Seawind 1160 Lite Chillout Wins Inaugural Cat Stephens Division

The last day at Sail Port Stephens felt like more than a tidy finish to a coastal regatta. With a 15-knot north-easterly building into gusts over 25 knots and a 28.5-nautical-mile passage race from the Nelson Bay breakwall out to Boondelbah Island and back toward Box Beach, the new Cat Stephens division gave multihulls a proper stage inside a big mixed-fleet series.

That matters because the inaugural Cat Stephens was not a token add-on. Held from 1-3 May 2026 out of Regatta HQ at d’Albora Marina Nelson Bay, the division was open to multihull yachts meeting Australian Sailing Category 5 safety requirements, and it ran one passage race a day with the start and finish line off the marina wall. In a fleet that included faster Corsair trimarans alongside Sea Glass, Sea Twist, a Lightwave 38, a Lagoon 450F and an Atlantic 48, the corrected-time picture stayed alive all the way through the series.

Paul Booth’s Chillout, a Seawind 1160 Lite, won the first Cat Stephens title after three days that rewarded clean execution more than outright boat speed. Reflection, the Seawind 1260 sailed by Paul Lehane, finished second, which gave the division a tidy owner-boat storyline instead of a grand-prix-only feel. That is exactly the sort of result that will catch the eye of multihull crews looking for a race where sailing smart still beats simply having the biggest kite.

Booth put it plainly: “It was the best three days of racing the crew had ever had.” For the cat crowd, that line lands because it points to the real appeal here, short-handed handling, teamwork, and racing a cruising cat hard without dragging the whole boat into an overbuilt systems war.

Sail Port Stephens had already signaled that 2026 would be its biggest event yet, its 19th year overall, and the expansion showed up onshore as well, with a dedicated race village, regatta headquarters, vendor stalls, kids’ entertainment and a spectator grandstand on the marina forecourt and breakwall. The wider series crowned Wine-Dark Sea on PHS and Wild Oats X in IRC, but for multihull owners the bigger takeaway was clearer: Cat Stephens gave cats and trimarans their own identity inside a serious spring regatta, and the 20th-anniversary edition now being planned for 2027 should have no trouble attracting boats that want both competition and visibility.