Run a dinghy around any major harbor in the world’s far-flung cruising grounds, and it’s quickly apparent that there’s no such thing as a “perfect” cruising boat. But if you’re in the market for buying a used sailboat or cruiser, the essentials are nearly universal for every sailor: You need a boat that you can readily afford (including the refit and/or outfitting), that meets your specific needs (­depending on size of crew and intended itinerary) and that will be saleable afterward. Sure, high-end custom one-offs may be better constructed than “classic plastic” production boats, but that doesn’t necessarily translate into a better cruising experience. Need advice on how to buy a sailboat? Below are some sailboat buying tips divined from owning and sailing more than 100,000 miles in a dozen very different cruisers — from high-tech performance ocean racers to traditional split-rig wooden boats — over several decades.

Tip 1: Remember the 30:70 rule: The builder makes 30 percent of the boat and purchases the remaining 70 percent from other suppliers, almost all of which has to be periodically replaced at ever-higher prices. The 30:70 rule helps explain high rates of depreciation — typically 50 percent after the first decade and 75 percent after the second.

Tip 2: Focus on the total acquisition costs: the purchase price plus the inevitable refit. A good rule of thumb is to use only half the boat budget to buy the sailboat, then employ the other half for the requisite upgrades. A common boat-buying mistake is not reserving enough money for the overhaul. Also, prepare a realistic annual maintenance budget before the purchase. A boat stuck on the dock provides no joy.

Tip 3: Avoid being beguiled by a long list of equipment and cosmetic touch-ups. Fact: Most equipment will probably require replacement. Also, brokers and sellers know that cosmetics help sell boats, but they don’t make them sail any better. Similarly, view claims of a “recent refit” with skepticism. Does new anchor chain or new sails make the boat worth more when chain and sails are part of a boat’s normal complement of gear? (And that actually may be a “yes” when it comes to sails, but rarely will you find a used boat with a new inventory.)

Tip 4: The major refit costs will likely involve the rig and engine. After 15 to 20 years, it’s long past time to pull the mast, upgrade the standing rigging and terminals, take apart the spar and inspect for crevice corrosion and cracks, replace blocks, inspect the sheaves and mast step, and beef up gear as necessary. For extended offshore use, the general rule is to replace everything with heavier rigging and equipment. Losing a mast offshore makes for a very bad day. Paint makes masts look better but often hides corrosion.

Tip 5: Likewise, after two decades, it’s time to pay the “engine piper” — or pay him later. There are basically two options: rebuild what’s already installed (saving half the cost) or repower with a new engine. Typically, the in-and-out labor costs are equal to the cost of a rebuilt or new engine. Changing engine brands can significantly add to the price. Remember, many experienced cruisers cover as many as half their miles under power (especially those running up and down the Intracoastal Waterway). So a reliable engine is essential. No one ever complains when it starts up every time! Also, budget for ample spare parts; obtaining them in distant ports can be a real headache.

Tip 6: Nothing improves comfort more than size. Within limits, everything on the boat can be changed except size. But size is a double-edged sword, as costs and maintenance even in slightly larger boats are disproportionately higher. As size increases, so does volume. A 40-footer will have twice the volume of a 30-footer. When discussing size, focus on the waterline length. Length matters because size yields more storage space and more accommodations, and longer boats tend to sail faster, with a smoother motion. Bigger boats also provide the ability to take on additional crew for longer passages.

Tip 7: The boat’s gear is one of the most important factors to consider when buying a sailboat. With the right gear, including electric winches for furling mains or halyards, a senior couple in reasonably good condition can take a 60-footer offshore. But the maintenance and operating costs of such a vessel can approach six figures yearly. Most cruising is done in affordable vessels in the 40-foot range, where traditional gear gets the job done. All that said, when cruising really took off in the 1960s and 1970s, a 25-foot fiberglass production boat was often considered big enough for offshore work.

Tip 8: As mentioned at the outset, there’s no such thing as a perfect cruising boat, no matter how large the budget. Moreover, one’s notion of an ideal cruiser changes with experience, intended usage and age. Boats are always works in progress. Center cockpits with island double berths have nice accommodations for dockside use. For offshore sailing, on the other hand, and especially if they eschew island doubles for snug sea berths, aft cockpits enhance the sailing experience. Jib furlers and electric winches make life easier but also can introduce cost and maintenance issues. Everyone underestimates the cost of owning and operating a functioning cruising boat.

Tip 9: Beware of fancy joiner work and the liberal use of external teak. It’s nice to look at, but it doesn’t make the boat perform any better and is costly and/or time-consuming to own and maintain. Similarly, unless you have deep pockets, avoid teak decks. (Teak is lovely, but it’s also awfully hot in the tropics.) Whether screwed or glued, after 15 years, teak decks are typically ready for replacement, nowadays at a cost that would buy a nice cruising sailboat.

Tip 10: Given the choice, opt for a boat drawn by a reputable naval architect over one from a builder who designed his own boats. I’ve found that the collaborative efforts produce better boats. Pay special attention to designers and builders who focus on cruisers, not raceboats. When you’ve narrowed down a prospect, learn about the boat’s history, talk to owners of similar boats and experienced surveyors, and, when applicable, contact the club associations of respective models, which can be good sources of information. Whatever you’re considering, remember that a boat that’s “lived in the islands” is apt to have had a hard life.

Tip 11: If you’re truly considering long-range cruising, think long and hard about the boat’s accommodations for use offshore. Double berths in the bow or stern are wonderful in port, as are swivel chairs in the main saloon. Without functional sea berths amidships, however, the crew will wind up sleeping on the cabin floor and asking when the trip will be over. Any sea berth worthy of its name is a minimum of 7 feet long and has a proper lee cloth.

Tip 12: Like Napoleon’s armies, crews travel on their stomachs. Spacious galleys are fine alongside a dock, but at sea you need a galley where the cook is secure and the pots and pans stay off the cabin sole. If you really want to eat well offshore, nothing beats a large freezer or crews handy with a rod and reel.

Tip 13: Marine toilets can and do fail, usually at the most awkward time. Spares help, but a second head is better. Repairing a head when underway is probably the worst job afloat.

Tip 14: Regardless of your budget or the size of your vessel, take safety seriously. That means a ­certified ocean life raft, EPIRBs, ­SOLAS-rated and -equipped life jackets with harnesses, a VHF radio with AIS, ample bilge pumps and even a sat phone if voyaging offshore. Before loading up on electronics, cover the safety gear. Sure, it’s nice to have an SSB radio, a big-screen chart plotter, an autopilot, a TV, a Wi-Fi router and so on. But buy the life raft first — if not for yourself, then for your crew and loved ones (even if they’re not sailing with you).

Tip 15: When in doubt, walk away. Unless the boat inspires real passion, it’s the wrong boat. Find the most competent and highly regarded surveyor available. Ask him or her about the required refit and likely costs involved. I’ve never regretted walking away from, or spending the money on, a “problem” survey. Make sure you have a serious sea trial — and not just a short run with the engine, and a quick raising and lowering of sails — in a good breeze. Even very experienced sailors can fail to note the obvious on sea trials, especially rushed ones.

Looking back on the cruising boats I’ve owned, my favorite was a fiberglass 45-foot ketch built in the early 1970s with an aft cockpit, a centerboard and double headsails. It had none of the amenities we now take for granted (a small portable generator handled the “electrics”), yet we fairly scooted across the Pacific. Close behind was a 35-foot block-and-tackle wooden ketch built in the 1960s, with no winches. The larger boat is still going strong in the islands, the smaller one in Alaska. So that’s my final tip: You can sail a long way on a simple boat.

An engineer by training with over four decades of experience voyaging in the Atlantic, the Pacific and the Caribbean, Peter Berman is the author of Outfitting the Offshore Cruising Sailboat (Paradise Cay Publications, 2011).

Read about: Boat Buying | Sailboat Reviews

The post 15 Tips for Buying a Sailboat appeared first on Cruising World.

My wife, Harriet, and I have logged nearly three years and over 14,000 miles of full-time cruising on our Dolphin 460 catamaran,* Hands Across the Sea*. We frequently get asked about how we made the decision to sail on a cat. Our questioners don’t ask about obvious matters, such as interior room (cruising cats have about 60 percent to 70 percent more usable living space than same-length cruising monohulls, or the drawback of being charged double for a marina berth. They ask about issues that we, as lifelong monohull sailors, also wondered about before we began researching cruising cats.

Our answers, like those of most cruising sailors, are colored by our experience with our own boat. But because I’ve also sailed, in the course of boat reviews for magazines, over two dozen cruising cats-measuring from 30 to 57 feet-I’ve had a wide enough look at modern cruising catamarans to realize that there’s no single correct answer to every question. As with the smorgasbord of single-hulled cruising boats, cruising catamarans come in a mind-boggling variety of sizes, shapes, prices, and purposes. There really is something out there for everybody. So let the questions now begin!

