The Aquila Enquirer with Capt. Eagle

One of the biggest advantages of owning an Aquila is access to our dealer network which includes MarineMax and our continuously growing representation of international Aquila Dealers in Asia, the Americas, Europe, and the Middle East. It is one of the largest worldwide support networks.

Our dealers offer expert aftercare for the boats in a uniform and geographically diverse manner. No matter where you go with your Aquila, you can find support in your neck of the sea to call when maintenance needs or technical questions arise with your power catamaran.

This network offers Aquila owners immense peace of mind. You’ll never find yourself alone. In addition to our extensive network, they are also backed by a team of experts at Aquila devoted to offering the best to our customers. So not only will you be cruising on a boat that has been expertly designed, thoroughly tested, and CE certified by a third party—you’ll also have an army of support backing you up.

Can you think of a better way to boat? I for one, cannot.

One of the reasons Aquila has such a loyal clientele is because it is constantly innovating, and giving its customers new things to chew on that they didn’t even know they had a taste for. To that end, the builder has some new models in the works that it’s very excited to launch soon.

One is an inboard-powered 42 Yacht that feels almost revolutionary in this outboard-crazed world we are currently living in. That boat is projected to cruise at 23 mph and top out at 26 mph. It will also be tested with the HydroGlide foils, to see what increases in range, efficiency and ride comfort can be had.

Another new model is the 47 Molokai—an impressive offshore fishing boat with outboard engines that will compete with the other monster center consoles that have become so popular as of late. The 47 is big enough to stay aboard for a few nights with a luxuriously appointed cabin and head, but fast enough to tick just north of the magical 60 mph number, or higher? That is, in a word, blazing. But then again, I’ve never been one for half measures, and I’ve always found that the best way to move into the future is with conviction.

Before you marry someone, you’d want to meet their parents. Same thing with a boat. Before you buy one, you want to learn about its design and engineering—because that’s where it came from. And when it comes to Aquila, rest assured your betrothed comes from good stock.

The design phase starts with initial line drawings so that we make sure all of my family members fit within our beautiful sleek lines, and then we get to work on finalizing the interior and deck layouts. Next Aquila runs CFD (computer fluid dynamics) tests on the hull shape to best understand how water will move across the hull’s surface at various speeds and under various conditions (AKA hydrodynamics). Once the hull shape is dialed in, the builder does the tooling on the hull and deck molds, and the beginning stages of a boat are born.

Next, Aquila works hand in hand with major suppliers on the electrical and mechanical systems. Following that is a focus on the power phases for the engines which have previously been identified in the CFD results. Then comes the ever-important details. That means LED lighting, adjustable seating, stitching on the upholstery, and an endless array of fit and finish-minded tasks that put the cherry on top. Next, there is a research and development phase where the model undergoes lots of sea trials and system tests.

And after all of this painstaking attention to detail and endless amount of boatbuilding knowledge poured into a new product, Hull No. 1 is finally delivered to MarineMax, where someone who cares just as much about the boat as Aquila does, can buy it for themselves. My best advice? Put a ring on it.

You might as well ask how a hot knife cuts through butter. At Aquila, the focus is always on performance, and in particular how the boats perform regardless of conditions. To that effect, a massive amount of time and energy is devoted to the boats’ hulls.

Each Aquila has a high bridge deck for extra clearance between the two hull tunnels, mitigating any slapping effect that one might find on other cats. That makes for a smoother, quieter ride. The hulls also have extra volume which allows Aquilas to float higher, and carry heavier loads. That means not only will all your water toys fit in an Aquila, but you will get to use them to make memories.

And for our Yacht class boats, we have the incredible bulbous bow to provide additional waterline length, efficiency, and comfort while underway acting as a float that tries to push the bow of the boat up when dipping into waves. Therefore, allow your guests to nap comfortably while you or your captain deliver on dreams come true.

Aquila also puts a laser focus on propulsion packages across its lines offering multiple engine packages to match your need for speed. The builder is perhaps best known for its comfortable cruisers, but in fact, its offshore models can top 50 mph, and in at least one case hit a sizzling top end of 65 mph. That’s real-deal speed. But even when you’re flying across the water, you can rest assured that you’re safe and one of the most structurally sound power catamarans in the world. All Aquila boats are CE Certified, meaning that they have passed stringent third-party requirements for seaworthiness

Anybody who has ever spent any amount of time at sea knows that good stowage is key. And since Aquila Power Catamarans were built for long journeys with family and friends, there’s a place to put your stuff in every nook and cranny.

