Picture this: You're anchored off Norman's Cay. The sun deck is set for breakfast. The beach club is open to the water. Your guests are still asleep in their full-beam suites. And you got here drawing eight feet—through water the big monohulls have to sail around. Just quiet morning and 116 feet of catamaran beneath you.
This is the FPY120. Not a sailing cat with motors bolted on. A purpose-built power catamaran designed from the keel up to deliver superyacht volume without the draft, the fuel burn, or the crew requirements of a monohull.
Fountaine Pajot built their reputation on production sailing catamarans. The FPY120 is their statement that they understand how to scale that engineering into the superyacht segment. And they did it without forgetting what made their smaller boats work.
Who It's For
The FPY120 is for the owner who has done the monohull thing and wants something different. You've chartered the 100-foot Azimut. You've been on the Ferretti. You know what 12 knots of fuel burn feels like at cruise. You're ready for a platform that gives you more space, more stability, and more range without needing a captain and three engineers on permanent payroll.
This is also the boat for the owner who wants to be involved. The FPY120 can be owner-operated with a small crew or run fully crewed depending on your program. The systems are accessible. The helm is manageable. The twin-engine setup is intuitive if you've run any twin-screw boat over 60 feet.
It's not for the owner who wants to pull into Monaco and out-chrome the competition. The FPY120 is a catamaran. It looks like a catamaran. If your priority is fitting into the traditional superyacht aesthetic, this isn't your boat.
Design & Layout: Volume as Strategy
The FPY120 gives you 6,598 square feet of living space across four levels. For context, that's more usable volume than most 130-foot monohulls. The difference is how it's distributed.
The main deck is where the catamaran layout pays off. The salon spans 1,098 square feet with 360-degree sightlines. No narrow side decks. No compromised beam. The aft cockpit is 1,539 square feet—larger than most yacht club patios—and it connects directly to a 775-square-foot beach club at water level.
The owner's suite occupies the full beam of the forward section. That's 829 square feet of private space with direct ocean access on both sides. Not a cabin. A floating apartment.
Guest accommodations are configurable from four to six cabins depending on layout. Each has en-suite heads. Each has real windows, not portholes. The crew quarters are separate and properly sized for long-term liveaboard use.
What makes this layout work is the vertical integration. The flybridge, main deck, lower deck, and beach club are connected by sight lines and flow. You're not climbing through hatches or squeezing down companionways. It feels like a residence, not a boat.
Performance: Freedom Defined by Range
The FPY120 is not a fast boat by monohull standards. Top speed is 24 knots with the optional 2,000-horsepower package. Cruise is 18 knots. If you need 30 knots, buy a Pershing.
What the FPY120 offers is range. Fountaine Pajot rates autonomy at up to 3,000 nautical miles on its 3,698 gallons of fuel—at economical cruising speeds, not at the 18-knot cruise. Throttle back for the passage and ocean crossings become a planning exercise, not a fantasy.
The twin-hull design also delivers a different ride. Catamarans don't heel. They don't roll the same way monohulls do. In a beam sea, the FPY120 stays flat. Your guests stay comfortable. Your galley stays functional.
The eight-foot draft means access to anchorages that are off-limits to most boats in this size range. The Exumas. The Grenadines. The shallow cuts in the Bahamas where the 120-foot monohulls can't go.
Speed is one kind of freedom. Range and access are another.
Ownership Conversation: Crew vs. Systems
Here's the reality: The FPY120 is expensive to own. Fuel, insurance, maintenance, crew, dockage—it all adds up fast, and at this size none of it is small.
But compared to a monohull superyacht in the same size class, the FPY120 offers flexibility. You can run it with a crew of two or three for casual use. You can scale up to a full crew of eight for charter or extended cruising. The systems are designed to be manageable, not intimidating.
The tankage does the same work at anchor: 3,698 gallons of fuel and 1,057 gallons of water buy you days on the hook without a marina in the plan. Fountaine Pajot designed the energy and water systems around exactly that kind of use—longer stays, less generator time, less dependence on shore.
Maintenance is where the catamaran design helps. Twin engines mean redundancy. Separate hulls mean easier access to systems. Fountaine Pajot has a global service network built around their sailing cat fleet. Parts availability is better than you'd expect for a boat in this segment.
Resale is the unknown. The FPY120 is new to the market. There's no 10-year depreciation curve to reference. What we do know is that well-maintained catamarans hold value better than monohulls in the 60-to-80-foot range. Whether that translates to the superyacht segment remains to be seen.
Where to Start
The FPY120 is not a boat you buy off the lot. Every build is a custom project. Layout, systems, finishes—it's all configurable. That means lead times. That means deposits. That means having someone in your corner who understands the build process and can guide you through the decisions that matter.
If you're serious about the FPY120, start with the numbers. Get a realistic operating budget. Understand what crew costs look like in your home port. Figure out if you're running this as an owner-operator or handing it off to a captain.
Then get on a Fountaine Pajot catamaran—any model—and spend a weekend aboard. The FPY120 is a scaled-up version of the same design philosophy. If the layout and ride don't work for you at 60 feet, they won't work at 116 feet.
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