Boatbuilding is hard, dirty, technical, often tedious, unforgiving work. So, one could fairly pose the question to Matt and Jessica Johnson, who are four years into a DIY build of a 44-foot catamaran, if it wouldn’t have made more sense to just buy one and go sailing.
It’s not like they are newbies to the cruising life. They’ve already owned two other boats, a 1989 Sabre 34 on which they did two transatlantics and sailed the East Coast, Bahamas, Cuba, and Central America, and a 1983 Trisalu 37, an aluminum monohull they spent two years gutting and completely refitting, then sailing to Portugal, Ireland, the Arctic Circle, and Norway. With tens of thousands of miles under their keels in some pretty distant waters, they have walked the walk.
So why spend four years living aboard an old powerboat in a hole-in-the-wall boatyard on Kent Island, Maryland, developing intimate acquaintance with every form of toxic dust and material and nasty, noisy power tool imaginable, learning the two-steps-up-one-step-back reality of building hull No. 1 of a new model of multihull, embracing the brutalist art of grinding, sanding, fairing, and sanding some more? Why put yourself through it?
Well, from a purely practical standpoint, both would rather pay with sweat equity than pay a bank. When they realized they were unhappy with the sailing performance of the Trisalu and turned their attention to performance multihulls, the pandemic-fueled used boat market had driven prices off their charts.
“The market was just ridiculous for performance cats, particularly,” Matt says. And, having already bought a used older boat and completely refit it, they didn’t see the logic in finding something more affordable to do that again, this time twice the work with two hulls.
“I’ve taken an old boat and fixed it up. We made it great, but in the end, it was still an old boat,” Jessica says. “If we can make it a new boat, I would much prefer that. So that’s when I told Matt, if we have the opportunity, I don’t want to take on an old project boat. I don’t mind taking on a project, but if we can do it new, that’s what I want to.”
But really, the more fundamental answer goes to who they are. They like to learn new things. They trust each other. They aren’t afraid to leap off the edge and take what comes. They enjoy hard work and the satisfaction of knowing that they accomplished something big.
“It’s learning by doing,” Matt says of the Cruise Max 44 they are building, and of all the projects they’ve taken on. “The goal is of course to get cruising again. But the other goal is to enjoy the learning process. You sit there and you’re like, ‘Oh, that’s a cool idea. Let’s see. Let’s try to make this work.’ ’’
Starting Out
This trust in the process—the journey, if you will—is how they came to sailing in the first place. High school sweethearts from Michigan, they married in 2004 and bought a new house in Muskegon. Matt was managing a Toyota dealership, and Jessica was working in billing for home and auto insurance. Averse to debt, they worked hard to pay everything off, which meant not doing much on the weekends besides binging Netflix (back when they came in discs in the mail).
“One Sunday, it’s a beautiful day and we’re sitting there, we’re like, what are we doing? Let’s do something,” Matt says. They thought powerboating might be fun and started perusing Craigslist but quickly realized they’d be bored. They did, however, find an ad for a sailing instructor—so they took several hours of sailing classes and liked it enough that they bought a 24-foot Hunter to sail on Muskegon Lake and Lake Michigan.
“Which, it didn’t go well at the beginning,” Matt says. “We got the mast up, which was a whole ordeal, launched the boat and proceeded to back out and hit every single boat [in the narrow marina fairway] like ping pongs. Bam, bam, bam…everybody’s standing in there going, ‘What the hell are these people doing?’ All of a sudden, this old guy on a bicycle who had been watching us was like, ‘I’m jumping aboard!’ He jumped aboard our boat and ended up getting us out to the mooring.”
That was summer of 2008. Needless to say, they didn’t give up. They kept sailing and improving their skills, and meantime they learned that some people pitched everything and went sailing full-time. The concept of a community of cruising sailors was a complete eye-opener and instantly appealed to their desire to travel and see more of the world.
“We just truly didn’t know this was a world that existed at all,” Matt says. “And if it wasn’t for going down the rabbit hole of the internet and early blogs [by cruising sailors], we would’ve never stumbled into it either.”
In 2010, they bought the Sabre 34, in 2011 they sold their house, and finally they left Lake Michigan, made it out to the East Coast, and headed south. They haven’t really looked back since.
When they left, they started a blog with lots of photos to keep friends and family up to date about where they were and what they were doing. By 2015, it was getting some 40,000 unique views monthly, and fellow cruisers convinced them that they should transition the blog into video and join what was then the beginning of the YouTube sailing influencers phenomenon.
At first, they resisted the idea. Having spent years cruising in remote places, even having to move to a new anchorage to get internet to upload a blog was irritating. Nor did they spend any time watching other sailors on YouTube. “It just wasn’t my thing,” Matt says. “I couldn’t figure out what people were watching, why people were watching.”
What drew them in was when they realized that if they could translate their blog following into paying viewers, they could cover their cruising costs and stay out longer. Now, they have 175,000 followers on their channel, MJ Sailing, many of whom have become hooked on the latest adventure, albeit this one firmly on the hard.
The Big Build
Once they decided they wanted to build their own boat, they again trusted the process to get them to the right one. It was not a straight line, but ultimately they settled on a Max Cruise 44, designed and built in Vietnam. With two carbon daggerboards, relatively narrow hulls, and sharp reverse bows, the performance cat has a displacement of just 20,000 pounds.
“We didn’t want to like this boat; it was a new designer, brand-new company, completely unknown to us and out of Vietnam,” Matt says. But they kept coming back to it because it met all of their criteria, and every time they asked a question, the responses were quick, thorough, and supportive. They learned that the company had deep experience in building military boats and the cats were a new line that would benefit from that robust construction background.
