That testing regime is the tell for what this boat is. Voyage Yachts builds the 590 in Cape Town, and its sister company, Voyage Charters, has run a fleet out of Soper's Hole in Tortola since 1996 as the yard's sole dealer — one family enterprise spanning boatbuilding, sales, technical service and charter management. Robin and Jo-Ann Downing own the charter side, and it was Robin Downing who conceived the 590 in the first place. The first ten hulls were sold into that charter fleet, with more to follow. Draw up a boat for a fleet you run yourself, knowing you will see it come back off every one-week booking, and you make a very particular set of choices.
A hull with a job to do
Look at her on the dock and the first thing you notice is the bows, which rake aft as they rise. Inverted bows are fashionable, but here they do real work: they push the sailing waterline right out to the forward end of each hull. At 57 feet 9 inches of waterline inside 58 feet 3 inches overall, there is about six inches of overhang in the entire boat. Sailing length is very nearly the whole length, and that is the quiet reason a 25-tonne catamaran moves as well as she does.
Then look at the draft: five feet two inches. That is remarkably little for a 58-footer sleeping twelve — a cruising monohull of similar length would commonly want half again as much water — and in the thin, reef-strewn corners of the eastern Caribbean, that number decides which anchorages are yours.
Underneath, the bridgedeck is shaped rather than flat, and Robin Downing, who conceived the boat, explains the thinking plainly enough: she "slopes under the bridge deck, which throws the water," and then "it hits the wave deflector in the middle, and it's much more comfortable sailing." That is the builder's account rather than an independently tested result, but the target is obvious to anyone who has punched across the Sir Francis Drake Channel on a brisk winter afternoon. Short, steep chop is the enemy of a happy charter guest, and Voyage has aimed squarely at it.
How she's built
She is hand-laid and vacuum-bagged over closed-cell PVC foam core — hull and deck each out of their own tooling, the structural grid cored and bagged the same way. Herb McCormick, who looked over the moulds for Cruising World, counted a three-piece hull mould and a separate deck mould of considerable heft. The laminate goes up in multiple layers of quadriaxial glass roving, and Voyage fights osmosis on two fronts, calling for a vinylester skin coat in the laminate and an epoxy barrier beneath the antifouling.
One point deserves to be nailed down, because it is easy to get wrong: this is not an infused hull. Infusion comes up in Voyage's own account only as something the yard has been weighing, worth perhaps another ton of weight saving down the road. Anyone who tells you a current 590 is infused has it muddled.
Under sail
The rig is a seven-eighths fractional on single spreaders, and Voyage set it up with an overlapping headsail specifically with long passages in mind — a choice that looks conservative on paper and pays handsomely in light air. Sails are Ullman Dacron: a fully battened, high-aspect main with three reefs and a furling genoa with a foam luff. Everything is worked from the flybridge, where electric Andersen winches and Spinlock clutches, including a powered winch for the main, mean one person can handle her.
The numbers from Cruising World's test are the ones to hang onto. In 8 to 10 knots of true wind, McCormick had her doing better than 6 knots close-hauled and better than 7 knots once he cracked off to a reach. Three-quarters of the wind speed upwind, in single digits, on a boat carrying six ensuite cabins — that is a genuinely good result, and it says the overlapping genoa is doing exactly what it was hired to do in exactly the conditions the Caribbean hands out most days. Cruising World figured a sail area-to-displacement ratio of 22.7 against a displacement-to-length ratio of 145, both worked from a loaded charter-spec weight; on the lighter displacement Voyage quotes for the boat herself, both numbers move the right way.
McCormick was straight about the limits, which is worth more than another paragraph of praise. Chasing more speed, he wrote, would mean "slender hulls (which would erase the spaciousness of the accommodations), a higher bridge deck (ditto)." There is the whole argument in a sentence. On the helm — a wire Lewmar system rather than hydraulics — he found the steering "not exactly sensitive, but it was more than adequate." Nobody is pretending this is a raceboat. When the wind quits, a pair of 56-kilowatt diesels, 75 horsepower apiece on straight shafts rather than saildrives, take over, and Voyage quotes a nine-knot cruise. Tanks hold 950 litres each of fuel and water — enough for a long passage, or a full charter week without hunting for a fuel dock.
