2020 was the year the Lagoon 450 “bulkhead-gate” got public. Basically, it seems many units in this range are affected by a flaw which would break the plywood front bulkhead. As there are over 1000 units of this range sailing all around the world, this topic quickly became the hot potato between Lagoon dealers and Lagoon technical support. In the meantime, owner’s group were created in various social platform, trying to assess the seriousness of the situation.
After long months of growing anger amongst owners, Lagoon finally created a page to officially comment on this situation.
“We can reassure you that forward bulkhead issue is not a safety issue. It still may become unpleasant if the reinforcement is made late, since bent or buckling bulkhead will only transfer the stress elsewhere”
Thomas Gailly
Lagoon Brand Director
Since then, there has been a increasing demand for bulkhead inspections, and we already ran quite a few, between Marina de Ragusa and Marina Cala del Sole, both very welcoming toward Catamarans, thus Lagoon brand. We follow the Lagoon tech support guidelines, as described in the following document.
On our last inspection, this is what we found for the front bulkhead, as checked from the starboard side. Obviously this boat is affected by the issue and will require the repair kit provided by Lagoon.
And now the inspection on Port side. This unit will definitely need the Lagoon reinforcement kit.
It’s not easy to show a step-by-step process to access the bulkhead for visual inspection, but we tried to share a few photos here.
As we received an increasing number of bulkhead inspection on this Lagoon 450 range, we conducted some quick online research to benchmark what we found. In this respect, this hull seems to be in the average of what can be found online on units reinforced under Lagoon’s tech control.
In a future post, we will document how we conduct the bulkhead reinforcement, under Lagoon’s supervision, as we are now waiting for their response. In the meantime, we share here a document we found regarding how hull #784 was reinforced on its starboard side.
boatservicelicata.com 
There are some furniture misalignments (washing machine door for instance), maybe a little more than on other catamaran we worked in. These boats are flexible by nature aren’t they. Some owners would complain on squeaking noise while under sail. We’ve repaired the sealings of the large front windows on a few L450, and the owners would tell us this has a huge impact to reduce the noise, so it’s not only the bulkhead.
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Do you have other symptoms?
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