Initially hoping to build the boat in South Africa, they ended up in the U.S. because of the uncertainties the pandemic was still creating. And, while they’d hoped to find a suitable and affordable build site in the Carolinas or south, they landed at Kentmoor Marina, across the Chesapeake Bay from Annapolis, when a friend who was a commercial realtor connected them to the owner. Proximity to the sailing community in Annapolis was a bonus, but it really was the boatyard itself and the people in it that turned out to be perfect for them—especially when the marina owner offered them the powerboat to live on while their project was ongoing.
“It’s just, it’s a great environment. We absolutely love it,” Jessica says. “We wish the temperature was a little bit warmer in the winter…but it’s just unbelievable generosity. That is definitely the spirit around here.”
The build began in March of 2021 when containers arrived with the hulls and other major pieces. Even then, the pandemic’s effects were slowing them down. Shipping costs were soaring and shipping routes were compromised. Getting materials like fiberglass and vinylester resin—which is what the boat is built with—bogged down for a time. All the while, Matt and Jessica dove in with their usual energy and sunny determination, learning, making mistakes, learning some more. Often, the builder was learning with them, since this was the first “kit” version of this hull.
“We were the guinea pigs,” Matt says. “We got hull No. 1, and the fact is that the design wasn’t fully finished before we started getting the pieces to start putting it together. And as amateurs, we didn’t want to necessarily make decisions on the fly for ourselves because we didn’t have these experiences like, oh, this will be fine.”
They are not shy about explaining their mistakes. For instance, he says, the company recommended that they dry-fit all of the parts first, but because of how and where they were building the boat, that was logistically not possible. So, when they glued in the cockpit seats, after measuring multiple times, they ended up 5 millimeters wider in the forward part of the cockpit, where the seats meet the door, than aft. As with navigating, a small mistake at the beginning multiplies out the farther you go. In the unforgiving realm of boatbuilding, what it all meant was many additional hours and weeks to correct—grinding, filling, fairing, re-gelcoating.
“I 100 percent cannot blame them at all because they gave us all the information and told us what to do, we just didn’t realize it, we didn’t do the dry fit the way we should have done, and so we’re going to pay the penalty of time… but this is how we learn,” Matt acknowledged in a video. Not being professional boatbuilders, he says, they have had to learn that certain aspects of the build require immense precision—like precisely placing the engine beds so that the engine and shaft are perfectly centered—while other areas can permit some leeway.
The builder and designer have worked with them constantly as they’ve evolved during the build.
“They’ve been so gracious in helping us. You know, I couldn’t imagine doing that with another company where they charge by the hour to help us out…I talk to them daily, just even to send them a quick question,” Matt says. “And they will come back with, ‘This is what we do in the yard,’ snapping photos or something like that. And so that has helped us. I couldn’t imagine building a complete one-off by ourselves.”
And while the build has clearly taken more time than they’d hoped, that time has allowed technology to change such that they’ve been able to make some new decisions. For instance, the initial concept was to have two outboards powering the boat. That has shifted to a Max Cruise Hybrid system—a 40-hp Yanmar diesel mated to a 10-kw electric motor in the port hull, and 10-kw electric motor in the starboard hull—an option that lets them also employ regen capabilities while sailing. The electrical system likewise has gone from 12 volt to 48 volt, increasing capacity and efficiency but also complexity.
Chewing over these details, Matt says, helps alleviate the grind that the past year has been when they have been bogged down in completing the interior and prepping it for painting, which they were perhaps a month away from in mid-March.
“So, you know, when I’m sitting there in the shower at night or whatever it is, I’m not thinking about sanding, I’m thinking about electrical and thinking about plumbing and that kind of stuff,” Matt says. “If I didn’t have that, that would be really difficult.” (They painted the owner’s head compartment already, mainly to see what the finished version would look like and what the physical logistics of painting would require. Sometimes, Jessica says, she just stands in there to reassure herself they’ll get through the seemingly endless prepping of the interior.)
Matt estimates they have 18,000 hours into the build, the majority of them his, since Jessica spends 30 hours a week plus on producing videos for their YouTube channel. They’ve also gone to Vietnam and Thailand and sailed two of the production versions of the boat—trips that confirmed their choice, filled them with more ideas, and fueled their motivation. The boats performed beautifully, sailing well up to wind speed, and even up to speeds at 18 knots, Matt says, the helm was balanced and the boat handled easily.
“That was really the most reassuring thing, was going there and actually feeling the boat and feeling it accelerate and going, OK, this is why we chose this boat. We did make the right choice.”
It is hard to overstate the level of detail and thought that has to go into a project this massive. Even with the company’s regular support and help and advice now and then from industry professionals, every part of the boat must be thought through from every angle, researched, thought through some more, then sourced. Sometimes, this gets overwhelming; other times, it’s the gravy.
“The water pumps, I just imported these water pumps from Italy, oh my gosh,” Matt says, lit up like a kid on Christmas morning.
“He was so excited,” Jessica says.
“I was able to go, OK, that’s what I want. That’s the best pump on the market,” Matt says. “We can pick each one of these things and get those things exactly from our experience—what works for us.”
Drawing from all that their years of cruising taught them and melding it with everything they are learning now is giving them a depth of experience and knowledge of every single inch of their own boat and its systems that a vanishingly few number of sailors possess.
“We are not doing this just to have a boat on the water,” Matt says. “We’re doing it because we’re enjoying the process, we’re learning skills, we’re tweaking it to fit exactly our needs and our desires. We’re building a boat for us.”
In Their Corner
Several companies are supporting Matt and Jessica as they build their boat, supplying everything from paints and sealants to deck hardware and equipment.
Currently they are:
AlexSeal Paint
BRNKL (security)
Dakota Lithium
Forespar
Lumishore
SouthCo
TotalBoat
Variprop
Vetus
MHPS Summer 2025
