Some PDQ 32 reviews

We did a lot of reading before settling on a PDQ for our adventures. We found the following articles/reviews on the web during our search:

PDQ 32 – By Quentin Warren – Nov 1, 1996

In the world of cruising catamarans, aesthetics take a hit when you cut down on length overall. At issue are a host of conflicting themes — the practical demand for interior volume works against the visual imperative that freeboard be low; the need for bridge deck clearance and standing headroom pushes the cabin profile skyward. What’s graceful, extended and cunning at 45 feet often becomes ungainly in the context of 35.

Which is why Alan Slater’s PDQ 32 is such a remarkable boat. Fully outfitted for long-range cruising, she remains bright, airy and easy to look at. With a nicely proportioned rig and a subtle sloping cabin top, she carries herself like a longer cat and avoids the pitfalls of many of her peers that attempt to consolidate as much mass as possible into a length that won’t accept it. You can cruise or even live aboard this boat quite comfortably, but her scale is such that sail handling and overall maintenance remain uncomplicated. Read more…

A PDQ 32 Passage – Mice Will Play: Passagemaker and Cruiser – By Brian Murphy

My first step outside the Ft. Myers airport left me wishing I’d brought more warm clothes along, a feeling that would stay with me over the next few days. I had just arrived from Ottawa to help deliver a new PDQ 32 from the boat show in St. Petersburg to a charter company in the Bahamas. It was November in Florida, but it felt like October in Canada.

The plane was delayed just enough that the departure of Mice Will Play, a brand new PDQ 32 from Cape Coral, had to be delayed until the morning. The boat had arrived in St. Petersberg a few days earlier for the boat show. We performed our provisioning and made a few last minute phone calls and adjustments.

I have sailed the PDQ 36 on several occasions but this was to be my first visit aboard the 32. My first impression of the cockpit was that it was a touch closed in when compared to the larger 36. However, I was soon to fall in love with the more protected feeling and comfort of the hardtop bimini and wrap-around dodger. Read more…

PDQ 32 Review – By Charles K. Chiodi, Multihulls Magazine March/April 1995

With the sun slowly setting behind the skyline of Miami, the wind was dying, the telltales on the PDQ 32 we were about to test had a hard time staying in the horizontal in the orange glow reflecting from the clouds.

Nightfall came quickly as the sun dipped behind the Herald’s building and the lights of Miami Beach started to reflect on the waterfront. From the shadows of the tiny island, hardly big enough to hoist a memorial statue, came the outline of another catamaran, also on a test run, perhaps for potential buyers. This was Miami Boat Show time, and the skippers were hard put to prove all the claims the salesmen made during the day.

Each morning and evening the show boats were let out of the corral when part of the docks were opened for demo rides and media inspection. The press mingled with potential buyers and listened to the dreams which they had come with, and the realization of facts they had learned during the day. They weren’t too far apart, for most wanna-be skippers were surprisingly educated about multihulls. It was no longer a question of “should we switch to a catamaran” but rather “which one?”

Those on the PDQ 32 were already familiar with their design and the company that builds it through MM and other sources, it was just a matter of the “three-dimensional experience” – the final convincer. All of us aboard were aware of the lively nature of this newest breed from Alan Slater’s drawing board, we just wanted to experience it. Thus it was not surprising that those of us on the wheel and winches were eager to keep distance between the PDQ 32 and the shadow of that catamaran that seemed to get a bit larger as time went by. It was too dark by now to identify it from the distance; all we knew was that we had to keep this cat going so as not to loose face by being overtaken. No, we were not racing, just, just… well, you know how it is when two boats are sailing in the same direction. It is more prominent when the company president, all his salesmen, a few potential buyers and the press is aboard. Of course, the same could well be the case on that other catamaran… all right, so we were racing, mentally. Read more…