6 Questions We Always Get

1. How fast does it go?

Well, that depends on a cat’s size and design, its sails, and how heavily loaded it is for cruising. First of all, when attempting to compare a cat with a monohull, try to pick boats of a similar length and performance pedigree. And realize that the conclusions you’ll reach will be nothing more than general guidelines. That said, I believe you can expect to make passages 20 percent to 30 percent faster aboard a cruising cat. On Hands, we’ve averaged 8 knots on passages of 1,000 to 2,000 miles without pushing the boat by carrying a lot of sail or taxing our mom-and-pop crew. As a doublehanded team, it’s crucial that we stay well rested, so our focus at sea is concentrated on off-watch comfort and not breaking gear rather than on all-out speed. That means easing off the throttle by reefing the sails, especially in boisterous seas, to ease the motion. But we’ve still been impressed with our cat’s ability to knock off the miles without knocking us out. Our “speed record” on Hands is 19.2 knots, surfing under main and jib in 28 knots of wind; at the time, the autopilot was steering. Yet we’ve met plenty of cat owners who are happy with 6-knot passages. Speed is exciting for them but secondary. They’re more thrilled with the ability to go from A to B without the heeling, rolling, and yawing of a monohull.

Cruising cats make good “powerboats” as well. For best fuel economy, cats usually run only one engine at a time and use both engines only when punching into head seas. For example, Hands powers at 7 knots with one engine at cruising speed (2,400 rpm), at 8 knots with both engines, and at 9 knots with both engines at full throttle. Thanks to the stability of two hulls, cats are balanced and steady platforms under power; it’s not necessary to have the mainsail up to stop the boat from rolling. And two engines provide handy twin-screw handling when it comes to docking.

2. Does it go to windward?

Without daggerboards, a cruising cat’s performance to windward is mixed; so-called “minikeels” don’t cut it. On a performance cruising cat with deep daggerboards, windward ability is far better-but usually still a bit shy of a similarly pedigreed cruising monohull. Why? In my experience, cruising cats simply aren’t set up to sail to windward efficiently. The typical three-stay, backstayless rig is prone to excessive headstay sag, which hurts pointing, and the low-aspect-ratio mainsail and headsail (and often, their sheeting arrangements) aren’t efficient for closehauled work. The windward performance of our own boat, which has 7-foot-6-inch daggerboards, was disappointing until we cranked the shrouds tight enough to minimize headstay sag. We also learned, by experimenting with sail trim, to sheet the mainsail quite hard to reduce leech twist; these tricks work wonders on a cruising monohull, too.

With her new setup, Hands sails at 7.5 to 8.5 knots in 15 to 18 knots of wind and tacks through 100 degrees, as measured by the boat’s GPS course over ground. When quantifying windward performance, don’t use the ever-dubious apparent-wind-angle readout. Instead, use the COG on your GPS as a way to measure how your boat points and how much leeway it makes. In steady winds, make several tacks five minutes apart, then take the average of the tacking angles to minimize the effect of subtle wind shifts and velocity changes. Of course, most of the cat cruisers we’ve met own cats without daggerboards, and they’re happily crossing oceans and exploring coastal areas-even though their boats don’t go to windward like a 12-Meter. One final thought: Given that the vast majority of the world’s cruising routes are downwinders, how much windward ability do you actually need in your cruising boat?

3. What’s the motion like?

One word: different. At sea, a monohull’s roll, heel, and yaw are familiar-not enjoyable, just familiar. A cruising cat serves up an alternative palette of motions: up, down, sideways, forward, aft. In almost all conditions, a cat’s moves are quick, but they’re small in amplitude. In real terms, this means that the rowdy sea conditions that send books and bodies flying on a monohull probably won’t spill your coffee on a cat. Sailing upwind in windy, choppy stuff, a cat’s motion is a kind of quick thrusting coupled with occasional sessions of hobbyhorsing-not something you want to do all day, unless you have to. But thanks to hull sections that are gently rounded, a cat doesn’t pound. As far as heel, you’ll get 4 degrees: In 12 knots, in 20 knots, in 30 knots of wind, you’ll heel 4 degrees. This is something that’s very easy to get used to. Downwind, life is good: A cat absolutely doesn’t roll, and the two widely separated, relatively narrow hulls minimize yawing; unlike the corkscrewing of single-hulled boats, cats exhibit superior directional stability. Monohull sailors are inevitably disappointed with a cruising cat’s lack of “feel” on the helm, but two hulls do make the autopilot’s job a lot easier.

A cat isn’t a magic carpet ride, however. In breezy conditions and rough seas on the beam, the motion can turn hyper: a quick dip to leeward, bounce up and straddle the wave, a quick bit of heel to windward on the backside. Lather, rinse, repeat. Harriet and I have both been seasick on Hands, and each time it’s because we’ve been driving too fast on a bumpy road. Taking your foot off the gas-reefing down-always eases the ride.

When moving fast, cats are noisier belowdecks than monohulls because water is rushing past two hulls instead of one. And almost all cats suffer, given rough and confused sea conditions, the thunderclap of chop smacking the wide, flat panels of the underside of the bridgedeck. At first the sound is alarming. With experience, it becomes an occasional annoyance. But it’s never a danger to a cat’s structure; the bridgedeck is a major structural component of a cruising cat, and it’s very strongly built. A high bridgedeck avoids the booms, but how high is high enough? The bridgedeck on Hands is about 27 inches high, and I consider that to be an acceptable minimum. Cats with bridgedecks nearly kissing the water at anchor-well, their crews are in for a very noisy ride offshore.

4. Can a cat carry a full cruising payload?

Yes, but there’s some truth to the saying “Overload a cat and it becomes a dog.” A cat’s bonanza of interior space must be treated carefully. Too much weight sabotages a cat’s high-end speed potential; gain too much weight, and you’ll still be sailing faster than most monohulls, but double-digit speeds will become elusive. So you’ll need to restrain your worst packrat/four-spares-of-everything instincts. On 46-foot Hands, even as we’ve added heavy equipment to the boat (four anchors and lots of chain, a 1,400 amp-hour battery bank, a washing machine, a watermaker, a hydronic heating system, and more), we’re continually cleaning house to save weight and stave off the clutter monster. Such winnowing will continue.

5. Do you feel safe offshore on a cat?

Yes. When a catamaran is holed, it’s reassuring to know that while it may swamp, it will rarely sink. Hands, for example, has three watertight crash bulkheads in each hull and several sealed, watertight sections beneath the cabin sole. On a cat, there’s also the built-in safety/redundancy factor of two engines and two rudders; break one, and you’ve still got one left. In fact, the more I cruise on a cat, the riskier seems the prospect of heading offshore in a monohull that can sink in 60 seconds and has only one engine and only one rudder.

6. What about capsize?

The tremendous stability of a cat simply has to be experienced to be believed, understood, and appreciated. Working on deck is safe; a cat barely heels and doesn’t suffer knockdowns. Through blasts of wind and steep seas that would’ve slapped down or broached a similarly sized monohull, we’ve stayed firmly on two wheels. Having been through it firsthand, I’m a believer in the cruising catamaran’s simple formula for awesome stability: buoyancy leveraged by lots of beam. Hands, for example, has 24 feet of beam. That said, one must exercise prudent seamanship when heading offshore in a cat. Harriet and I know that it’s “game over, wait for rescue” if we’re stupid enough to flip the boat. However, on Hands that would mean flying a full main and jib, sheeted tight, in 50-plus knots of wind on the beam-but note that the main shroud is designed to fail before the boat can be overturned. And let’s get real: If our seamanship is that bad, we shouldn’t be out there. On any boat.

3 Questions We Wish People Would Ask

1. How’s a cat at anchor?

Considering that most cruisers spend 99 percent (OK, maybe only 98 percent) of their time at anchor, this isn’t a dumb question. The simple answer is: Cats shine at anchor. They don’t roll; when the dinner plates go flying on the monohull next door, the worst you’ll get is a waddle. At anchor or on a mooring with a bridle led to the tip of each bow, cats barely “sail” like a monohull can. On Hands, we rode out a gale on a mooring to leeward of a 44-foot performance cruising monohull. While they tacked continually through 140 degrees, sailing back and forth, heeling to each gust, we tacked through only 30 degrees and stayed flat. Also, all cats have a safe-at-sea, convenient, out-of-the-way spot between the sterns for hoisting and stowing the ship’s tender. And finally, the “loading dock” cutaway-stern design of modern cats means that tender-to-boat access is superior to that of most monohulls.

2. What’s the most important equipment for a cat?

In my opinion, the best thing you can do for a cruising cat is get well-cut sails of low-stretch material. It’s my observation that for cats longer than about 35 feet, crosscut Dacron sails are just too stretchy to handle the loads. Headsails morph into bloated bags as the wind picks up, and mainsail leeches dump off to leeward; this means poor performance, especially to windward. On Hands, we have a full-batten Spectra mainsail with 12 feet of roach, a carbon/Dyneema self-tacking jib, and a large Cubenfiber screacher for light-air and downwind work, all by North Sails. Equip your cat with great sails and the boat will perform in accordance with its design intentions.

3. Would you go back to a monohull?

No-and we haven’t met any cat sailors who would. The first time Harriet and I went long-distance cruising, in the 1980s, we sailed a 15,000-mile route three-quarters of the way around the Pacific on board a heavy-displacement, full-keeled cutter. When we decided in 2006 to go cruising again, we approached the question of which type of boat to get with an open mind. After a lot of research that included hands-on testing, we chose two hulls-and we’re glad we did. But since then, we’ve found that there’s an inevitable one-two combination of ignorance and prejudice that cat owners run up against. Ours occurred when a veteran cruiser took a tour of Hands-during which he referred to our hulls as “pontoons”-and ended up announcing, “I could never get a cat. They just aren’t real boats.”

