New Boat: Horizon PC60

The PC60 offers volume and seaworthiness to owners in search of long-distance voyages.

I have to admit, I was partial to the Horizon PC60 from the jump. As I walked the docks of the 2021 Ft. Lauderdale boat show, it was the name emblazoned along her transom that reeled in my focus: Mangata. It’s a word that came to my attention during some previous travels through Sweden, and it refers to the moon’s reflection on the water. (From an etymological perspective, it makes a lot of sense for a coastal people who spend months at a time in darkness to have a dedicated word for this phenomenon.) The owners of Mangata have a particularly deep connection to the appellation.

“Our daughter-in-law is Swedish,” says the owner, “so she introduced us to the word. And we like to do our boating in remote places, way out in the Bahamas and such, where the moon and stars are bright and it’s just us. We were having trouble picking a name for our boat, which, you know, is kind of a big deal. And then one night when the boat was near completion, my wife and I were at our Florida house, and we walked outside and the moon was huge and clear and twinkling along the water. That’s when we knew she was going to be Mangata.”

The PC60 is perfectly suited to the way these owners use their boat. They’re coming out of a Bahamas 41 center console, but felt the hotels in the Bahamas were becoming too crowded as of late, so they wanted something they could stay aboard. “We wanted volume,” he says. “When we are aboard it’s our kids and their friends, lots of socializing, as well as spearfishing and diving. We didn’t need a huge master. We just sleep there. We loved the big, wide-open layout the PC60 has in her salon, as well as the big cockpit and what really feels like a second salon on the flybridge. And the cockpit is so big that it gives us plenty of room for our in-water activities too. Plus the cat doesn’t sway and bob too much when you’re climbing in and out of the water.”

Horizon PC60

Have a closer look in the gallery below:

Besides the volume and added stability the PC60 offers, there was another reason the owners opted for a twin hull. “We looked at some of the bigger Ocean Alexanders and Horizons, but they were a little too much boat for me and my wife to run by ourselves. And we wanted something we could fit behind our house, and a 90-footer wasn’t going to cut it. But with the PC60 you get the same amount of volume, but in a shorter footprint, and it’s something we felt we could operate without a captain.”

As we boarded the boat on test day, the PC60’s volume was manifest. There were three journalists, four owners and a Horizon sales rep on board, and frankly, we barely saw one another. That quality is a great asset to have for anyone planning on spending a long period of time at sea, where both fish and guests start to stink after three days.

Out in the ocean off Ft. Lauderdale, the PC60 showed off her sea legs, flattening out a steady chop like a steamroller. Sitting in the Stidd captain’s chair, I clocked a 23-knot cruise on the electronic gauge embedded in a carbon-fiber dash. Horizon Power Catamarans uses the lightweight material relatively liberally on board, including at the leading edge of the keel and in parts of the skylounge’s enclosure. The end result is a lighter boat with a lower center of gravity that is armored with a material that’s five-times stronger than steel in case of collision.

That extra strength is a bit of a safety blanket for Mangata’s owners, who intend to cruise this boat far away from the madding crowd, in the notoriously shallow waters of the Bahamian Out Islands. “We want to take her down to the Ragged Islands, and places like that, just to really get away from everyone except our family and friends—and spend a few nights on the hook where it’s just us and the moon.”