‘Smarter’ Aspen Power catamaran sips less fuel

Published 8:01 pm Friday, December 5, 2008

EVERETT — While some boat builders are shuttering their doors, Aspen Power Catamarans is just getting started.

“My sense of the market is that people would like a big comfy boat that gets good fuel efficiency and can handle rough water well,” said Larry Graf, Aspen’s founder.

Graf’s 20 years of experience helps him gauge the market; 15 of those years were with Glacier Bay Catamarans in Monroe. But the Snohomish resident left Glacier Bay, a company he started in 1987, to take on a new challenge: to build a “smarter” boat, a more fuel-efficient one.

“I basically had done everything I could do” with Glacier Bay, Graf said.

For more than a year, Graf worked with a small staff to come up with the right design for his new catamaran. What he came up with is unlike other boats on the market. The Aspen catamaran’s hulls are asymmetrical, and the boat is powered with one engine.

“It’s such an unusual idea to put a single engine on a catamaran,” Graf said.

Without the second engine, he said the Aspen catamaran has less drag in the water than a typical catamaran.

“It’s a very slippery hull” in the water, he said.

And Aspen catamarans will burn less fuel than their competitors, especially at an 18-mph pace. At that speed, the Aspen catamarans are about 70 percent more fuel efficient than similar craft, Graf said. This summer, when fuel prices were high, a weekend trip to the San Juan Islands in a 39-foot boat could cost $2,000.

“It’s not a go-fast boat,” he said. “But it’s a fun boat.”

The single-engine catamaran’s wake also is reduced as a result of its design. The wake from a 26-foot Aspen catamaran looks more like that of 10-foot Zodiac boat than it does a catamaran of comparable size, Graf said.

“There’s nothing that competes with its fuel efficiency,” he said.

Besides offering improved fuel efficiency, the Aspen catamaran also is expected to cost about half what the average catamaran does in maintenance.

Aspen remains a small operation — with just four employees — and that’s how Graf hopes it will remain. He plans to build only the 26-foot catamarans at his Snohomish facility. The larger boats, the 39- and 48-foot ones, will be built in Asia.

Graf is in the process of obtaining a patent for his catamaran design, but he’s already taking customers out for rides on the prototype vessel. He expects to have the first 26-foot catamaran ready and available for purchase in March. The larger boats will be a little later, with the 39-foot one coming available in October and the 48-foot catamaran in production six months after that.

A basic 26-foot Aspen catamaran starts at $75,000 and is priced up to $140,000 for an overnight vessel. The 39-foot catamaran will be priced at $549,000 and the 48-foot Aspen catamaran will cost $879,000.

The Aspen catamaran isn’t for every boating enthusiast. Graf describes the catamaran’s target customer as an experienced boater, probably 45 to 65 years of age.

“They’re not in a rush but they enjoy the waters,” he said. “They don’t have to buy a boat that looks like everyone else’s.”