But the majority of monohull sailors are indeed curious, if cautious, about cats for cruising. They wonder, while trying to sift through anti-cat myths and pro-cat hyperbole, about these odd-looking craft. Cat sailors, meanwhile, have already discovered that there’s another way to go cruising. They know that it’s possible to sail flat and fast and safe and to cruise with all the comforts of home. So is it crazy for cruising sailors to consider buying two hulls instead of one? The journey starts with an open mind.

Tom and Harriet Linskey continue to cruise aboard Hands Across the Sea (www.handsacrossthesea.net) and bring educational, healthcare, and environmental help to island communities in need.

The post Why Cruise a Catamaran? appeared first on Cruising World.

Finding the Right Surveyor

To finance or insure a boat, you’ll need a current survey. But how can you find a reputable marine surveyor whose advice you’d trust with your investment and your family’s safety? “There are no requirements that say a surveyor needs to know anything more about a boat than what you may know,” says Dwight Escalera, principle surveyor at Executive Marine Services in Wakefield, Rhode Island. To complicate matters, your yacht broker can’t ethically recommend a surveyor to you; doing so could invite collusion.

Where to look? Three organizations—the National Association of Marine Surveyors, the Society of Accredited Marine Surveyors and the American Boat & Yacht Council—can help you find the expert you need. First, compile a short list of surveyors to interview. While your broker can’t give you a single name, he or she can provide a list of half a dozen names. Alternatively, go to the NAMS or SAMS website and enter the boat’s location for a list of certified local surveyors. SAMS accredited marine surveyors have demonstrated basic knowledge, including an exam. SAMS surveyor associates haven’t yet qualified as an accredited marine surveyor, but they’ve agreed to abide by SAMS ethics and standards. Membership in NAMS or SAMS doesn’t tell you about a surveyor’s knowledge of boat systems and construction. But the ABYC does, in eight areas: marine electricity, diesel engines, gasoline engines, marine systems, composite boatbuilding, marine A/C and refrigeration, marine corrosion, and general standards. “Knowledge of the ABYC Standards would demonstrate that a surveyor knows how a boat needs to be constructed in order to be safe,” says Escalera. ABYC deems someone who’s earned at least three certifications a master technician. Cross-reference these lists, then interview several candidates about their particular experience. If your boat has particularly complex systems, look for experience in those areas or call in an additional specialist.

The post Finding A Marine Surveyor appeared first on Cruising World.

Boat Buying 101

Is spaciousness in a cruising boat a good thing? Stability? How about shoal draft? Affordability? Performance? Seakindliness? Maintainability?

As much as we’d love to say yes, yes, and yes, each of these traits compromises another. The more honest answer to all these questions is: It depends. Seasoned yacht designers wrestle with the first axiom of yacht design—every choice is a compromise—in every element of each new boat they create. You want a roomy stall shower in your 38-footer? Sure, that can be done, but you’ll have to trade away the spacious nav station to get it.

The key to shopping for your own cruising boat is to clearly understand the links between these choices, then use them to find the most elegant compromise for the sailing and living that you and your boat will actually do together.

Every year since 1994, Cruising World has empanelled a team of Boat of the Year judges to identify the best sailboats from builders all around the world. You don’t have to prod that word “best” very hard before the paradoxes poke out from under every side of it. To contain them, the BOTY judges closely question every boat’s creator to uncover the nuanced intent behind the design brief; only against that criterion, unique to every case, can the boat be judged. So now, let’s turn the tables. Instead of asking boatbuilders and designers what they intended when they created their Dreamboat 42, we’ll put that question to you: What are you really looking for in your next boat? Challenging your own assumptions just may surprise you and lead you to the best boat you never thought you’d own. We’ll pose half a dozen questions, then illustrate possible answers with boats built in the last decade, particularly those that stood out in our Boat of the Year contests.

The Middle or the Edges?

In the 1970s, that heyday of production-sailboat building, we saw the great flourishing of yacht-design compromise: boats that raced and cruised, slept six, crossed oceans, and fit into a 35-foot slip. CCA racing rules begat the long overhangs on legendary cruising boats from Pearson and Rhodes and Columbia. The exaggerated tumblehome on some “cruisers” from C&C and other builders doffed a cap to the IOR racing rules. And while the subsequent 30 years have brought plenty of refinements, still the legacy of that first generation of full-scale production sailboats poses a crucial question: Do you want a boat that lives near the middle of the design box; a cruiser with full living accommodations that’ll let you do some club racing; some lively daysailing; some overnighters; some ocean passages? Or do you want a boat that boldly lives near one of the edges of the design box, a boat that deliberately trades away one or several criteria for full-stop excellence in another? As you scan the field, keep this in mind. Particular boats at the middle or the edges will exemplify elegant compromises. The key is finding the ones that really fit you best.

A look at Beneteau’s range brings the point home. The world’s most prolific sailboat builder offers one line, now called Oceanis, that deftly exemplifies the middle of the box, addressing such elements as displacement, sail area, hull form, and layout with a moderation that appeals to many sailors by allowing the boats to be used in many different ways. Recent BOTY winners in this category include the Beneteau 34, 40, and 49.

Meanwhile, the same builder offers two other lines that pointedly diverge from the centerline for more focused use. The Beneteau Sense 50 (2011’s Best Full-Size Cruiser), with it’s spacious, single-level layout on a wide hull form, invites a particularly social kind of cruising while turning away from straight sea berths, high bridgedecks, and small cockpit volumes—those design elements that traditionally telegraphed “offshore voyager.” And on the other side of the aisle, Beneteau’s First-series designs have traded away some of the cruising comforts of the Oceanis line for greater horsepower—and taken firsts in international regattas in the bargain.

We can see the same middle-vs.-edges difference in boats from other builders. Take the Catalina 309 and the J/95, two 31-footers that each won BOTY’s Domestic Boat of the Year award when they were introduced. The 309, like its award-winning bigger siblings, the Catalina 355, 375, and 445, exemplifies smart thinking from the middle of the box: full standing headroom, ample private sleeping cabins for two couples, complete working galley and head, plus tankage for a 200-mile motoring range.

The J/95, by contrast, trades that standing headroom for a low profile in a boat whose centerboard and twin rudders let you deftly sail into 3 feet of water. Designed by J/24 creator Rod Johnstone, the J/95 isn’t meant as a vacation home or a class racer like many of its siblings (including the J/133 that won Best Performance Cruiser in 2004) but rather as a fun, easy-to-sail weekender that does what it does emphatically well: take you daysailing, perhaps with a grandchild or two, right up to the shoreline.

Payload or Performance?

When we talk about the middle vs. the edges of the design box, those perimeters could represent any number of elements: luxury living spaces, all-oceans seaworthiness, straight-up speed. For now, let’s look at just one facet: the sliding scale that runs from payload to performance.

By payload, we mean the displacement required to make a boat a home. That means both interior space and the buoyancy in the hull form to carry the latest marine conveniences: genset, refrigeration, air-conditioning, entertainment suites, furniture-grade materials, and joinery. Hunter Marine exemplified the middle of this design box with boats like the Hunter 356, 38, 41 DS, and 49. Designed by Glenn Henderson, whose firsthand cruising experience included a year in the Caribbean aboard a 26-foot Pearson and whose deep performance-design credentials were honed in SORC boats, the Hunters of the last decade offered an exemplary blend of liveaboard comfort with boats you really want to take sailing, not just anchoring.

Now move farther toward the performance edge, and what do you get? Winners of the Best Performance Cruiser class—C&C 99 (2002), J/133 (2004), Sabre 386 (2005), X-46 (2006), X-34 (2009), as well as the Dufour 40 Performance Plus (Best Midsize Cruiser, 2009)—excelled at what they do precisely because they traded away some displacement for the light, stiff structure that invited their crews to pile on the sail area for a joyful ride.

Along another side of that edge are the so-called daysailers, a trend of lovely uncluttered machines whose performance is invested in the pure aesthetics of simple fluid dynamics. Optimized not for winning races nor for overnight or transoceanic passages but for simple shorthanded outings, highlights along this edge of the design box include the Morris M36, M42, and M52; the Sabre Spirit; the Friendship 40; the CW Hood 32; and the Hinckley DS42—all models from designers and builders who’ve also created standout craft from the middle of the design box.

Two (or Three) Hulls?

Multihulls are particularly defined by their place on this “payload or performance” continuum. The promise of displacement-busting speed depends on fine hull sections and minimum weight, while all that sprawling space between the hulls invites every comfort of a luxury condominium. One starting point for distinguishing multihulls on this sliding scale is to look at the displacement-to-length ratios of models built in the last decade. In the lightest third would be boats whose D/L falls between about 50 and 100: there you’ll find models from Gunboat, Outremer, Gold Coast, Soubise, Switch, Atlantic, Aeroyacht, Shuttlecat, and Fountaine Pajot.

