Lagoon Catamarans 42

The Lagoon 42 took the crown its little sister wore for two decades: more than a thousand hulls out of Bordeaux since 2016, which is a decade doing what the 380 needed twenty years to do. The signature is the rig. The VPLP-drawn hull carries its mast stepped notably further aft than the 420 this boat replaced, which opens the foretriangle for a self-tacking jib, shortens the boom under a high-roach main, and pulls weight toward the middle of a light cat that would otherwise hobby-horse. Beneath it, a gullwing bridgedeck shaped to keep the sea from banging on the underside, cockpit and saloon on one level, and three- or four-cabin layouts — the four-cabin boat being the one charter ordered. Cruising World made it Boat of the Year for full-size multihulls under fifty feet in 2017 and the yard has been behind on the order book ever since.

Which 42 you are looking at matters more than the brochure suggests, because the boat was revised twice under its owners. After two dismastings reported on early hulls, Lagoon issued a modification to the way the mast meets its step, covering 2018 and prior boats; 2019 and later left the yard with the step already redesigned. Boats before 2021 carry an aluminium cross beam bolted to stainless fittings, which in salt water does what dissimilar metals always do — owners report the corrosion, and a correction kit exists for it. Neither is a reason to walk away from an early hull. Both are reasons to know which hull is in front of you, and to ask for the paperwork that says the work was done.

A late boat is the version of this model with nothing outstanding against it:

The notes nobody recalled are the ones that follow the boat. Owners report saildrive seals weeping early and factory antifouling that surrenders in months. The factory watermaker was close to a rite of passage: its thru-hull and strainer sit above the waterline, so the system draws air and destroys its own boost pump, and Lagoon and the equipment maker eventually published a fix — which means a given boat either has had it or has not. Reviewers noted a coachroof finished in smooth gelcoat with no antiskid, on a boat you are expected to walk forward on with wet feet, and a saloon that takes its air through two forward windows; owners fit computer fans behind the fridge because the factory ventilation will not hold temperature. In the four-cabin layout the accommodation wins and the stowage loses, which cruisers describe as thin for living aboard — and that layout is exactly the one the ex-charter boats have. Nor is this a light-air boat on white sails: SAIL's test got a little over six knots upwind in eleven and a half of breeze, and owners are blunt that below ten knots it is a Code 0 or the engines.

What a surveyor asks of a young 42 is biography first — private boat or charter workhorse — because the hull itself rarely has stories to tell this young. Charter service is not a disqualification; it is a maintenance history in different handwriting, and it is most of what separates two boats that look identical and are priced apart. One we hold puts both questions in a single hull:

If the 42 is more boat than the plan needs, the model it dethroned is still the budget entry to the same idea. The rest of the family gathers on the Lagoon page, and the boats we rate for ocean work are on the bluewater shelf.