New 6.2m joins the popular 6m Series

Jul 22nd, 2010

Fantastic photos prove the excellent seahandling capabilities of Cheetah Marine's newest and smallest creation. The 6.2m prototype was launched in mid July and achieved top speeds of 27 knots with twin Evinrude E-Tec outboards.

The Cheetah Marine 6.2m catamaran first arrived on the work boat market in 1990 and immediately created considerable interest. Since then the Cheetah 6m series has proved itself time and time again and has become the best selling small catamaran workboat in Europe with nearly 200 delivered.

The 6.2m grew to 6.9m and then 7.6m when marine aluminium engine pods were made available. Cheetah designer and partner Sean Strevens said 

“As time has gone on, with fuel prices going up and up, it seemed appropriate to redesign the 6.2m in the light of all the experience we have gained over the past 20 years. We have learnt that a change of a few millimetres one way or the other can make a huge difference to the performance of the boat. We wanted to build a 6.2m LOA catamaran which would go really well with very low powered engines. The new 6.2m is ideal for very economical local operations, commercial fishing, patrol and leisure use. It retains all the advantages of the previous models, stability, space and shallow draft”

By restricting the 6.2m to a windscreen or a standard wheelhouse, the weight is kept to a minimum and so economy is outstanding. Both the 6.9m LOA and the 6.9m with aluminium pods, LOA7.6m, are still available for those needing more weight carrying capacity and more powerful engines.

Seatrials of the prototype went extremely well as the accompanying pictures prove. The latest new 10.2m Cheetah also underwent very successful trials recently and will be delivered shortly. The yard continues to be extremely busy with Cheetahs off to both Holland and Belgium as well as the U.K.