In the middle group, with D/Ls ranging between 100 and 120, are boats from PDQ and Antares, Voyage, Dolphin, Maine Cat, Catana, Privilège, Lagoon, Fountaine Pajot, St. Francis, Nautitech, Discovery, and Seawind. In the final third, whose D/Ls range from about 120 to 200, are boats from Privilège, Leopard, Maxim, Dean, Seawind, Perry, Catana, Voyage, Lagoon, St. Francis, Voyage, Broadblue, and Admiral. Treat groupings like this with the caution that multihulls are particularly sensitive to the weight we put aboard them; the difference between light-ship and half-load displacement figures may be enough to bump a particular model into a different category, and you’ll see that some models appear in two categories. That said, you could make your own categories: sail area-to-displacement, tankage, displacement, or whatever detail is most important to you.

Also, keep in mind that lightness alone doesn’t equate with performance, and it certainly doesn’t confer seakindliness. To understand seagoing performance, try comparing real-world passage times. For the last 20 years, the Atlantic Rally for Cruisers has hosted transits of some 200 boats per year for the 2,700-mile Atlantic Ocean crossing from the Canary Islands to the Caribbean. For those of us who weren’t lucky enough to make those passages ourselves, the ARC results provide a gold mine of data. Look, for example, at the results from five years ago. Multihulls that posted between 180 and 200 miles per day in the 2007 ARC included a Fountaine Pajot 38, 44, and two 46s and a Lagoon 380 S2, 420, and 500. Multihulls that averaged between 200 and 230 miles per day included a Lagoon 410 S2, 440, 470, 500, and 55; a Catana 471; a Broadblue 385; and a Fountaine Pajot 43. Boats that averaged between 230 and 260 miles per day included a Fountaine Pajot 60, a Catana 471 and 582, and a Lagoon 570 and two 440s.

Note that one of the standout miles-per-day performers, the Lagoon 440, was also one of the most innovative boats on the payload side of the equation. As with the Lagoon 500, the flybridge-style helm station breaks through the typical space constraints of the boat’s size peers. In so doing, these models exhibit some of the most elegant compromises in the fleet.

Tested Tech or Innovation?

Of course, one of the ways to achieve cutting-edge performance is to employ cutting-edge innovations in materials or techniques. And that raises still another fundamental choice: Do you want a boat that lives in the comfort of settled technology? Or do you want to sail among the pioneers trying new things?

In half a century of composite boatbuilding, we’ve learned a lot. Solid structures of E-glass and polyester, sails of Dacron, rigs of aluminum and 7×19 stainless-steel wire, plus diesel engines and lead-acid batteries—all these technologies (among many others) are entirely predictable now. As a broad industry, we know their life spans, and we can identify the signs that indicate when it’s time to make replacements or repairs. But over the years, many innovations in boatbuilding design, materials, and techniques have come along to make sailing better. Cored hulls, better resins and reinforcing fibers, laminated sails, lighter and stiffer rigging, smarter propulsion and power distribution—all these innovations have been moving from the edges toward the middle for decades.

Among recent Boat of the Year contenders, we find fine examples from both sides of that question. The Leopard 38 and 44 (Best Multihull Cruiser and overall Best Import for 2010 and 2012, respectively) are Morelli & Melvin-designed cats built by Robertson and Caine in South Africa in close consultation with the folks who run The Moorings and Sunsail charter companies. What that means for these cats, in both the owner versions or the charter versions, is that these boats are built with a prime focus on the maintenance cycles—a vast database drawn from literally tens of thousands of charter days. Sailed from Cape Town on their own bottoms, these boats were honestly designed with the buoyancy necessary for all the conveniences and built with technology that’s been thoroughly tested over time.

For straight-up sailing, though, a different Morelli & Melvin-designed boat wins the plaudits of many a discerning sailor. Ask a roomful of pros what their dreamboat would be, and one name keeps coming up: the Gunboat. Beginning with the Gunboat 62 (Most Innovative, 2003) and followed by the 55, 60, 78, and 90, this line of luxury cats demonstrates what’s possible at the edges of boatbuilding design, materials, and technology. Epoxy resins, carbon-fiber spars, aramid rigging—these materials place the boat in a specialty zone when it comes to maintenance. But for those who are willing, there’s nothing so luxurious as the thrill of the power and speed that these boats deliver.

The innovations of a generation ago—asymmetric cruising spinnakers, cored hulls, deck-saloon layouts—have moved to the middle of the design box. Meanwhile, today’s builders keep trying things like hybrid propulsion (Lagoon), epoxy construction on a production scale (Tartan), and articulating transoms (Hunter) that could just break through the constraints of size and technology that others take as a given.

Eight Berths or Two?

A fundamental question we should all ask ourselves, given the limited volume of a sailboat’s hull, is how that volume should be divided. As noted earlier, the first wave of production sailboats turned every available surface into a berth to fit more folks in for the overnighters. The question for you is: How many people do you really want to shelter for the night?

Boatbuilders have offered refinements on both sides of that question. For more overnight guests, look to builders who regularly launch boats into the charter trade. They’ve worked wonders in providing virtually equal accommodations to two or three couples at once—often with a separate head for each cabin. The Jeanneau Sun Odyssey line (its 32 won Best Production Cruiser in 2003; the 40.3 won Best Value in 2005) offers variable layouts that let you install or remove bulkheads for two cabins or four.

On the other side of the equation are boats deliberately designed for a couple. Catalina has addressed this in several recent models. One of the most innovative interior layouts of the last decade is the Island Packet Estero (Best Midsize Cruiser Under 40 Feet, 2010), a 36-footer that altogether eliminates the ubiquitous V-berth, instead placing the dinette forward of the mast and ceding the aft sections to a luxurious couple’s cabin.

Cruising Far, or Wide?

Over the years, a host of builders have refined boats designed and built to address the traditional dream of many a cruiser: sell the house, leave the job, and head off over the horizon. Boat of the Year winners that were created to take you far in luxury include the Discovery 50 and 55; Hallberg-Rassy 37, 40, 43, and 62; Hylas 56; Kanter Bougainvillea 65; Malö 37 and 40; Morris 42; Najad 355; and the Passport Vista 545 CC.

But what happens when you separate the two parts of the phrase “far and wide?” I was on the 2011 Boat of the Year judging panel that gave the Cruising Spirit award to the Rodger Martin-designed Presto 30, a minimalist, wishbone-rigged ketch with camping accommodations and no standing headroom that nevertheless had our staff champing at the bit to take this boat—towed behind a full-size pickup, mind you—to explore Alaska’s Inside Passage, Mexico’s Baja peninsula, the Exumas chain in the Bahamas, and even high-latitude Hudson Bay. This would never be a sell up-and-set off kind of cruising boat but rather one that would let you keep your shoreside life fully intact yet interspersed with enough far-ranging sailing adventures in different places to build a whole life of memories on.

So, with that, we put the question to you: Would you like to go cruising far? Or would you like to go cruising wide?

Keeping Up With The Times

As we mentioned previously, modern innovations continue to redefine the sailing world, the sailboat market is constantly changing and new boats are being introduced. An important question to ask yourself is if you think these high performance boats are right for you, for example, Gunboat has released a new foiling catamaran – the G4 – as a performance cruiser. For some speed may be important, and for others it may be more about the trip than getting there quickly. While some modern cruisers are designed for ease, others are designed for a more advanced sailor and it is crucial to know the difference.

Some of the best cruising boats are tried and true classics from the last 30 years of boat building, and in fact, may people still prefer these iconic designs over the new sleek, high performance boats of today.

The post How to Buy a Sailboat appeared first on Cruising World.

repower

Many sailboats built two decades ago or earlier still have plenty of life left in them. But their engines may not. Grey Marine, Palmer, Perkins, Buhk, Universal, Pathfinder, Faryman—these once-common names in marine propulsion are all but gone from newer boats. Many of these engines were designed as truck or tractor motors, then retrofitted for marine use. The question facing you now is: Should you rebuild the existing engine? Or repower with a brand-new engine?

Let’s start with the cost of repowering. “You’re talking probably between $12K and $16K for a 30-footer, and $18K to $22K for a 40- to 45-footer,” says Mike Muessel of Oldport Marine, in Newport, Rhode Island, who’s repowered dozens of boats.

Expensive? Yes. But before you dismiss that option, first account for the real costs of a rebuild. “When people talk about rebuilding an engine, they usually mean rebuilding the internals—new pistons and rings and so forth,” says Muessel. Too often, he says, they forget to tally the cost of all the auxiliary parts: the starter ($400 to $800), alternator ($400 to $800), heat exchanger ($1,200), and saltwater pump ($500). Add a wiring harness, engine gauges, switch panel, transmission, and injection pump, plus labor, and the costs of a rebuild start to compete. It’s not uncommon, Muessel says, to spend 60 percent of the cost of repowering on a rebuild. And you’re still left with an older engine that’s long out of warranty.

If you’re shopping for an older boat, take a good mechanic with you on the sea trial and get a thorough assessment of the engine’s condition. With that firsthand information, factor the real costs of a dependable power plant into your final negotiations for the boat.

The post Aging Power Plants: Rebuild or Repower? appeared first on Cruising World.

marine finance

The lending landscape changed radically between 2006 and 2009. Now, as we survey the field of marine financing, we find a smaller band of players humming a happier tune. “We’re seeing historically low rates in marine finance,” said Don Parkhurst, senior vice president of the Marine and RV Finance Division at SunTrust, in Virginia. Still, money doesn’t come easy. According to James Barron, senior vice president of Essex Credit Corp., in 2006 interest-only loan programs and no-down-payment options were available. “Such programs are uncommon today,” he said.

