Designed primarily as a centre-cockpit family cruiser and certainly less racy
than her smaller sisters, the 1200 adds luxury and comfort to the familiar
Dragonfly formula, with electric-powered winches, a windscreen on the
coachroof, an owner’s suite aft with its own heads compartment, standing
headroom in the saloon and a powerful inboard diesel engine. A large
knuckle on the hull, just above the waterline, creates extra interior volume
without dramatically increasing wetted surface area.
She is a powerful beast with impressive dimensions – the upwind sail area
is 94m2 and she boasts an awesome 8.6m (28ft) ‘wingspan’ with her floats
fully extended – but by all accounts she is surprisingly easy for a short-
handed crew to handle.
Hard on the wind in a Force 2 breeze, the YM test team logged 6 knots at
28° to the apparent wind direction. They found her a bit ponderous to tack,
but otherwise highly responsive on the helm, and managed to match the
true wind speed of 9 knots on a reach.
Under power, the standard 55hp Volvo engine drives her along at
10 knots but her turning circle is less suited to negotiating tight corners
than a monohull.

LOA 12m (39ft 4in) LOA folded 13.6m (44ft 7in) LWL 11.2m (36ft 8in) Beam (max) 8.6m (28ft
2in) Beam (folded) 4.25m (13ft 1in) Draught 2m (6ft 7in) plate down, 0.8m (2ft 7in) plate up
Displacement 5,500kg (12,125lb) Class association www.dragonfly-trimarans.org