From the beginning of the design process, every single Aquila is built with storage space at the very top of the list. This prioritization pays off. Aquila Power Catamarans have more stowage than all of their competitors. Large compartments under the salon sole and the berths in the staterooms, interior cabinets for dried goods and drinking water, and exterior compartments for water toys, fishing tackle, and anything else you could possibly think of—an Aquila has it all. All that stowage means that not only can you go from port to port in a fresh outfit each night, but you can also cook gourmet meals with fresh ingredients while on the hook, and generally customize the type of cruising you want to do. You’ll be prepared for anything, because your Aquila will be packing everything.

Scroll through the images below for a peak at all sorts of storage options offered on an Aquila.

At the present moment, you’ll see those flying foils on the 36 Sport. But through continuous development, soon the flying foils will be available on some other Aquila models which Captain Eagle has sworn to secrecy for now.

The ability to incorporate foils into the integrity and design of the hull is all about modifying the hull mold to absorb the structural pressures to create lift and make you fly. You need a recess in the hull plus reinforcements to attach the foils to. Much like a sail boat keel, the foils go into the recess and are bolted into the hull before being tested for structural soundness. With the attachment you’ll see immediate gains in speed, efficiency and comfort. Efficiency will increase too, to the tune of 15-percent better performance for Yacht class models and 30-percent for Sport class models. And the overall ride will be remarkably improved as well inciting a sense of flying but firmly rooted to the water below you

Adding after-market Hydro Glide Foil System™ to your 36 Sport may be possible, depends on your hull number. If your dream is to fly efficiently and have hydrofoils as an aftermarket add-on, reach out to your local Aquila dealership and they can handle it from there. Once the servicing dealership receives all parts needed, it should take about five days in the boat yard until your boat is ready to go, and from there on out, it’ll be all smooth sailing.

Check out this cool video which might explain all better than I did.

Most any boat can be stored on a boat lift if you have the waterfront real estate available and neighbors that don’t mind seeing you have all the fun! But in Aquila’s case, it’s mainly the smaller ones that I see hoisted out of the water. That means any model in the Aquila Offshore and Sport class lines are suitable for boat lifts. Aquila’s Yacht & Luxury class are typically stationed as a floating memory machine in the water. And I have it on very good intel that a 54 Yacht may soon call a lift its home. So, if your dock and boat lift dreams happen to match your appetite for one of the world’s best power catamarans (Psst! That would be an Aquila), then there is a dock and lift with your name on it.

When marriage makes it to ten years, the couple celebrates the “tin anniversary,” as tin celebrates the strength and resilience of the relationship. The same could be said of Aquila in 2022, as it celebrates ten years of making increasingly popular powercats that can persevere through almost any sea (or market). When Aquila was born in 2012, its principles wanted to understand what kind of boat could best serve the present and future demands for pleasure craft. After much research and debate, they decided that cruise-friendly, incredibly stable powercats with loads of interior volume and highly capable and efficient hulls were the way to go. The rest, as they say, is history.

Today Aquila is recognized around the world as one of the top yacht builders you’ll find in any harbor. And thanks to forward-thinking design and construction techniques coupled with longtime partner MarineMax, and their unparalleled ability to market and service the boats, the next ten years for Aquila are looking so bright, ya gotta wear shades.” Capt. Eagle will toast to that.

Might I humbly suggest rephrasing your question. Where can’t I buy my Aquila Power Catamaran? Aquila has put together one of the most enviable dealer networks in the world, in large part due to its partnership with MarineMax. MarineMax—along with its Great Lakes subsidiary Skipper Bud’s—handles all U.S. sales for the brand, and it’s a heck of a combination. MarineMax has so many locations in America sometimes it feels like you could trip over one of their dealerships. And on the chance you have a maintenance issue with your boat, MarineMax’ s top-notch after-sales services will also be at your disposal.

Overseas, Aquila has an abundance of dealers with which they are affiliated. These change periodically though so your best bet is to check our website and contact them. A dealer or sales rep will get back to you sooner than you can formulate your next question for me.

When it comes to components our main goal is quality, of course, and that includes quality of service—aftercare—because we realize that despite best efforts, things on boats break. And if you’re in some far-flung Caribbean port with a busted air-conditioner that nobody knows how to fix, take it from Captain Eagle, you better stock up on rum.

To that end, Aquila strives to choose its components from well-known companies that offer products with strong warranties that can be serviced globally. For example, Aquila uses Webasto for A/C and brands like Volvo Penta and Cummins for inboards, as well as Mercury exclusively for outboards. These are top-of-the-line companies that provide not just great products, but more importantly from a componentry perspective, products that are exquisitely supported.

Aquila buys about 65-percent of its componentry from US brands, and ship them to our state of the art and environmentally friendly factory for installation. That way when the boats come back to America or are shipped to other destinations around the world, it’s easy to follow up on warranties. It’s how Aquila ensures that wherever you are in the world, you never have to stop cruising.