As we saw in the home-mortgage markets, around the middle of the last decade, bankers weren’t careful about qualifying clients. In those years, it wasn’t uncommon to see “no doc” loans—that is, loans that require no proof of income—going out for loans of $350,000 or more. At that time, dozens of banks and service providers competed for that same business. Today, the field is smaller, said Parkhurst, with just three national lenders—Bank of the West, US Bank, and SunTrust—plus a handful of regional lenders focused on marine finance. Service providers shop multiple lenders to locate loans for prospective boat owners. (Essex Credit is a hybrid; it’s both a service provider and a lender.)

How have the recent years affected your ability to get a boat loan? In 2006, “people with bumps on their record could get boat loans,” said Parkhurst. According to Barron, in 2009 most lenders were extending marine financing only to customers with credit scores above 690 and no credit issues. Today, consumers with minor bumps in their credit can find financing, although at a higher rate and with some program restrictions.

What sort of financing can you expect? Assuming you put 15 percent to 20 percent down, Parkhurst described rates of 4.5 percent to 5 percent on a 20-year loan as “rock bottom” and even “artificially low,” based on the Fed’s actions. And still lower rates of 4.25 percent are available in variable-rate loans whose rates are locked in for the first three years. If you’re trying to keep monthly payments low, Essex Credit offers a 30-year loan with a 30-percent-down program.

The post Marine Finance: Historically Low Rates appeared first on Cruising World.

Hands 368

My wife, Harriet, and I have logged nearly three years and over 14,000 miles of full-time cruising on our Dolphin 460 catamaran, Hands Across the Sea. We frequently get asked about how we made the decision to sail on a cat.My wife, Harriet, and I have logged nearly three years and over 14,000 miles of full-time cruising on our Dolphin 460 catamaran, Hands Across the Sea. We frequently get asked about how we made the decision to sail on a cat. Our questioners don’t ask about obvious matters, such as interior room (cruising cats have about 60 percent to 70 percent more usable living space than same-length cruising monohulls; see “Lely’s Living Space,” page 50) or the drawback of being charged double for a marina berth. They ask about issues that we, as lifelong monohull sailors, also wondered about before we began researching cruising cats.

Our answers, like those of most cruising sailors, are colored by our experience with our own boat. But because I’ve also sailed, in the course of boat reviews for magazines, over two dozen cruising cats-measuring from 30 to 57 feet-I’ve had a wide enough look at modern cruising catamarans to realize that there’s no single correct answer to every question. As with the smorgasbord of single-hulled cruising boats, cruising cats come in a mind-boggling variety of sizes, shapes, prices, and purposes. There really is something out there for everybody. So let the questions now begin!

6 Questions We Always Get

1. How fast does it go?
Well, that depends on a cat’s size and design, its sails, and how heavily loaded it is for cruising. First of all, when attempting to compare a cat with a monohull, try to pick boats of a similar length and performance pedigree. And realize that the conclusions you’ll reach will be nothing more than general guidelines. That said, I believe you can expect to make passages 20 percent to 30 percent faster aboard a cruising cat. On Hands, we’ve averaged 8 knots on passages of 1,000 to 2,000 miles without pushing the boat by carrying a lot of sail or taxing our mom-and-pop crew. As a doublehanded team, it’s crucial that we stay well rested, so our focus at sea is concentrated on off-watch comfort and not breaking gear rather than on all-out speed. That means easing off the throttle by reefing the sails, especially in boisterous seas, to ease the motion. But we’ve still been impressed with our cat’s ability to knock off the miles without knocking us out. Our “speed record” on Hands is 19.2 knots, surfing under main and jib in 28 knots of wind; at the time, the autopilot was steering. Yet we’ve met plenty of cat owners who are happy with 6-knot passages. Speed is exciting for them but secondary. They’re more thrilled with the ability to go from A to B without the heeling, rolling, and yawing of a monohull.

Cruising cats make good “powerboats” as well. For best fuel economy, cats usually run only one engine at a time and use both engines only when punching into head seas. For example, Hands powers at 7 knots with one engine at cruising speed (2,400 rpm), at 8 knots with both engines, and at 9 knots with both engines at full throttle. Thanks to the stability of two hulls, cats are balanced and steady platforms under power; it’s not necessary to have the mainsail up to stop the boat from rolling. And two engines provide handy twin-screw handling when it comes to docking.

2. Does it go to windward?
Without daggerboards, a cruising cat’s performance to windward is mixed; so-called “minikeels” don’t cut it. On a performance cruising cat with deep daggerboards, windward ability is far better-but usually still a bit shy of a similarly pedigreed cruising monohull. Why? In my experience, cruising cats simply aren’t set up to sail to windward efficiently. The typical three-stay, backstayless rig is prone to excessive headstay sag, which hurts pointing, and the low-aspect-ratio mainsail and headsail (and often, their sheeting arrangements) aren’t efficient for closehauled work. The windward performance of our own boat, which has 7-foot-6-inch daggerboards, was disappointing until we cranked the shrouds tight enough to minimize headstay sag. We also learned, by experimenting with sail trim, to sheet the mainsail quite hard to reduce leech twist; these tricks work wonders on a cruising monohull, too.

With her new setup, Hands sails at 7.5 to 8.5 knots in 15 to 18 knots of wind and tacks through 100 degrees, as measured by the boat’s GPS course over ground. When quantifying windward performance, don’t use the ever-dubious apparent-wind-angle readout. Instead, use the COG on your GPS as a way to measure how your boat points and how much leeway it makes. In steady winds, make several tacks five minutes apart, then take the average of the tacking angles to minimize the effect of subtle wind shifts and velocity changes. Of course, most of the cat cruisers we’ve met own cats without daggerboards, and they’re happily crossing oceans and exploring coastal areas-even though their boats don’t go to windward like a 12-Meter. One final thought: Given that the vast majority of the world’s cruising routes are downwinders, how much windward ability do you actually need in your cruising boat?

3. What’s the motion like?
One word: different. At sea, a monohull’s roll, heel, and yaw are familiar-not enjoyable, just familiar. A cruising cat serves up an alternative palette of motions: up, down, sideways, forward, aft. In almost all conditions, a cat’s moves are quick, but they’re small in amplitude. In real terms, this means that the rowdy sea conditions that send books and bodies flying on a monohull probably won’t spill your coffee on a cat. Sailing upwind in windy, choppy stuff, a cat’s motion is a kind of quick thrusting coupled with occasional sessions of hobbyhorsing-not something you want to do all day, unless you have to. But thanks to hull sections that are gently rounded, a cat doesn’t pound. As far as heel, you’ll get 4 degrees: In 12 knots, in 20 knots, in 30 knots of wind, you’ll heel 4 degrees. This is something that’s very easy to get used to. Downwind, life is good: A cat absolutely doesn’t roll, and the two widely separated, relatively narrow hulls minimize yawing; unlike the corkscrewing of single-hulled boats, cats exhibit superior directional stability. Monohull sailors are inevitably disappointed with a cruising cat’s lack of “feel” on the helm, but two hulls do make the autopilot’s job a lot easier.

A cat isn’t a magic carpet ride, however. In breezy conditions and rough seas on the beam, the motion can turn hyper: a quick dip to leeward, bounce up and straddle the wave, a quick bit of heel to windward on the backside. Lather, rinse, repeat. Harriet and I have both been seasick on Hands, and each time it’s because we’ve been driving too fast on a bumpy road. Taking your foot off the gas-reefing down-always eases the ride.

When moving fast, cats are noisier belowdecks than monohulls because water is rushing past two hulls instead of one. And almost all cats suffer, given rough and confused sea conditions, the thunderclap of chop smacking the wide, flat panels of the underside of the bridgedeck. At first the sound is alarming. With experience, it becomes an occasional annoyance. But it’s never a danger to a cat’s structure; the bridgedeck is a major structural component of a cruising cat, and it’s very strongly built. A high bridgedeck avoids the booms, but how high is high enough? The bridgedeck on Hands is about 27 inches high, and I consider that to be an acceptable minimum. Cats with bridgedecks nearly kissing the water at anchor-well, their crews are in for a very noisy ride offshore.

4. Can a cat carry a full cruising payload?
Yes, but there’s some truth to the saying “Overload a cat and it becomes a dog.” A cat’s bonanza of interior space must be treated carefully. Too much weight sabotages a cat’s high-end speed potential; gain too much weight, and you’ll still be sailing faster than most monohulls, but double-digit speeds will become elusive. So you’ll need to restrain your worst packrat/four-spares-of-everything instincts. On 46-foot Hands, even as we’ve added heavy equipment to the boat (four anchors and lots of chain, a 1,400 amp-hour battery bank, a washing machine, a watermaker, a hydronic heating system, and more), we’re continually cleaning house to save weight and stave off the clutter monster. Such winnowing will continue.

5. Do you feel safe offshore on a cat?
Yes. When a catamaran is holed, it’s reassuring to know that while it may swamp, it will rarely sink. Hands, for example, has three watertight crash bulkheads in each hull and several sealed, watertight sections beneath the cabin sole. On a cat, there’s also the built-in safety/redundancy factor of two engines and two rudders; break one, and you’ve still got one left. In fact, the more I cruise on a cat, the riskier seems the prospect of heading offshore in a monohull that can sink in 60 seconds and has only one engine and only one rudder.

