First DCB M42R Widebody Catamaran To Debut In 2024

More than a showcase of its new 27,000-square-foot facility, yesterday’s DCB Performance Marine Grand Opening delivered a piece of intriguing new-model news to the 500-plus guests, from DCB customers and vendors to marine industry luminaries, on hand during the afternoon event. Near the end of the gracious open house, DCB production manager Johnny Bauer gathered in front of the group, which included new managing partners Craig and Kim Hargreaves, partial company owners Tony Chiaramonte, Jeff Johnston, Paul Miller and the entire DCB staff, to official unveil detailed renderings of the new M42R Widebody catamaran.

The larger sibling of the M37R catamaran, the first M42R will be delivered this year.

According to Bauer, the tooling for the 42-footer, which will be powered by Mercury Racing 500R outboard engines, is currently being completed at Marine Concepts/Design Concepts. The compression tunnel catamaran has wider sponsons, a deeper tunnel and longer sponsors that will provide an even better rough-water ride than its smaller though rough-water-capable M37R sibling.

“Tapping into the proven technology of the M37R cat, we lengthened the boat to 42 feet overall, and widened it to 11 feet and 3 inches,” Bauer explained. “This allowed us to expand the cockpit more than 6 inches, which in turn enabled us to design a functional and comfortable eight-seat cockpit.

“A second design option replaces the two outer rear seats with ergonomic and functional staircases for easier ingress and egress of the cockpit,” he added.

Simply stunning.

In addition to a longer and flatter deck than the that of the 37-footer, the M42R will boast larger in-deck stowage lockers.

The company already has several orders for the cat and the DCB team expects to have hull No. 1 completed by the end of the year. The boat is going to Kris and Shelby Hansen, who also took delivery of the first M37R in 2018.

“The Hull and deck designs are complete, the hull plug has completed initial machining and coating, and is in the queue for final machining,” said Bauer. “The deck-plug tooling has been started and will follow closely behind the hull plug. We are expecting finished molds to arrive at our new Phoenix facility in June 2024 and our team is driven to have the first boat completed and dialed in by the end of 2024.”