Design and Construction
The Feeling 52's hull is fiberglass, and her keel is the tilting drift type, a centerboard-style arrangement that lets the quoted 130-centimeter raised-keel draft make her accessible to anchorages a 52-foot cruiser would normally avoid. Alliaura Marine built her as a development of the Feeling 55 rather than a clean-sheet design, so the architectural language and interior planning are inherited wholesale. At 15.80 meters overall and 15.62 meters on the waterline, with a 5.20-meter beam and a displacement of 20,000 kg, she is a voluminous hull; the source record describes her as having large capacity, and the monomaran concept is precisely this translation of catamaran-like roominess into a single hull. The tilting keel and 2.20-meter standard draft against a near-zero minimum draft define her shallow-draft cruise brief.
Rig and Handling
Rigged as a sloop with 132 square meters of sail area, the Feeling 52 pairs a substantial rig with a hull the reviewers credited with excellent performance. The monomaran brief is not merely about volume; it is about a single hull that behaves with the ease and deck-level openness associated with a multihull scheme, which the builder framed as the core advantage of the concept. Her twin-engine layout, addressed below, also shapes her propulsion profile in a way few monohulls of this size can match.
Power and Accommodations
The most unusual engineering choice is the engine room: two auxiliary sail-drive engines of 55 hp each, a configuration moved to the Feeling 52 from the flagship Feeling 55. The equipment list specifies 2 x 55 HP sail-drive units, giving redundant propulsion and symmetrical thrust. Below, the private layout provides a pair of cabins, two heads, and four berths, whereas the charter arrangement adds a third cabin for six berths total. The large capacity noted in the design brief finds its expression in these layouts, with the three-cabin charter plan evidently suited to higher-occupancy cruising.
The Verdict
The Feeling 52 is a distinctive late-generation Alliaura cruiser that compresses flagship thinking into a slightly smaller, cheaper hull. Her monomaran concept, twin 55 hp sail-drives, and tilting keel give her a shallow-draft, catamaran-flavored profile rare in a 52-foot monohull, and her accommodations scale from private two-cabin to charter-grade three-cabin use.
Pros
- Inherits nearly all Feeling 55 planning and style at lower cost and length
- Tilting drift keel enables 130 cm raised-keel draft for shallow access
- Twin 55 hp sail-drive engines provide redundancy and balanced propulsion
- Monomaran layout delivers large catamaran-style capacity in one hull
Cons
- Minimum draft quoted at 0.00 m implies keel fully housed; standard draft 2.20 m still deepens her considerably
- Specialized twin-engine and tilting-keel systems may complicate service versus conventional monohulls