6. What about capsize?
The tremendous stability of a cat simply has to be experienced to be believed, understood, and appreciated. Working on deck is safe; a cat barely heels and doesn’t suffer knockdowns. Through blasts of wind and steep seas that would’ve slapped down or broached a similarly sized monohull, we’ve stayed firmly on two wheels. Having been through it firsthand, I’m a believer in the cruising catamaran’s simple formula for awesome stability: buoyancy leveraged by lots of beam. Hands, for example, has 24 feet of beam. That said, one must exercise prudent seamanship when heading offshore in a cat. Harriet and I know that it’s “game over, wait for rescue” if we’re stupid enough to flip the boat. However, on Hands that would mean flying a full main and jib, sheeted tight, in 50-plus knots of wind on the beam-but note that the main shroud is designed to fail before the boat can be overturned. And let’s get real: If our seamanship is that bad, we shouldn’t be out there. On any boat.

3 Questions We Wish People Would Ask

1. How’s a cat at anchor?
Considering that most cruisers spend 99 percent (OK, maybe only 98 percent) of their time at anchor, this isn’t a dumb question. The simple answer is: Cats shine at anchor. They don’t roll; when the dinner plates go flying on the monohull next door, the worst you’ll get is a waddle. At anchor or on a mooring with a bridle led to the tip of each bow, cats barely “sail” like a monohull can. On Hands, we rode out a gale on a mooring to leeward of a 44-foot performance cruising monohull. While they tacked continually through 140 degrees, sailing back and forth, heeling to each gust, we tacked through only 30 degrees and stayed flat. Also, all cats have a safe-at-sea, convenient, out-of-the-way spot between the sterns for hoisting and stowing the ship’s tender. And finally, the “loading dock” cutaway-stern design of modern cats means that tender-to-boat access is superior to that of most monohulls.

2. What’s the most important equipment for a cat?
In my opinion, the best thing you can do for a cruising cat is get well-cut sails of low-stretch material. It’s my observation that for cats longer than about 35 feet, crosscut Dacron sails are just too stretchy to handle the loads. Headsails morph into bloated bags as the wind picks up, and mainsail leeches dump off to leeward; this means poor performance, especially to windward. On Hands, we have a full-batten Spectra mainsail with 12 feet of roach, a carbon/Dyneema self-tacking jib, and a large Cubenfiber screacher for light-air and downwind work, all by North Sails. Equip your cat with great sails and the boat will perform in accordance with its design intentions.

3. Would you go back to a monohull?
No-and we haven’t met any cat sailors who would. The first time Harriet and I went long-distance cruising, in the 1980s, we sailed a 15,000-mile route three-quarters of the way around the Pacific on board a heavy-displacement, full-keeled cutter. When we decided in 2006 to go cruising again, we approached the question of which type of boat to get with an open mind. After a lot of research that included hands-on testing, we chose two hulls-and we’re glad we did. But since then, we’ve found that there’s an inevitable one-two combination of ignorance and prejudice that cat owners run up against. Ours occurred when a veteran cruiser took a tour of Hands-during which he referred to our hulls as “pontoons”-and ended up announcing, “I could never get a cat. They just aren’t real boats.”

But the majority of monohull sailors are indeed curious, if cautious, about cats for cruising. They wonder, while trying to sift through anti-cat myths and pro-cat hyperbole, about these odd-looking craft. Cat sailors, meanwhile, have already discovered that there’s another way to go cruising. They know that it’s possible to sail flat and fast and safe and to cruise with all the comforts of home. So is it crazy for cruising sailors to consider buying two hulls instead of one? The journey starts with an open mind.

Tom and Harriet Linskey continue to cruise aboard Hands Across the Sea (www.handsacrossthesea.net) and bring educational, healthcare, and environmental help to island communities in need.

The post Why a Cat? appeared first on Cruising World.

Catamarans have evolved over the past three decades, and the public perception of the cruising cat has gone from oddball and dubious to mature and proven. Viewed more clearly through the lens of experience, the spectacular flips of some early racing models are accepted now as the inevitable outcome of experimentation and the price of progress. Modern cats have benefited from the “oops” moments of these pioneers, and they’re now considered at least as safe as monohulls.

“The first question out of the mouths of visitors aboard catamarans isn’t ‘Will it tip over?'” says Hugh Murray, president of The Catamaran Company, which handles cats in every capacity, from new- boat dealer to used-boat broker to charter broker. “We haven’t really heard that for five, maybe more years. We do get ‘How fast can it go?’ But that’s usually for pass-along information intended for the guys back at the office. What people are really interested in is the space.”

That, and the idea that sailing holidays don’t have to mean the family has to be cramped together, white-knuckled, at 30 degrees of heel. Instead, they can spread out and lounge in the airy deck-level saloon, with its wide view of the horizon; engage in the sailing in the roomy cockpit; or lie on the trampoline and watch the sea go by.

The most popular cats bear out this dynamic. Their predominant features are an abundance of living space aboard a stable platform. Despite the inherent potential in the configuration, cruising catamarans, just like cruising monohulls, aren’t built for speed but for comfort. Their appeal has as much, if not more, to do with the luxury they offer–and a penchant for lying quietly to an anchor in a rolly roadstead–as it does with their ability to sail a little faster off the wind than their monohull cousins. OK, in some cases, a lot faster.

While cabin count and condo-like convenience rank high on the cat designer’s brief, they come blended with performance and seakeeping features in all ratios. There’s a cat for every wallet and want, from small to large and from gentle and domesticated to fast and feral.

Under 30 feet, a catamaran’s natural proportions converge to make it less habitable than a monohull of similar length. The hulls become constrictingly narrow, and it requires great artistry on the part of a designer to fit headroom into a bridgedeck saloon without seriously limiting clearance over the water or condemning the profile to a caricature.

One of the smaller boats with true liveaboard potential is the 33- foot Gemini 105Mc. It has accommodations approaching those of a 38- or 39-foot monohull–and at $150,000, not a dissimilar price. With centerboards raised and rudders tilted up, it can float in knee-deep water.

At 40 feet and over, available space seems to grow exponentially.
“These boats have more space than many two-bedroom apartments,” says Murray. “Buyers see them as a home away from home, and more and more they’re bringing household appliances aboard, like a flat-screen TV for every cabin.”

Still, the draw for some sailors remains the potential for exciting, wave-skimming passages. For them, such builders as Outremer and Maine Cat offer boats with more slender hulls and less capacity for weighty accoutrements.

“The Outremer 45 has as much performance as you’d want in a cruising cat,” says Gregor Tarjan, the president of Aeroyacht, a dealer for Outremer and Fountaine Pajot. “The trade-off is narrow hulls and low headroom.”

Compared with more sumptously appointed 40-footers, the slippery Maine Cat 41 is on a tighter budget for sleeping quarters, and it doesn’t even have a bridgedeck saloon. On the tween-hulls platform, it’s set up for open-air living under a fixed hardtop–a sun porch under sail.

As the number of new catamarans has proliferated, so too has the number of used boats. “In the early 1990s, there might have been under 100 used multihulls on the market, max,” says Bill Ware, co- founder of 2Hulls, which is now part of The Catamaran Company. “Today, we have over 170 listings, and that’s just The Catamaran Company. Worldwide, the number is much larger.” In early spring this year, his company listed half a dozen Lagoon 38s, which isn’t surprising given the builder was approaching hull number 400 in production. Their prices ranged from $225,000 to $325,000, an indication that cats from the recognized builders hold their prices well.

Over time, Ware has seen many different types of buyer. “Some sailors buy a cat as a transition boat,” he says. “Especially monohull sailors. They might be thinking of moving to a trawler later on, but they buy a cat because it’s stable, and they aren’t ready to give up the sails.”

Whatever your needs and preferences, and those of the others around you involved in the decision making, you’ll find a number of choices where your desires will mesh with what’s available.

**

Equations in Cat Design: Develop a critical eye for proportions**

Many factors determine how a cat functions, that is, how well it delivers its promise as a sailboat and as a living space. Designers go to great lengths to create the desired level of appointments while balancing hull hydrodynamics and weight distribution to provide the requisite combination of performance, stability, and ride characteristics.

As in monohull design, one goal is to keep weight close to the center of the vessel to reduce pitching. But if the weight is too concentrated, the pitch frequency may in fact become uncomfortably short. This won’t bother adrenaline junkies but might put the less sanguine on edge. Moving weight away from the center of gravity will lengthen the pitch frequency but also increase its amplitude. Too far, and the motion both tires the crew and slows the boat.

Hull design, particularly how finely the bows and sterns are drawn, also contributes to pitching characteristics. Full ends with generous reserve buoyancy will act quickly to damp the motion, perhaps uncomfortably so. Fine ends may not damp the pitching enough, resulting in hobbyhorsing and, perhaps, the potentially dangerous immersion of the bows. Fine ends work best on boats groomed for speed with centralized weight, whereas full ends better absorb the long- period pitching of a heavier boat with a more widely distributed load.

