Palm Pleasure 2 transatlantic crossing blends family, logistics, and sea life

Palm Pleasure 2 crossed the Atlantic as a blunt stress test of a boat usually associated with day charter comfort. The Punch 21.10 DC left Portugal bound for Martinique with Aurore Hernandez and her father, Christian Hernandez, aboard, turning a family passage into proof of what a working catamaran can carry, how it is packed, and what has to be sacrificed to make a charter platform offshore-capable.

The emotional core was personal before it was technical. Aurore Hernandez said she was 5 years old on her first transatlantic crossing with Christian Hernandez, and now the pair were doing it again, three decades later, on the same broad kind of multihull logic that shaped Christian’s career. He founded Multicap Caraïbes in Martinique and later Multicat Algarve in Portugal, building a reputation around the Punch line after first starting the adventure in 1987, following more than 20 years at sea as a merchant navy officer. Philippe Harlé was the naval architect who helped turn that idea into a wood-epoxy catamaran concept.

The departure itself was as practical as any offshore start. Palm Pleasure 2 cast off on Wednesday, May 6, at 12:34 p.m., after provisioning that looked more like a floating logistics exercise than a holiday cruise. The crew loaded canned goods, pasta, rice, snacks, fruit, vegetables, and prepared meals from La Villa in France. They also took on 240 litres of fresh water, then spread the supplies through the galley and storage spaces as crates and bags filled the boat.

That is where the passage becomes useful to other catamaran owners. A large day-charter platform can be pushed into serious ocean miles, but only if the people aboard think like passagemakers, not sightseers. Bread was plentiful. A grater and a fine grater were forgotten. Aurore joked about hydrating face masks. Those details matter because they show how quickly an offshore routine replaces the polished promise of a charter brochure. The boat became a home, a pantry, and a workspace all at once.

The bigger backdrop gives the crossing extra weight. The original Punch story ran for 23 years in Martinique and ended in 2010, before the brand was revived in Portugal at Vila Real de Santo António, near the Guadiana River mouth. Multicat Algarve says its Punch 1510 Day Charter, launched in 2023, carries 145 m² of sail area, two 300-litre water tanks, and two 400-litre fuel tanks, numbers that underline the same point Palm Pleasure 2 made at sea: a day-charter catamaran can be more than a dockside platform when the crew, the loading, and the mindset are right.