Firefly 850 Sports
Fast, Fun, Fantastic

The Firefly 850 Sports is designed to be a stylish, fast, exciting coastal racing or weekend cruising catamaran. The design brief specified a fast, open catamaran of 28 feet, with the hulls wide enough to provide a cozy double berth with weight and construction costs kept to a minimum. The boat has the added advantage of being demountable so it can be trailed to races or cruising areas.

The first Firefly 850, Hot Vindaloo was built by John Sticklan and launched in Mackay in 1995. The following year John won many regattas on Hot Vindaloo giving much larger and more expensive line honours multihulls a run for their money.

In 1998 John trailed Hot Vindaloo or Curry in a Hurry as she had been nicknamed to Brisbane and competed in the Brisbane to Gladstone Race. Although conditions did not suit the small catamaran for most of the race, only 2 much larger catamarans finished ahead of them.

Other Firefly’s built in Australia include Ross Blair’s own Firefly which Ross and family cruised in Queensland. Lake Maquarie in New South Wales has a Firefly sailing around owned and built by Marinus Ploy and more recently Wayne Dolan’s Wet Spot in Brisbane.

In 2005 Latitude 8 Yachts in Phuket, Thailand started producing the first of the new slightly modified Firefly 850 Sports cats. Supervising in the build of the first two boats, Voodoo Child and Moto Inzi, I made some minor adjustments to the plans as well as upgrading and streamlining the build process. The main changes to the original construction was the use of foam sandwich/carbon fibre panels in lieu of Duracore panels as originally specified for the bulkheads, bunks and cockpits.

It other areas carbon fibre unis have been utilized as well as the rudder shafts and prodder being carbon fibre tubes.

Weighed for the OMR Rule including sails, ground tackle, motor and all other equipment both boats weighed in at 960 kgs., about 100 kgs. lighter than Hot Vindaloo in the same trim.

As of May 2006 the third Firefly 850 Sports X-Ta Sea has been launched by Latitude 8 Yachts with another 4 ordered.

All changes and modifications for the Firefly 850 Sports are included in the fully upgraded construction plans.

The Firefly 850 Sports is an “open” cat or sometimes referred to as a “tube” boat that is two hulls connected by 3 aluminium beams with closed trampoline aft on the main beam and open mesh nets forward.