It follows that boats designed for the performance end of the spectrum have short bridgedecks that keep the weight centered; pure cruising boats spread the accommodations, and the load, more longitudinally. The bridgedeck of the built-for-speed Gunboat 48 is 53 percent of the boat’s overall length. On the Switch 51 and the Catana 47, it’s 55 percent. At the opposite extreme are the Gemini 105Mc (89 percent), some Lagoon models, and the Royal Cape Catamarans 50 (82 percent). Most cats fall between the Nautitech 40 (63 percent) and the Lagoon 420 (77 percent).

Another key factor in the agility-vs.-amenity equation is the length- to-beam ratio of the hulls at the waterline. Narrower hulls are faster but don’t have the payload capacity of beamier hulls. Most cruising-catamaran hulls have length-to-beam ratios of about 8:1, but at this ratio, even a 40-foot hull offers tight quarters, taxing the designer to create accommodations that aren’t claustrophobic. Ways of creating additional living space include flaring the hulls above the waterline or stepping them inward in way of the wingdeck. This sometimes results in increased drag when sailing in anything other than flat water.

Builders run the gamut from mass producers to one-at-a-time custom yards, and each weighs the features that affect performance, comfort, and cost, hoping to strike the balance that will attract the right customers in the right numbers. Clues as to the builder’s thinking are visible on the boat’s exterior.

If peppy performance is on your wish list, look for a bowsprit, used to project the tack of a cruising chute of some kind. Look also for daggerboards, which particularly improve windward performance and maneuverability. Windage is a big drag on cats, so boats designed for speed and agility tend to have a more streamlined appearance: rounded deck edges; smooth, lozenge-shaped deck saloons; lower total profile. Faster cats also have shorter bridgedecks, so eyeball the trampoline area forward and the hull extensions aft.

More cruiserly craft tend to have longer bridgedecks, as mentioned above, plus larger and squarer superstructures and simpler rigs. If you don’t want to hassle with daggerboards and will be content with less spectacular performance, go with fixed keels; depending on where you cruise, you can take advantage of their shallow draft when seeking isolated anchorages or pulling up near a beach.

If you’re a wind-in-the-face sailor, you might prefer dual helm stations out on the sterns over the more common position at the deckhouse bulkhead. Nautitech and Catana favor this approach, while Lagoon, on its larger models, has a flybridge, removing boathandling operations from the cockpit completely.

One of the most talked-about dimensions on catamarans, and one that you don’t often find in the published literature, is the wingdeck clearance–the height of the wingdeck or bridgedeck above the water. Slamming in a seaway can make offshore passages noisy and uncomfortable, and while factors like bow buoyancy and the shape of the tunnel also come into play, high wingdeck clearance is the single surest way to reduce the number of impacts in a given sea state. In boats intended for high-speed offshore voyaging, designers aim for as high a clearance as possible in keeping with goals for low weight and windage. Height isn’t so critical in boats intended for cruising in coastal or sheltered waters.

By making observations from the dock, you can get an idea of which boats might satisfy your sailing needs. Only then should you venture aboard–where you’ll surely be seduced by the sumptuous saloons.

**

Payload vs. Pace: Some designs handle the poundage better than others**

With a few exceptions–Prout catamarans came into existence before the age of fiberglass and of singlehanded transatlantic races–cats first entered the public’s awareness by sweeping the field in the ocean races in which they were allowed to compete with monohulls. But just as it’s a myth that catamarans are inherently unsafe, it’s also a myth that they’re all fast. They’re susceptible to the same performance constraints–poor hull design, too much weight, insufficient sail area, inefficient keels–as monohulls. And as with monohulls, only 10 times more so, every creature comfort you bring exacts its price from speed.

Catamarans are sensitive to loading in direct proportion to their projected performance. “You can add 10 percent to the weight of a monohull and lose maybe one percent of its maximum speed,” says Gregor Tarjan, Aeroyacht’s president. “Do that to a multihull and you lose 10 percent of speed.”

The narrow hulls of a fast boat will immerse more quickly than the wider hulls of a more cruiserly craft. And because cats have so much volume and deck space, it’s easy to load them up. An average 40-foot cruising cat with a hull-to-beam ratio of 8:1 has a pounds-per-inch- immersion measurement of about 1,300 pounds. One hundred gallons each of diesel (700 pounds) and water (800 pounds) will set it down an inch. A 50-pound anchor with 250 feet of 3/8-inch chain adds 450 pounds, and you’ll probably want three anchors, a couple of spare rope rodes, and half a dozen mooring warps, bringing you close to the second inch. Add a generator in its sound shield, an air-conditioning compressor, and a foursome of air handlers, plus a battery charger and an inverter, and you’re looking at your third inch. It’s not unusual on a 40-foot cat to see a 12-foot RIB with a 20-horsepower outboard, a rig that can easily weigh 500 pounds, slung from davits that weigh another 100 pounds. Add to that a barbecue, diving gear, a kayak, and a windsurfer, and you’re well on your way to your fourth inch. We haven’t yet added tools and spares, never mind food, beverages, pots and pans, linens, or even people. If you attain the advertised capacity payload, which for a 40-foot cat might be about three tons, the boat will float almost five inches below its designed “light ship” waterline.

When the boat floats lower, wetted surface grows. If the transoms immerse, drag increases significantly. Perhaps more important than the lost performance, the wingdeck clearance is also reduced. The closer the boat’s wingdeck is to the water, the lower the sea state in which it’s likely to interact forcibly with waves, a situation that’s again uncomfortable and slow.

The tendency of boats to accumulate weight hasn’t gone unnoticed by their builders. In several instances, a revised model has simply been lengthened. Two examples are the Dolphin 460, which started life as the Dolphin 430, and the Manta 42, which grew from the Manta 40. Both benefited from their sterns being stretched out. They gained volume aft, some of it below the waterline, supporting the added weight that seems to accumulate back there, around the engine compartments and in the aching voids under cockpit seats and coamings. Extending the existing hull lines farther aft raises the transoms, too, and as long as the bridgedeck remains unchanged, it’s now a little more centered on the longer hulls, and the new combination should be less prone to pitching.

Eyeball the transoms and the stems while the boat is afloat and look around the boat to determine its load condition: Are the fuel and water tanks full? Is there a generator? How many anchors and mooring lines? Are provisions and stores aboard? How many people?

If you want to make the most of the boat’s sailing potential, pay attention to how much gear you bring aboard. Take inventory regularly, and send ashore anything that hasn’t earned its place aboard. Keep those transoms clear of the water.

**

Loads and Righting Moments: A cat bears heavier loads because of its inherent stability**

If cruising catamarans have failed to live up to the mayhem predicted by early critics–oceans littered with upturned boats–it’s due in large part to lessons learned from accidents with early racing machines. Many capsizes were the result of the lee bow immersing under the dual influences of wind pressure and wave action, which caused the boat to pitchpole. A key factor proved to be the relationship between length and beam. It’s no coincidence that the maximum beam of a cruising cat rarely exceeds 55 percent of its length. And high freeboard forward isn’t there simply to provide headroom but to create reserve buoyancy in that all-important lee bow.

It’s rare for a catamaran to capsize under wind force alone. To render the chance as unlikely as possible, designers limit the sail area of vessels (such as charter boats) that might end up in the hands of less experienced cat sailors. A typical situation that might catch the unwary is a tropical rain squall, in which the wind can gust from 15 to 30 knots in seconds. Even with sail areas small enough to minimize such a threat, most cruising cats have adequate sail power–sail area-to-displacement ratios in the low 20s–for all but the lightest conditions.

The reason for employing such a cautious approach to design is simple: Catamarans don’t give the same clues as monohulls do when they’re overpressed. Most important, they don’t heel.

At small angles of heel, a monohull has a small righting moment. As wind strength increases, a monohull responds by heeling, which dampens the shock load in much the same way as a stretchy nylon line absorbs energy. A monohull’s righting moment increases until the heel angle reaches about 60 degrees, and it remains positive well past 90 degrees, at which point the heeling force becomes minimal, and the boat begins to right itself.

A cat’s righting moment is the resistance to immersion offered by the leeward hull. It starts out as a measurement much greater than a monohull’s, so the boat is unable to absorb wind gusts by heeling. A wind force on the sails that would cause an average 45-foot cruising monohull to heel 15 degrees would heel our average 40-foot cat only three degrees.

When a cat does heel, its righting moment increases until the leeward hull carries the entire weight of the boat and the windward hull is flying. For practical purposes, designers consider this the angle of vanishing stability because from this point on, as the boat heels farther, righting moment diminishes rapidly as the center of gravity moves closer to the leeward hull. On our theoretical average boat, this angle is about 16 degrees. It’s fairly general practice among naval architects to design cruising cats so that in theoretical static loading conditions, this point won’t be reached in winds under 35 knots.

As discussed in “More Righting Moment Means Less Heel” (see the sidebar), the maximum righting moment for an average 40-foot cat is approaching twice that of an average 45-foot monohull. Since this is the starting point for calculating rigging loads, it follows that spars and standing rigging have to be substantially more rugged. Here, the cat’s wide platform works in its favor: The wide shroud base reduces the shroud load needed to support the spar, which in turn reduces the compression loading on the spar. Nevertheless, working loads are high, and standing rigging tends to be heavier on a cat than on a monohull.

Moreover, the compression load from the mast must be carried in an unsupported area, literally in the center of a beam, and the headstay load likewise. These loads and the racking forces generated as the boat moves through a seaway demand structures meticulously engineered to be stiff. Any flexing will generate damaging cyclical loads in the hull and the rigging.

