It's 6am on a Thursday. You're offshore, halfway between Fort Lauderdale and Bimini, twin CAT C12.9s humming below. The salon is quiet. Your guests are still asleep in their en-suite staterooms. You've got most of 1,500 gallons still in the tanks and zero concern about the weather window closing. This is the PC65 promise: a 66-foot power catamaran that treats blue water like a highway, not a gamble.
Most buyers shopping this size range are choosing between a fast monohull that beats them up or a trawler that takes three days to get anywhere. The PC65 splits that difference with a 24-foot-6-inch beam, twin hulls, and enough fuel capacity to make the Bahamas feel like a short hop. One thing to know going in: Horizon no longer builds it. The PC68 took its place in the lineup, which makes the PC65 a brokerage proposition — and, for the right buyer, a bargain.
Who It's For
This boat is for the owner who wants to run their own vessel without a permanent crew but still host six to eight guests comfortably. It's for the entrepreneur who values time more than bragging rights. You're not buying this to impress the yacht club. You're buying it because you want to leave Friday afternoon and wake up in a different country Saturday morning.
The PC65 works for couples who want an on-deck master with a skylounge above, or families who prefer four staterooms below with an open flybridge. Horizon builds these semi-custom, so the layout adapts to how you actually use the boat, not how a designer thinks you should.
If you need a captain and two crew to feel comfortable, this isn't your boat. If you want to handle the helm yourself and maybe bring a mate for longer trips, this is exactly your boat.
Design & Layout: Function Over Fashion
The PC65 layout is driven by one principle: twin hulls create usable volume that monohulls can't match. The salon spans the full 24-foot beam with L-shaped seating, a galley with bar access, and sight lines that run bow to stern. You're not walking through narrow companionways. You're moving through a space that feels more like a beach house than a boat.
The standard configuration puts four staterooms below, all en-suite, with the master taking the full beam amidships. Some owners spec an on-deck master forward of the salon, which adds a fifth head and opens up the option for a crew cabin aft. The "Cellfish" builds with enclosed skylounges show how far you can push the customization without losing the core utility of the platform.
The flybridge on open-bridge models gives you 360-degree visibility and enough seating for eight. The skylounge version trades some of that open-air access for climate control and protection, which matters if you're running in the Carolinas or the Pacific Northwest.
Below deck, the engine rooms are separated by the hulls, which means redundancy and access. You can service one engine without tearing apart the other side. The 5-foot-3-inch draft lets you tuck into anchorages that push most 65-footers into deeper water.
Performance: Speed as Strategy
The PC65's published specification is twin CAT C12.9 diesels at 850 horsepower each. Individual hulls were built with higher-output packages and different propeller and drive specifications, which is one more reason to read the build sheet on any particular boat rather than the model brochure.
Horizon publishes 1,500 gallons of fuel and 300 of water, and — as with every boat in this range — no speed, no range and no fuel-consumption figure at all. That is worth saying plainly, because the PC65 has been sea-trialled by magazines and those numbers circulate as though they were factory specifications. They aren't. If range at a particular pace is central to your plan, get it measured on the boat you are buying.
What the yard does publish tells you enough about the character. Fifty tons at half load on a 24-foot-6-inch beam is a planted, unfussy platform: the twin hulls cut chop without the pounding of a deep-V monohull, and the boat stays flat when the wind picks up. Just over five feet of draft keeps the shallow-water advantage intact at 66 feet.
This isn't a boat that wins races. It's a boat that gets you there more comfortably than almost anything else its length.
Ownership Conversation: What It Actually Costs
The PC65 sits in the space where owner-operators start thinking about crew. You don't need a captain, but longer trips get easier with one. Budget around $8,000 to $12,000 per month for a rotating captain if you want that flexibility. Fuel at 20 knots runs $400 to $500 per hour depending on diesel prices. Insurance, dockage, and maintenance will push annual operating costs to $150,000 to $200,000 if you're using the boat 60 to 80 days per year.
The CAT C12.9 engines are bulletproof if you maintain them. Expect service intervals every 500 hours and major overhauls around 8,000 hours. Parts are available everywhere, which matters when you're 1,000 miles from Fort Lauderdale.
Resale on Horizon power cats holds better than most production builds in this range because the yard delivers on time and the boats don't fall apart after five years. The semi-custom nature means your build might take 18 to 24 months, but you're getting a boat spec'd to your actual needs, not a dealer's inventory unit.
The honest cost conversation is this: if $200,000 per year in operating expenses changes your lifestyle, you're stretching. If it's the cost of having your own floating base camp for six months of the year, the PC65 makes sense.
Where to Start
The PC65 works because it doesn't pretend to be something it's not. It's not the fastest cat on the water. It's not the most luxurious interior in the 65-foot range. It's the most capable blue-water cruiser you can run yourself without a full-time crew, and that's worth more than another knot of speed or another inch of marble in the galley.
Explore full specifications at YachtSpecsDirect.com
Browse available Horizon power catamarans at mintedyachts.com/horizon-power-catamarans