SOLAIRE

## Solaire — 55ft Power Catamaran | Caribbean Her name means "of the sun," and the brief was written into the hull from the start. Solaire is a 55-foot power catamaran built around a simple premise: in the Caribbean, the best rooms have no walls. Wide, notably stable decks give her the kind of platform monohulls of similar length can't match, and the sun pads are positioned to follow the light through the day rather than crowd a single spot. Her cruising ground is the Virgin Islands and the Leewards — the BVI's short, sheltered hops between anchorages, the US Virgin Islands, and the run down through the Leeward chain. Accommodation Three cabins host six guests, each with a queen-size bed. A clean, egalitarian layout: no one draws the short straw. At anchor This is where a catamaran earns its keep. The bathing platforms put guests into the water in a single step, and the reefs of the BVI reward anyone who bothers to put a mask on. The tender and water toys cover snorkelling, paddleboarding and the rest, but the feature that genuinely changes the mood on board is the slide — the sort of thing that turns a swim stop into a two-hour affair, whatever the age of the guests. Between swims Indoor and outdoor living spaces both work for dining and for doing nothing at all — long lunches in the shade of the flybridge, evenings back inside when the trade wind picks up. Solaire is crewed, and the service reflects it: provisioning to preference, a chef's table that reads the day rather than a fixed menu, and a captain who knows which bay will be empty on a Tuesday.