It’s no secret that our boats have a long way to go to get to America. But their journey is one that’s undertaken with the same painstaking eye for detail as we use to build our Aquilas.

Here’s how it works: Any boat that is 36 feet in length or smaller is prepped and shrink-wrapped at our factory in Hangzhou City, China before being trucked about three hours to Shanghai. The boats over 36 feet come off the production line and launch into a river in Hangzhou, where multiple sea trials are conducted to get everything dialed in just so. The 44 Yacht will be loaded on a barge before heading to Shanghai, while the larger boats will make the journey on their own bottoms as they’re too high to pass underneath certain bridges along the way if they’re put on a barge.

Once in Shanghai, all the boats are loaded via a crane as deck cargo onto ships. From there, they make the long journey to our very own Tampa, Florida, or other ports located around the world. There they get divvied up among Aquila’s dealers, and soon move into the hands of our lovely customers.

As a long-time fan of heights, Capt. Eagle is all for raising the decks as high as possible. But Aquila has another reason as well. Long story short: it makes for a smoother ride. Some catamaran designs are notorious for slamming around in rougher seas because as a boat falls into the trough of a wave, water splashes up and smacks the underside of the bridge deck. The impact is often enough to tip over your martini—no bueno.

With a higher bridge deck, this Aquila design significantly reduces that slamming effect and also gets rid of  “cat’s breath,” i.e., the spray created by high pressure underneath the hull that often comes up over a catamaran’s bow drenching the windshield, and sometimes even the bridge deck. On Aquilas, that spray passes between the hulls and comes out at the transom, leaving everybody onboard nice and dry. The higher bridge deck effectively creates a cushion of air on which the boat rests, creating a ride that is nothing short of… feathery.

You mean, can you feather your own nest, so to speak? Of course, you can. At Aquila, we realize that sophisticated boaters will want some choices when putting together the boat of their dreams, and we are all for that. Customizing a boat is a big achievement. You have hard-earned wisdom about your likes and dislikes on a boat, and Aquila is there to indulge (nearly) all your preferences.

Engine size is an obvious choice on many of our models, but so is the layout—including a big one, how many staterooms you want on your boat.

Elegant accouterments, like interior color choices, can also be the owner’s choice, as can features that vastly extend a boat’s cruising range, like a reserve fuel tank and a watermaker, as examples. But a cool thing to remember about Aquila is that, unlike some competitors who we are too chivalrous to name, Aquilas start out with a feature list that already feels like a customized vessel. For example, some of the models in our current lineup already come with freshwater toilets, mooring systems, CZone® digital switching technology, and a lot more. For lots of builders, features like that are expensive add-ons. For Aquila, it’s just the takeoff point.

Because at Aquila, the customer is always right. Our customers have been clamoring for a smaller model and so we gave them the 28 Molokai. This scratches a few itches on both sides of the coin. For one, it provides an economic, sporty, and safe entry-level boat for younger people that may be looking to get into the game. The boat is easily fishable, and because of its inherent stability, its good for in-water sports too, in case you’d rather catch your dinner with a spear than a hook.

Once a boater—and perhaps a young family—outgrows the 28, boats like the 32 and 36 Sport models are waiting for him. Fast, fun, and manageably sized, an Aquila lover can go a long way with these boats.

We are constantly looking at all of our lines, looking for ways to grow them, because in the end that variety is what will keep our clients the most happy. There are nearly endless ways to enjoy boating, and we plan on offering as many of them as possible.

Oh and one more thing that’s perhaps most exciting of all, we have some bigger models coming that will outshine some of the exciting and talked-about boats that have hit the market in recent years. I’ll sit on specifics for now though—I don’t want to let the cat out of the bag.

Walk any boat show these days, and you’ll see untold outboard cowlings lined up at the docks like rows of Star Wars stormtroopers. That’s because outboard engines are very much on the rise for many good reasons. Outboard engines are fast, relatively easy to maintain compared to inboards, and are efficient —that’s why an Aquila partnership with Mercury was a no-brainer. Mercury is today’s leader in outboard innovation, so pairing them with Aquila’s forward-thinking design was the perfect fit.

On Aquila’s smaller and sportier 32 & 36 Sport options, outboards just make sense. If you’re a newer boater, you’ll probably want to get your feet wet, so to speak, tooling around on an outboard motor before you graduate to larger inboard boats and have to climb into an engine room to do repairs. Plus, on smaller builds, you gain interior space by having outboards—or perhaps more accurately, you don’t lose interior space to a big, old engine room. Lastly, with Mercury engines offering speeds that crest the hallowed 40-mph mark, you’re guaranteed to have some fun out there. And isn’t that the point?