Six cabins, all equal
Most big cats sort their sleeping accommodation into a class system: one handsome owner's suite, then a descending series of consolation prizes. The 590 will have none of it. The charter layout puts six matched ensuite cabins into the two hulls for twelve guests, and Voyage's whole point is that no one draws the short straw. McCormick counted four with athwartship bunks and two with fore-and-aft berths, and reckoned the boat "laid out for gracious living." One BOTY judge, Gerry Douglas, said she reminded him of a boutique hotel, which is either a compliment or a warning depending on your temperament — though anyone splitting a week aboard with eleven friends would likely take it as the former.
There is an owner's version too, and it is a thoughtful piece of rearranging. The mid-to-forward starboard hull becomes a proper main suite with its own sitting area, vanity and desk, a double ensuite stays aft, and the forward port hull turns into a pantry, laundry and workshop with two more doubles behind it. Two revenue cabins traded for the storage and utility space that liveaboards actually run out of first.
Topsides she is organised for the way people really use a boat in the tropics: flybridge, a separate forward cockpit, a hard bimini with windows so you can keep an eye on the main, and swim platforms in both hulls.
The systems story
This is the most modern thing about the 590 and the part that will shape ownership more than any other. A 43 kilowatt-hour lithium bank takes its charge from twin 16 kilowatt gensets, and Frigomar variable-speed air conditioning steps down from 10,000 to 3,000 BTU without cycling — which, Voyage says, keeps genset running to four to six hours a day and lets the boat hold temperature all night without anyone lying awake listening to it. Ed Sherman, who handles systems for the BOTY panel, singled it out: "they're using very high-end inverters with variable-speed air-conditioning systems that step down as it gets cooler at night."
The other side of that coin is honest enough. Sail handling, refrigeration and comfort all lean on the same electrical backbone. For a fleet operator with a workshop in Tortola, that is a sound bet. For an owner planning to be a long way from anyone fluent in lithium, it is the part of the boat to get thoroughly acquainted with before signing.
The Verdict
The Voyage 590 is not a performance cat that happens to have cabins. She is an accommodation platform tuned to sail properly, conceived by someone who runs a charter fleet for a living and built by the yard alongside it — an unusual arrangement, and a rather reassuring one. She earns her Best Charter Boat award on what she does for twelve people at anchor, but the inverted bows, that near-full-length waterline and the overlapping rig mean she is no floating condo: she will make a respectable passage in light air, and every hull has already crossed an ocean to prove she can.
If you want a knife-edged sailer, look elsewhere — Cruising World's own reviewer says as much, and cheerfully. If you want a big, seaworthy, thoroughly equipped catamaran that treats all six cabins as equals, there is remarkably little else built to this brief.
Pros
- Inverted bows give a sailing waterline within six inches of her overall length
- Better than 6 knots upwind and 7 reaching in only 8 to 10 knots, per Cruising World's test
- Five-foot-two draft opens up anchorages that shut out boats her size
- Six genuinely equal ensuite cabins — no consolation prizes
- Every hull crosses the Atlantic before entering service
- Foam-cored hull and deck, vinylester skin coat and an epoxy barrier against blistering
- Lithium and variable-speed air conditioning integration singled out by Cruising World's systems judge
Cons
- Steering is "more than adequate," in McCormick's phrase, without being especially talkative
- Volume and bridgedeck height put a ceiling on outright speed — a trade made deliberately for accommodation
- Sail handling and comfort lean hard on the electrical system, which rewards an owner who understands it
- Hand-laid and bagged rather than infused, leaving perhaps a ton on the table by Voyage's own reckoning
- Built in small numbers, so examples are scarce and expertise is concentrated at the yard
