Red Sea Sails · Company Introduction
Company Introduction · For Excess Catamarans · July 2026
RED SEA SAILSA sailing hub on the Egyptian Red Sea coast established in 2015 · Independent, owner-run, IYT-accredited.
Introduction
Company Introduction · For Excess Catamarans · July 2026
An independent, owner-run sailing operation on the Egyptian Red Sea coast — school, charter, regattas and events under one roof. Based in El Gouna, expanding into Somabay from 2026. We built the local sailing community from almost nothing; today it's the base everything else runs on.
Around 2013, Mo and Faisal found Sea Spray wasting away in Hurghada's New Marina — the home port of the MV Tala, the Red Sea Explorers dive liveaboard and a legend in her own right. Sea Spray is a Herreshoff H28 design, built in 1961 and sailed from California to the Red Sea in the 1990s. They restored Sea Spray and mastered blue-water sailing through rigorous hands-on experience, building the foundation for Egypt’s premier independent sailing hub.
Friends came along, then more friends, and weekends grew into a community. In 2015, Faisal Khalaf and Hazem Moussa turned it into something real: Red Sea Sails.
The roots run deeper. Red Sea Explorers, the technical-diving liveaboard running since 2005, is still going today — and RSS and RSE have been inseparable ever since. Through every lean season, it has been RSE keeping an eye on RSS, helping her weather the storms.
An 11-Year Operational Foundation: We didn't build a showroom—we built the sailing infrastructure of the Egyptian Red Sea. Now, we are ready to deploy the Excess fleet onto established water.
A small, owner-led team of sailors and operators. Everyone in the picture is on the water regularly. The three founders have formed Red Sea Regatta — the events and management company behind RSS.
Egyptian Sailing Federation · Felix Maritime Agency · FX Yachting (Greece) · Valu / Ulter — plus working relationships across the local marine industry.
A five-boat working fleet across monohulls and multihulls. Every boat earns its living — school, charter, regatta, events.
We won't inflate our figures — the point isn't scale, it's trajectory. A decade building a sailing community on a coast that had almost none, running charters and courses year-round for Egyptians and visitors from across Europe and the Gulf.
A real record behind a small operation — 1,404 charters, 4,000+ guests, 161 sailors trained, across two bases and every month of the year. The finance pack has the full picture; this is the shape of it.
A stretch of coastline with the conditions serious sailors want and the infrastructure serious owners need. 15–20 knots of thermal wind most days, flat water inside the reef, 300+ sailable days a year. Air 20–30°C, water 22–28°C. The season runs right through winter — with November to April as our peak, exactly when the Med is closed.
Sailing here isn't new — Egypt's yacht clubs date to the monarchy era, a century back. They've faded to dinghy-only over the decades. RSS is rebuilding cruiser and catamaran sailing on this coast: the school, the fleet, the regattas.
A self-contained town of lagoons, marinas and islands on the Red Sea. One of Egypt's premier second-home destinations, one of the world's top kite and wingfoil spots, and the base RSS was built out of.
A private peninsula an hour south of El Gouna. Steady cross-shore wind, protected bay, reef diving straight off the jetty, and its own kite and wingfoil stations. The new marina completes this year — where we ran the Somabay Sailing Festival in May and where we're expanding operations from October.
El Gouna to Somabay is an hour by road — or a 50nm day sail past islands, reefs and deserted anchorages. It's our flotilla and regatta route, with great diving and quiet islands the whole way down. Somabay isn't just an event base: from October it becomes a full year-round operation.
Within a short stretch of our two bases, serious developers are putting hundreds of new berths in the water. This isn't a forecast — it's under construction now.
| Development | Backed by | What's coming | Timing |
|---|---|---|---|
| El Gouna | Orascom | Marina town & first base · new deep-draft marina for superyachts planned | Live |
| Somabay | Abu Soma | New marina — our events base and 2026 expansion | 2026 |
| Ras Soma | Travco | New waterfront development with marina | Under construction |
| Marassi Red Sea | Emaar | Three marinas, ~600 berths, yacht club | Phased to 2030 |
| Amaala · across the water | Red Sea Global | Marina · Ocean Race Europe finale 2027 · ~180nm from Somabay | 2026–27 |
Gouna, Somabay, Hurghada, Marsa Alam — and the Saudi coast opposite. One connected sailing region coming online at once. We're the only sailing operator positioned across it.
Since 2022 we've run 23 regattas and festivals on this coast — 19 self-funded to establish the community foundation, with sponsors introduced on the last 4. The numbers below are the audience we operate in front of.
Two dates near-term: the El Gouna Boat Show, 8–10 October 2026, and the third edition of the Red Sea Regatta in December — the flagship on our calendar. Both are open to an Excess presence.
Our first festival at Somabay. And for the first time at one of our events, catamarans outnumbered monohulls on the start line.
A clear market shift on local waters: Egyptian sailing families are moving to catamarans faster than the industry expected, and the reason is cultural: cats carry the extended family and friends the way monohulls never could. Add the growing regatta appetite and this becomes a real emerging market.
A concentrated audience across the two bases — most sail here regularly, some fly in for events. All four groups are addressable, three from our existing network.
On this coast, families and groups are choosing catamarans — for the space, the stability, and the way they carry everyone aboard. The market demand is clear: regional buyers are choosing catamarans for space, stability, and family usage. Operating across school, charter, events, and retail allows us to capture the entire customer lifecycle. The right catamaran partner lifts every part of what we do — not only the dealership.
The demand is local and real. The market has narrowed to exactly our profile — school, charter, events and dealership under one roof. The right partner strengthens all four.
The Excess Lab is the one collaborative platform in the catamaran world — a growing tribe of owners, prospects and your design team. We're doing the same on the water: building the community and expanding the territory. We'd be your presence here, turning Lab members into sailors, and sailors into owners.
Excess built the platform. We bring the region, the community and the boats on the water to fill it.
RSS grows on its own — school, charter, events, bases. A partnership doesn't create the plan; it accelerates it. The bottom row is what Excess adds.
Year-round assets — the Mediterranean summer. In July–August the crowd moves to Egypt's North Coast (Sahel), the country's HNW summer scene. We station catamarans there for the season: showcase sailing and social days on clear water, in front of the audience that buys them. Red Sea winter, Med summer — the same boats earning across two markets. Berthing is costly there, so we'd offset it through sail-branding and sponsors — subject to the vessel agreement. [To refine together.]
Using Somabay as our regional operational hub and Hurghada’s direct international airlift, we bridge Excess into high-potential growth markets across the Middle East and East Africa.
Achievable multi-year expansion: Rather than spreading operational teams thin, we position Somabay as the central hub—driving regional B2B resort opportunities and hosting VIP fly-in experiences on our water.
This is a first conversation, here's why the two sides fit. The natural first step is Excess boats on our water: in charter, at our regattas, at the shows.
We've shown what we've built and where it's headed. The next move is yours — tell us how Excess would want to begin.
Red Sea Sails is an operator, not a broker. Everything in this deck is built and running today — the base for whatever we build next together.
