Manta sailboats: one name, two unrelated builders
Two different companies have built boats called Manta, in different countries and different decades, with nothing connecting them beyond the word itself. The earlier is the Manta 19, a small Austrian trailer-sailer that also saw a licensed production run in the UK during the 1970s. The later is Manta Catamarans, a Florida yard that built a line of cruising catamarans from the 1990s into the 2000s. Different designers, different builders, different boats — the name is the only thing they share.
Origins and ownership
In the early-to-mid 1970s, David Hutchinson of Blakes Marine was exhibiting his firm's Kelpie yacht at the Friedrichshafen boat show when he came across the Manta 19 and negotiated permission to build 200 of them in the UK under licence from the Austrian builder. Blakes Marine, a subsidiary of the J. Blake & Co. Ltd. Group — better known as a long-established Ford car dealer — built those UK boats from its base at Hoylake, on the Wirral.
Manta Catamarans changed hands when Dan Even, a successful entrepreneur from Southern California, bought the struggling firm. "All I wanted was to buy a boat," Even said, "but I bought a boat and the company." He streamlined the manufacturing process and brought professionalism to the marketing department. Pat Reischman, who according to a 2008 account had been with the company since its founding roughly a decade earlier, carried through that ownership change. SAILING magazine, in the same account, called Manta one of the few cruising catamarans built in the United States.
The designers
Anton Miglich, an Austrian designer, created the Manta 19 as a small cruiser/racer. Schoechl Yachts, the Austrian builder behind it, also produced the fin-keeled Sunbeam 22 — a boat the Manta 19 owners' association describes as sharing remarkably similar lines to the Manta 19.
The original Manta 38 was designed by French naval architect Eric Lerouge. SAIL magazine describes Florida production running from the late 1990s into the late 2000s; SAILING magazine dates the design more specifically to 1993, with production starting in 1996 in St. Petersburg. Cruising World later credited the Manta 40's construction quality to Pat Reischmann's own early, extensive experience with composite technology as it changed boatbuilding.
Construction through the eras
The Manta 19 was built with a moulded interior lining that gave a smooth interior finish and, according to the owners' association, virtually eliminated condensation.
SAIL magazine describes the Florida catamarans as unmistakable from a distance, with high bows and a massively curved, integrated forward crossbeam that — unlike the pinned aluminum crossbeams on conventional catamarans, which support forestay tension — is fixed rather than pinned. Most boats came with stub keels, though the magazine noted some later versions built with daggerboards instead.
Cruising World reported that on the Manta 40, all elements were vacuum bagged, with hull, deck and bulkheads laid up from a varying schedule of triaxial, biaxial and unidirectional cloth in isophthalic and vinylester resins; below the waterline the hulls carried solid glass and vinylester, while above the waterline and in the deck, Nida-Core polypropylene honeycomb coring cut weight and added stiffness. Its hull-to-deck joint combined 3M 5200 adhesive sealant, mechanical fasteners on 10-inch centers, and glass tabbing. SAILING magazine, describing the 42 MkII generation, characterized the hull-and-deck joint there as laminated, making it more or less leakproof, with bulkheads and subfloors built from Nida-Core and covered in veneers. The 42 MkII's hulls and bridgedeck were laid up mostly in vinylester resin, cored with Corecell, and vacuum bagged.
Lines and generations
On the European side, the 19 (about 18½ feet) is the trailer-sailer that carries the Manta name's early history, alongside a smaller companion, the Manta 16 (about 16 feet).
On the Florida side, the range grew from the original 38 through a first major mold change that increased the hulls to 40 feet, then to a 42 — built roughly from 1999 to 2001 — before reaching its final form as the 42 MkII, introduced with hull No. 82 in 2002, the same year the company moved to its Sarasota facility.
Who Manta is for
The Manta 19 suits a buyer drawn to a specific, well-documented piece of 1970s trailer-sailer history — an Austrian design licensed into a limited UK production run at Blakes Marine. Manta Catamarans suits a different buyer: someone after a robustly built, American-built cruising catamaran, vacuum-bagged and cored throughout, from a small dedicated Florida yard. The two rarely come up in the same search, but a shopper researching either one should keep the provenance straight — the shared name is a coincidence, not a lineage.
