, and bridge-to-bow access runs from the flybridge to it down both sides. That is a sail-handling decision as much as a lounging one: getting forward quickly without going through the salon is what you want when something needs doing at the bow and the boat is moving.
Aft, a fixed fiberglass platform spans the hulls for the dinghy, which keeps the tender out of the davit-and-strap routine that eats time at every anchorage.
Construction is resin-infused vinylester through the hull and deck, with no plywood in the structure or below the waterline, PVC cores varied by load, and PET cores in the large interior furniture panels. The 25'9" beam is where the interior volume comes from, and the height above the waterline with the hardtop, mast excluded, is 18'3".
Under Sail and Under Power
The rig is an anodized aluminum two-spreader sectional mast standing 82'6" above the waterline. Standard sail area is a 968.8 sq ft pin-top mainsail and a 710.4 sq ft furling genoa, for 1,679.2 sq ft upwind. A square-top mainsail of 1,037.6 sq ft is optional and takes the upwind total to 1,748 sq ft, and a Code 0 or gennaker of 1,106.5 sq ft covers the light-air reaching that a cruising cat of this weight will want.
Weight is the honest context for all of that. Light displacement is 42,900 lbs and loaded displacement is 50,600 lbs — worth separating carefully, because the loaded figure circulates in some places labeled as the light one, and a 7,700 lb difference changes what you should expect of the rig.
Auxiliary power is twin 50 HP saildrives as standard, with 60 HP and 75 HP saildrives on the options list. Aquila publishes the saildrive output but not the engine brand. Fuel is 222 gallons and water 232 gallons, with 90 gallons of holding, and generator options run to a 15kW/14kW and a 21kW/18kW set.
Aquila publishes no top speed and no cruise speed for the 50 Sail, under sail or under power. That is normal for a cruising catamaran and it is the correct answer, because polars on this kind of boat depend on load, sail wardrobe and how much of your life you have brought with you. Sail the boat yourself, loaded the way you intend to cruise it, before you form a view.
Ownership: The Honest Conversation
Specify the cabin count last, not first. It is the one decision on this boat that cannot be changed later and the one that most affects how the boat feels day to day. Six cabins is a lot of doors in a fifty-foot hull; four is genuinely spacious. Spend time in both before you commit, ideally aboard rather than on a plan.
Choose the auxiliaries against your cruising ground, not your budget. Twin 50s are the standard package and they are sized for a cruising cat, but if your plan involves tide-gated passages, strong-current inlets or a lot of motoring in calms, the 60 and 75 HP saildrives exist for a reason. Ask about propeller specification at the same time, because it matters more on a saildrive than most buyers expect.
The 25'9" beam is the standing cost of catamaran volume. It buys the interior and the level platform at anchor, and it will decide which marinas can take you and what they charge. Check that before the boat is built, not after.
Watch the loading. A boat certified for thirty people and sleeping fourteen invites you to fill it, and the difference between light and loaded here is nearly four tons. Everything about how the boat sails, and the 4'8" draft that will vary with load, moves with it.
Where to Start
The Aquila 50 Sail is a cruising catamaran built for people who intend to go somewhere and stay a while, with a cabin layout that keeps a full boat civil and an ocean certification behind it. If the plan is long passages, extended seasons aboard or a charter program that has to work back to back, this is a serious platform to start from.
Explore full specifications at YachtSpecsDirect.com
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