Bulbous bows are important because they work. There’s a good reason you see them on cargo ships that need to be able to safely cruise through heavy seas while operating on razor-thin margins. So to put them on a pleasure craft just makes sense.

Here’s what they actually do: Bulbs at the forward portion of the hull mitigate the hobby horsing some boats experience as they rock over undulating sea states. The bows are cored with foam, and react like a basketball when you push one underwater. They don’t sink very far below the surface—like say after crashing down off the crest of a wave—and they push to float back to the top, creating lift. The effect is one of a smoother, less mal-de-mer inducing ride.

Bulbous bow designs also help with fuel efficiency. The longer bows help deflect water with less resistance, and also elongate the waterline, which, due to the laws of hydrodynamics, translate to better fuel-burn numbers both at displacement and semi-displacement speeds.

You’d choose Aquila’s Hydro Glide Foil design for the same reason you’d choose someone to be a good friend—in short, they both lift you up. Take the Aquila 36 Sport for example. With foils added to that model’s bottom, the boat instantly rises higher out of the water than it would sans foil. This creates an effect like a magic carpet. All boats float (y’ know, hopefully), but the Aquila 36 Sport really floats.

The reduced drag created by the foil translates to a 35-40-percent improvement in fuel efficiency at cruise speeds, which in turn makes your buck at the fuel pump go a lot farther. The foils also help the boats go faster at their top-end when paired with the 300hp Mercury V8 engines—this particular model can hit 36 knots with the hammer down. The foils, currently available on the 36 Sport and 42 Yacht, help reduce wear & tear on the engine too—because you are able to reduce the engine load while cruising. This ultimately results in your engines being happier and spending more time with you on the water.

The foils help with seakeeping too and may make the jump from a monohull to a cat a bit less daunting. Whereas some catamaran hull designs can heel outward during sharper turns, Aquilas with the Hydro Glide Foil System™ installed, the hulls will heel into a turn, much like a traditional monohull. So the seakeeping may make some newer cat owners feel a lot more at ease—much like a good friend would.

Well that’s an easy one, my friend. Space may be the final frontier, but Aquila already has it mastered.

Any boat can be a liveaboard if you’re bold enough, but for Capt. Eagle’s tastes, a good catamaran is hard to beat. And the reason is the beaminess offered by a twin hull. A cat will almost always be significantly wider than a monohull of a similar length. This translates to mega-wide salons, flybridges, and bowdecks, AKA the places you’re going to actually hang out will be a lot bigger. And with space at less of a premium, stowage capacity is bigger too—with lots of room for cabinets and hanging lockers. That translates to more provisions and more wardrobe choices. Variety is, after all, the spice of life, and that goes double when life happens aboard a boat.

The other facet of liveability that makes Aquila an excellent choice is operability. Take it from me, when making like Jimmy Buffett in ports unknown, you’re going to want easy access to your sea strainers and the like. They might have cheeseburgers in paradise, but there’s no guarantee on good boat-service options. Engine rooms built for comfort are a boon for liveaboard mariners since captains take up space. And as we’ve gone over, space is, was, and always will be your very best friend when spending extended periods of time at sea.

If you’d like more specific info than Capt. Eagle provided here, head over to Aquilaboats.com for specs, power and layout options, and other goodies.

An excellent question! And if I may be so bold, allow me to parry it with a question of my own. What is the difference between a boat and a yacht, really? Size, sure—but length overall matters most to the outside observer, sipping his beer on the docks and watching the world go by. For an owner, interior volume strikes much more closely to the essence of luxurious onboard living.

Due to their wider beam, catamarans offer loads of space in the living areas. And that space is felt in spades on the accommodations level as well, where privacy is king. On an Aquila Power Catamaran, cabins in either hull afford a certain amount of distance between guests after a day of living their best lives on the massive upper decks. It’s a luxury to part ways at night, and I’ve found absence always makes the heart grow fonder.

What’s more, a multi-hull offers an unparalleled level of stability. There’s a reason ancient Polynesians strapped outriggers to the canoes they used to traverse the mighty Pacific, and it wasn’t aesthetics. Catamarans are as averse to rocking and rolling as 1950s suburban mothers were to Elvis Presley’s music. And even in calm seas, the cat’s stability outperforms. Any diver who has ever plopped overboard with an air tank strapped to their back off a center console knows you want as steady a platform as possible for watersports.

Lastly, catamarans offer more access than a Fort Lauderdale boat show press pass. Weight dispersed over multiple hulls means that boats draw less, letting you into anchorages that would otherwise simply be unavailable. Meanwhile, a cat’s relatively compact LOA opens up dockage options—remember, a 60-foot cat is roughly equal volume-wise to a 90-foot monohull—and helps manage by-the-foot dockage fees.