Seawind sailboats: an Australian design lineage built around one recurring idea
Seawind's catamarans keep returning to the same idea: fold the wall between the saloon and cockpit away and let the two become one room. Practical Sailor called the tri-fold door system on the 2005 Boat of the Year-winning 1160 "ridiculously simple," and a similar door reappears, reworked, on the 1260 and again on the 1370 fifteen years later. The company behind it has changed shape more than once -- an Australian yard, a Californian trimaran builder it absorbed, and a decade-long consolidation into Vietnam -- but the design throughline from founder Richard Ward's early boats to the newest ones has stayed consistent.
Origins and ownership
Richard Ward founded Seawind Catamarans in 1982 in Sydney, Australia, and remains its Founder and CEO. The company began by building small "off the beach" catamarans called the Maricat -- 4-to-5-metre boats that became the most popular Australian-produced catamarans of the era, with more than 3,000 eventually built. In 1991, amid an Australian recession and a weak global sailing market, Seawind introduced the 28-foot 850, its first entry into the larger cruising-catamaran category; the follow-on 1000 was named "Australian Sailboat of the Year" in 1994, the first time the award had gone to a catamaran.
A second builder joins the story in 1984, when John Walton -- son of Walmart founder Sam Walton -- founded Corsair Marine International in San Diego to build the Ian Farrier-designed Corsair F-27 trimaran. Corsair passed to Australian dealer Paul Koch in 1994 and relocated production to Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, in 2006. Seawind purchased Corsair in October 2010, announcing the deal at its own Pittwater Regatta in Sydney; Ward called it "a marriage made in heaven," and the combined group has since built both brands from an expanding Ho Chi Minh City factory.
The consolidation came with strain. In 2011 Seawind moved Australian staff to Vietnam to help run the newly acquired Corsair factory and start production of the 1160 there, and in 2012 Seawind Group Holdings -- the holding company over both brands -- was placed into voluntary administration, released on October 9, 2012 by administrators BRI Ferrier. The restructuring closed the original Wollongong plant; Ward, who called it the most challenging year in his 30 years in business, cited high manufacturing costs and a strong Australian dollar that put Seawind at a disadvantage against imports. Production of the 1250 shifted to Vietnam alongside the 1160 that year, and Seawind kept after-sales support running through Multihull Central at Rozelle Bay on Sydney Harbour. The company later opened a Thai service center in 2023 and announced a Turkish production facility in 2024.
The designers
Naval architect Scott Jutson shaped Seawind's early identity: he designed the small Seawind 24 in the early eighties and the Formula 40 racer "Simply the Best," for years the fastest sailing boat in Australia, and he co-designed the 1994 Seawind 1000's hull lines with Richard Ward. Ward himself became the house designer for what followed -- Practical Sailor and Sail credit him directly as designer of the 1160 and the 1260, and a later review calls him "the driving force behind Seawind Catamarans for more than four decades," crediting him with the 1170's hulls. Two outside practices shaped Seawind's largest and newest boats: Reichel/Pugh designed the 1600 flagship, and French naval architect Francois Perus collaborated with Ward on the 1370, unveiled in July 2020 -- a boat that sold 90 hulls on reputation alone before the first one touched water.
Construction through the eras
Seawind's early boats were foam-sandwich fiberglass builds using uni- and bi-axial glass, and around 2000 the company partnered with New Zealand engineering firm High Modulus to upgrade its construction process. Corsair's trimarans, built within the same Vietnam operation, are made by hand using composite construction and vacuum resin techniques. Individual Seawind models since have used vinylester or polyester resin infusion with foam coring and, in high-load areas like chainplates and bulkheads, carbon-fiber reinforcement -- specifics that vary by model and are worth confirming boat by boat rather than assuming across the range.
Lines and generations
The 1160 is Seawind's signature line: introduced near the end of 2004 as a "marriage" of the cruisability of the 1200 and the openness of the 1000, it won Australia's Boat of the Year award for 2005, ran through roughly 120 hulls before production ended in 2012, and was reworked twice more -- as the lighter 1160 Lite in 2014, then as the 1160XL in 2025. A stretched, lightened performance derivative, the 1190 Sport, later won a Judges' Special Recognition Award at the U.S. Sailboat Show. The earlier 1000 series -- the 1000, the 1050 Resort, and the 1000 XL -- grew out of the 850 and passed 225 hulls built, several placed with charter operators from the Whitsundays to the Caribbean. The newer range groups the 1250's evolution the 1260, the 45-foot 1370, the Reichel/Pugh-designed 1600 flagship, and the compact 1170, engineered with New Zealand firm Gurit and built in both Vietnam and Seawind's newer Turkish yard.
Who Seawind is for
Reviewers have pitched Seawind's newer boats squarely at cruising couples: Cruising World profiled the 1370 as "a bluewater catamaran built for cruising couples" and titled its 1170 review "The Ultimate Couples' Catamaran." That framing reflects a design habit that runs back to the 1160 -- a self-tacking jib and a tri-fold door system built around a crew of two, not a full charter-boat complement. It also remains a builder led by its own designer: Richard Ward, described as the driving force behind Seawind for more than four decades, still guides the boats that carry his name.
