George, Delighted the list is up and running. Congrats. We completed the "great loop" this past October on our Aventure 460 Power Catamaran after traveling over 6800 miles in one year. A terrific adventure. But first our catamaran story. In 2001 I retired from teaching. We had previously owned bass boats and a houseboat. My wife bought a book "Honey Lets Buy a Boat" and then we said, why not us? She had a couple more years before she retired. We began looking at trawlers which ultimately led to examining monohull designs and the many pro/con articles when we came across catamaran hull design articles. We began to seriously research the cat hull designs and visited almost every boat show in the U.S. Also, visited factories of several US catamaran builders. We were not pleased with the layout and designs of what we found. While search the web one day I came across a company called Aventure. The rest is history. We discovered that someone in Cleveland had purchased one and he graciously invited us to examine his boat. We fell in love with her immediately. The Aventure company invited us to their factory in South Africa! And about two years ago this month we arrived to check out their factory and hull #3 was half finished. We were very pleased with what we found signed a contract. Went home and then returned in July 2003 for launching sea trials. She passed sea trials with flying colors. The Aventure company put our "Yum Yum" aboard a container ship and she arrived in New Orleans a month later. We cruised the great loop and traveled some 6800+miles. Now in Cape Coral FL and heading for the Keys, Dry Tortugas and then Bahamas. We have taken hundreds of pictures of the Yum Yum from the time she was in the factory to now. Building a web site with a selected number of them. We are extremely happy with this terrific beautifully designed and stable power catamaran cruiser. Here are some of her specs. Designer: Lavranos Marine Design. Twin Yanmar 370 hp turbo diesels. 46’ long. Beam 15 ½ feet. Draft 3 ½ feet. Weight: 14 tons. Northern Lights Diesel genset 6.3 KW. Custom solar panel system 28 amps/hr. 2 ea 16000 BTU air conditioner/heaters. 600 gal/day Water maker. Hand laid woven fiberglass hulls. Built to CE certification standards. 400 gal/diesel. 200gal/water. Both trawler and turbo speeds up to 23+mph. Hardtop fly bridge with pilot station. Large covered cockpit with swim platform. Ten foot hypalon dinghy with 15hp elect Honda and davits. DirectTV on board satellite system. Three (3) double staterooms. Two (2) electric TECMA heads w/walk in showers. Huge galley: 3B stove, fridge/freeze, micro. Beautiful Canadian cherry woods. Tremendous storage. Huge saloon custom KUDU leather. 2 LCD flat panel TV’s with CD/DVD/VHS. Full canvas enclosures & dinghy cover. Simrad pkg w/48 mile radar, chart plotter, echo-sounder. Additional ILS 15 depth finder. Simrad AP22 autopilot system. 2 ea VHF radio systems. Windlass w/pilot house remote. Winslow 6 person coastal/offshore life raft. EPIRB system. ICOM 802 SSB/Ham system. Complete USCG safety package. Rod holders. And more. Will be glad to contribute our experiences to this list. Sorry this post is so long. Best wishes for a successful list. Pierre and Linda Barrette Cape Coral Yacht Basin, FL

>Pierre and Linda Barrette wrote: >We completed the "great loop" this past October on our Aventure 460 Power >Catamaran after traveling over 6800 miles in one year. Can you tell us something about the performance of your boat? You covered 6,800 miles. How many engine hours was that? How many gallons of diesel did you burn? The answers would enable us to see the average speed and fuel burn in gallons per hour. --Georgs