Lagoon 46

Replacing the best-selling catamaran Lagoon ever built

The Lagoon 46 replaced the Lagoon 450, the boat that turned Lagoon into a charter-fleet fixture with nearly 800 hulls sold since 2010, so the 46 that launched in 2019 carried real expectations rather than a clean slate. Lagoon kept the recipe that worked, a VPLP hull, saildrives, a wide flybridge helm, and addressed the specific complaints owners and charter operators had about the 450. The most visible change is structural: the mast moved further aft on the coachroof, which turns the jib self-tacking and opens a bigger foretriangle for downwind sails, while a shortened boom and higher-aspect mainsail cut the pitching that came with the 450's rig.

The 46 debuted alongside the larger Lagoon 50 and was designed to carry the 50's cues, the flybridge Bimini hardtop, the outdoor galley, the recessed electric mainsheet winch, down into a hull nearly five metres shorter. Reviewers at the time noticed the family resemblance directly: Cruising World called the hull windows even larger than the 450's, and French sailing magazines including Voiles et Voiliers and Multicoques Magazine credited the boat with genuinely more interior volume than its length suggested. It won the Asia Boating Award for Best Multihull Sailing Yacht in 2019, its launch year, and it has stayed in the catalogue since, latterly as the update called the 46 Iconic.

Sailing performance a step ahead of the boat it replaced

Catamaran reviewers are rarely generous about pointing ability, and the Lagoon 46 got more credit than most of its class. Phil Ross's review for TMG Yachts recorded the boat holding four knots of boat speed at 45 degrees off the apparent wind in a light seven-knot breeze, closer to the wind than cruising catamarans usually manage, and Cruising World and SAIL Magazine both logged closehauled speeds around nine knots on their own test sails. Under a Code 0 in a proper breeze, SAIL's testers saw eleven to twelve knots, and Croatia charter operator Yachtaris quotes a realistic seven to nine knots in the moderate winds its guests actually sail in.

None of that makes the 46 a performance cat. Like every Lagoon with fixed keels rather than daggerboards, it will not point as high as a monohull or a true performance multihull, and reviewers converge on 55 to 60 degrees off true wind as the practical optimum for making ground upwind, with real leeway below that angle. The engines earn their keep in exactly that gap: twin Yanmar diesels, 45 hp standard and 57 hp as the common upgrade, push the boat to 8.5 knots wide open and a genuine 7-knot cruise at a modest 2,200 rpm, which is what most charter guests and cruising owners actually run day to day.

Lagoon replaced the best-selling catamaran it had ever built with one that points closer to the wind, then let a decade of charter fleets prove the rest.

Engines, tankage and the systems a used-boat buyer should check

Every 46 left the yard with twin Yanmar 4JH-series diesel saildrives, rated at 45 hp in the standard fit and 57 hp on the option most owners and charter operators actually chose, a distinction worth confirming on any used hull since it changes both the wide-open-throttle speed and the resale conversation. Fuel capacity is 1,040 litres (275 US gallons) and fresh water is 600 litres (159 US gallons) split across two tanks, figures that Wikipedia, Multihulls World and Lagoon's own specification sheet all agree on. Lagoon has never published an official range figure for the 46 at a given rpm, which is worth knowing before assuming transatlantic autonomy from the tankage alone.

The rest of the systems are options rather than standard fit, and it shows on used listings: brokerage specifications for individual hulls describe a roughly 13.5 kVA diesel generator, a 63-litre-an-hour (26 US gallon) watermaker mounted in the port engine room, and an optional bow thruster for tight marina work, none of them guaranteed on every hull built. A charter-configured 46 typically carries all three plus air conditioning and a fuller electronics package, while an owner's-version boat bought lightly specified may have none of them, so a buyer comparing two 46s on paper needs the equipment list, not just the hull number, to know what they are actually pricing.

Life in charter, and what charter does to the boat

The 46 is one of the standard hulls at The Moorings, Sunsail and Dream Yacht Charter, and it anchors Croatia's Adriatic fleets in particular: Yachtaris alone runs 38 examples out of its Croatian bases and prices it as the premium mid-range catamaran in that market, a 15 to 25 per cent premium over the smaller Lagoon 42, with weekly charter rates running roughly 4,000 to 10,000 euro depending on season. Yachtaris reports that charter guests spend most of their time on the flybridge and use the saloon mainly for cooking and sleeping, which matches how Lagoon designed the boat around that upper deck in the first place.

Charter life leaves a mark that a buyer can actually read in a used listing. A 2020-built 46 sold through Moorings Brokerage out of Saint Lucia in 2026 showed 1,499 and 1,687 hours on its two engines after roughly six seasons, a realistic guide to how hard a well-run charter hull gets used, and it asked 404,200 euro against a new price that was well over 600,000 euro when the boat was built. That gap, and the logged hours behind it, are exactly the kind of detail a private owner rarely generates on their own boat but a charter operator publishes as a matter of course.

Where owners and reviewers find fault

The recurring complaint across owner and reviewer accounts is visibility, not performance. Sailing Katamarans' review of the 46 notes poor sightlines to the stern corners from the flybridge helm, meaning a skipper backing into a stern-to berth in the Mediterranean style needs a camera or a second pair of eyes on the sugar scoops rather than a clear view down. The flybridge that makes the 46 such a good charter boat is the same structure that puts the helmsman further from the water and the stern than a monohull skipper is used to, and it is the single most repeated criticism this research found.

A second, smaller thread runs through Cruisers Forum's Lagoon owner community: an extended discussion of whether early-build 46 masts needed reinforcement or replacement, with owners comparing notes on what a revised mast looked like rather than pointing to a single documented recall. Lagoon has not published a formal statement on the subject that this research could independently verify, so it is recorded here as an open owner discussion rather than a confirmed defect, and a buyer looking at an early hull should ask the yard or a surveyor directly rather than rely on forum consensus. Weight is the other honest tradeoff: the 46 carries more displacement than a lightweight performance cat of the same length, which is part of why it needs its engines in light air and why none of its reviewers call it fast, only comfortable and capable.

Für wen: An owner or charter operator who wants a proven, heavily supported catamaran in the 45-foot class with genuine charter-fleet backing, and who values flybridge living and interior volume over outright sailing performance.