Leopard sailboats: production catamarans built for a charter fleet and sold to private owners
Leopard is the private-owner brand built alongside two of the largest bareboat charter operations in the world. The boats come off the same Cape Town production line as Moorings and Sunsail charter catamarans, built by the same yard, to construction standards Robertson and Caine developed under decades of charter-fleet duty cycles. What separates a Leopard from its charter sisterships is not the hull or the builder — it is who the boat is built for and what a private owner is allowed to change.
Origins and ownership
Robertson and Caine was founded in Cape Town, South Africa, in 1991 by John Robertson and the late Jerry Caine, building custom racing yachts and production cruisers. John Robertson had already been building boats since 1977. The yard's early racing pedigree did the marketing: Broomstick, a 70-foot Simonis-designed Maxi built by the Robertson and Caine team, won the Cape to Rio International Yacht Race in 1993, and the Fast 42 Orion Express impressed on the world racing circuit.
That international exposure drew the attention of The Moorings, which entered into an agreement with Robertson and Caine to manufacture sailing catamarans for its global charter fleet. Sources differ on exactly when the relationship began. Leopard's own company materials place the groundwork as early as 1993 and, on another page, describe a partnership stretching back to 1995, while Soundings places the formal agreement in 1994. Those same company materials anchor the relationship's first concrete order to 1996, when The Moorings placed its first order for eight catamarans. From that relationship, Robertson and Caine says it has gone on to supply thousands of catamarans to The Moorings and Sunsail, the two charter brands under parent company THL Marine.
The private-ownership brand grew out of charter demand rather than a standalone product plan. Franck Bauguil, of The Moorings Private Sales, brokered the first private sale — diverting a Moorings 4200 to St Lucia for buyers John and Po Martin and rebranding it under the new model name Robertson and Caine and The Moorings Private Sales had agreed on: Leopard. Leopard's own history places the brand's founding in 1997; Soundings instead dates its creation to 2000, describing it as a response to charter guests who kept asking how they could own one of these boats privately. Either way, the pattern that followed has held since: The Moorings and Sunsail retain exclusive production rights for the charter market, while Leopard catamarans are sold to private owners, including through THL Marine's Private Leopard Sales divisions and agents worldwide.
The yard grew from an initial core of roughly 200 Cape Town artisans working out of a single production yard into a multi-factory operation, and Robertson and Caine describes itself as South Africa's largest boat builder manufacturing for export, the largest catamaran builder in the Southern Hemisphere, and the third-largest catamaran builder globally. Leopard credits its market success to the synergy between Robertson and Caine as builder and Travelopia as global distribution partner.
Ownership of the two companies runs on separate tracks and shouldn't be conflated. Robertson and Caine (Pty) Ltd, the Cape Town builder, is owned by Vox Ventures, a wholly owned subsidiary of the European investment firm PPF. PPF announced on February 3, 2023 that it had signed an agreement to purchase Robertson and Caine from its founder and shareholders, for an undisclosed price, saying the deal would expand its nautical division's products and services for the global export market. Leopard Catamarans, the brand and distribution side, is instead part of the Travelopia group, which is backed by the KKR fund — a separate ownership line from the PPF-owned builder.
The designers
Leopard's early identity leaned on Alex Simonis's racing pedigree, the same naval architect behind Broomstick. Leopard credits Lex Raas with the original vision of catamarans for charter, and credits Robertson, Caine, naval architect Alex Simonis, and designer Anthony Key together for the traits the brand became known for: rugged build quality, performance, ease of operation, elegant interiors, and space. More recent Leopard company material credits the firm Simonis & Voogd Yacht Design broadly for the range's design.
Construction through the eras
Robertson and Caine builds Leopard's fiberglass hulls and decks using vacuum bagging, which dramatically reduces epoxy exposure to the air during layup. In July 2025, Robertson and Caine introduced a new hull construction process called single shot infusion, replacing the traditional multi-stage infusion method with a streamlined, one-step approach that saturates the entire hull structure — core, laminates, and reinforcements — in a single controlled resin application. Doing away with secondary bonding steps this way, Cruising World reported, improves uniformity, reduces weight, and lowers the risk of delamination. Robertson and Caine paired the new process with acoustic leak detection systems that verify vacuum integrity before resin is applied. The refinements were first applied to the Leopard 46 and are expected to filter through the rest of the lineup afterward.
Lines and generations
Robertson and Caine's production record for Leopard runs from 1997 through 2024 and spans hull sizes from roughly 37 to 58 feet, sail and power catamarans included. Some models trace a direct line of succession: the Leopard 45 evolved from the 2012 Leopard 44, which SAIL Magazine credits with introducing the brand's forward-cockpit layout, and went on, by SAIL's account, to sell hundreds of hulls before the Leopard 46 replaced it. On the flagship end, the Leopard 50 replaced the Leopard 48 with what SAIL Magazine called an entirely new yacht rather than an upgrade, and the Leopard 52, drawn by Simonis Voogd Design, replaced the 50 in turn.
Who Leopard is for
Leopard suits buyers who want a production cruising catamaran engineered to the same standard as a professional charter fleet, but with the layout and options tuned for ownership rather than turnover: larger owner staterooms, more storage, and equipment like washers and dryers, watermakers, and expanded electronics that a standardized charter boat wouldn't carry. That distinction is the throughline for anyone comparing Leopard against its own charter-fleet sisterships: the engineering pedigree is identical, but the ownership experience is built specifically for owners rather than renters.