However placid a catamaran may appear at rest, once it gets moving, it’s a powerful creature and deserves respectful handling by the crew.

**

Sailing a Cat: Attention to trim and reaching sails can provide a large speed bonus**

To power the boats under sail, designers, with few exceptions, have settled on fractional rigs with small overlapping headsails and big, roachy, full-battened mainsails. This is a combination that’s easy to control and keeps the center of effort low, which is helpful in obtaining maximum sail area while limiting, if not eliminating, the potential for capsize.

Small headsails keep headstay loads low. This makes backstays less important, to the degree that they can be replaced by upper shrouds led well aft, where, well outboard thanks to the wide beam, they don’t interfere with the roachy mainsail.

But speed and performance aren’t givens. “Four things make catamarans slow,” says Gregor Tarjan of Aeroyacht. “Weight, of course. Then a dirty bottom, baggy sails, and an inattentive crew.” That sounds a lot like the operating condition of many cruising boats, but at least a cat crew that pays attention can work to ameliorate any other deficiencies.

While the first impression gained on stepping aboard a cat and into the opulence of a fruitwood-trimmed saloon is of unabashed ease and luxury, these boats demand physical activity when under sail. In-mast mainsail furling has no place here-such a sail simply doesn’t have the needed power or tunability.

Cat mainsails are big, and they’re heavily built to withstand high working loads. Setting and stowing them requires effort (or help from the winches). Bigger mains go up on two-part halyards, and cat builders often provide a winch on the mast. An electric winch, or a convenient lead to the anchor windlass, can be a great help. The sail is usually stowed in a boom-mounted sail bag, but the high house and (frequently) solid bimini roof make packing it a relatively easy task, as long as access to the roof is simple and secure.

Trimming and steering a catamaran call for a delicate touch. Its great beam means a cat can be fitted with a long traveler with which to minutely control the set of the main, the boat’s primary driving force. And because that force can be so powerful, midboom sheeting is unusual. Under way, the mainsheet is the safety valve, typically controlled on a winch mounted near the helm.

Changes in heel angle are so subtle that you have to focus on telltales and the speedo to measure the effect of sail adjustments. You’ll also likely want to tack downwind, because achievable reaching speeds, even in moderate airs, are so much faster than sailing on a dead run.

For light windward work or moderate-air reaching, a reaching sail (variously called a gennaker, screacher, or code zero) can add knots and excitement. Set flying on a furler or, in the case of an asymmetric spinnaker, from a sock, it’s easy to hoist and recover from the vast foredeck. Several builders offer bowsprits, and some support tacking the sail to the windward bow when off the breeze. On the Gemini 105Mc, an optional track spans the bows so the sail can be set to windward on either jibe without detaching the tack.

On any sailboat, the enjoyment you get from sailing is directly proportional to the effort you put into getting the best out of the boat. In the right conditions of steady breeze and flat sea and with an active crew, a catamaran can almost match a ride on a magic carpet.

**

Speed, Economy, Comfort: You can have any two of these**

Legendary multihull designer Dick Newick is generally credited with coining the speed/economy/comfort triangle as it applies to multihull sailboats, though it’s true for vehicles of any kind. Essentially, you can have any two of these qualities at the expense of the third. You can have speed at a low price if you’re willing to give up comfort, and you can have comfort at a low price if you’re willing to give up speed. If you want some of both, expect to pay for them.

If we take a couple of examples from the current multihull marketplace, we can see how effective the triangle is in measuring what you get for your buck. The Gunboat 48, which won the award for Most Dramatic Moment during CW’s 2006 Boat of the Year trials (see “Liftoff,” Editor’s Log, December 2005), has a light-ship SA/D of 32.3, making it far and away the most powerful of the catamarans reviewed. Another way to look at power in a cat is to compare displacement to the boat’s footprint, or length times beam. The Gunboat weighs a shade under 17 pounds per square foot, while three others in the Boat of the Year competition–the Lagoon 500, St. Francis 50, and Jaguar 36–came in between 25 and 27.

So what does it cost? The Gunboat is fully tricked out for cruising with beds, heads, galley, and the works, but everything is pared down to save weight, and the package comes in at a cool $73.45 per pound of displacement. The Lagoon 500 costs $17.35 per pound, but fashioned more for comfort and loaded with amenities, it weighs 131 percent more. When sailed in top-performance mode, the Gunboat behaves like a racing boat, demanding constant close attention from the crew. The Lagoon, while capable of a fair turn of speed off the wind, won’t keep anyone’s adrenaline gland on a hair trigger, but most will find it both slower and more relaxing to sail.

These boats also represent two other extremes in the market. The Gunboat is essentially custom built of advanced, lightweight, and high-strength materials. The Lagoon is built largely of standard materials in great numbers on a sophisticated production line by a company (Groupe Bénéteau) with enormous purchasing leverage.

The cost-per-pound measure is a useful starting point for someone looking to get the most stuff for the dollar, but as the above example shows, it needs to be weighted with other factors, such as where the boat is built, by whom, with what materials, and at what level of outfit.

High-volume builders, led by Lagoon and Fountaine Pajot, produce large numbers of boats in a wide range of sizes to a recognized standard of construction. Options are limited by the economics of the production line, but you usually have a choice between layouts for “charter” or “owner” use. Yards that build fewer boats per year, such as Privilège, offer a broader range of options, and as a rule you can expect to pay more in proportion to the degree of customization you seek. Switch Catamarans builds only four boats a year, each one highly customized around the essential structural components. Manta, one of three U.S. catamaran builders, builds about 10 Manta 42s a year, each to order. It offers a choice of finish materials, and it controls the cost of personalizing the boats by grouping extras in incremental packages.

The largest producers don’t build much under 38 feet, although Fountaine Pajot is introducing its Mahé 36 this year. Numerous smaller builders take up the slack. The Maine Cat 30 and Performance Cruising’s 33-foot Gemini 105Mc illustrate two ways of addressing the problem of fitting livable quarters into shapes that please the eye. Below 30 feet, on smaller hulls, you’re moving into day-cat territory.

If you’re looking to defray some of the cost of ownership and sub out the maintenance to someone else, there’s always the charter business, which has absorbed a large portion of worldwide catamaran output. The Moorings sells its own branded version of Robertson and Caine’s Leopard line, and many boats built by Voyage Catamarans enter that company’s integrated charter business. Most bareboat companies large and small have cats in their fleets, so you can board your cat close to home or, if you prefer, in a favorite cruising ground.

First, you have to decide what you want your buck to buy: frills or thrills? Maybe you should take a test drive first.

**

Cruise Before You Choose: Whether on charter, as a demo, or with a friend, take a test sail**

Purchasing a catamaran for the first time represents a big investment, not just in money but in a different style of onboard living and boathandling. Happily, you don’t have to jump in without testing the waters first. There are many ways to get hands-on experience of cats and the cat experience before making the leap.

Every October, the U.S. Sailboat Show in Annapolis, Maryland, is a great place to view a variety of cats, and Performance Cruising hosts Multihull Demo Days (www.multihulldemodays.com) for several builders shortly thereafter. Many of the companies that have been exhibiting at the show make boats available for brief demonstration sails, so this is a good chance to check out several boats in a condensed period of time. The Miami Strictly Sail show in February also has dozens of cats to view dockside.

But at any time of year, one of the best investments in trial sailing is to take the entire family for an extended introduction to what their new onboard roles might be by chartering a cat. You’ll learn a lot by moving aboard any boat for a week. And to get a jump on the special handling techniques involved and to flatten your learning curve generally, you can also hire and take along an experienced skipper. You can even go whole hog and charter a fully crewed cat, learning from professionals while being pampered.

Charter opportunities abound. At one end of the supply spectrum, the fully integrated Catamaran Company () provides every service, from selling new boats to bareboat and crewed charters worldwide to brokerage sales of used boats. Major charter companies, including The Moorings (), Sunsail Sailing Vacations (www.sunsail.com), and TMM Yacht Charters (www.sailtmm.com), feature catamarans in numerous locations. Even smaller builders often have unique trial opportunities. For example, Maine Cat (www.mecat.com) operates a single base in the Bahamas where you can charter a Maine Cat 30 or 41.

If you enjoy traveling in company, Cruising World Adventure Charters hosts a Sail-a-Cat flotilla (www.sailingcharters.com) every year in the British Virgin Islands. This is an opportunity to share impressions with like-minded sailors-not to mention that on this year’s trip, you’ll get a chance to spend time with Cap’n Fatty and Carolyn Goodlander.

For a more ambitious immersion in catamaran sailing, you could hook up with a crew-networking outfit, such as Offshore Passage Opportunities (), through which you might find a crew position on a delivery.

The chances to learn about cat sailing don’t end with a purchase, however. PDQ Yachts runs a program called PDQ U every summer on Lake Ontario for owners taking delivery of their new boats.

Jeremy McGeary is a CW contributing editor.

The post Join the Cat Crowd appeared first on Cruising World.

International Marine Insurance Services, phone (410) 643-8330 (MD)
Seaward Marine Insurance, phone (305) 538-0474 (FL)
Berg Williams Insurance, phone (800) 749-8800 or (305) 767-9500 (FL)
BOAT/U.S., phone (800) 283-2883 or (703) 461-2850 (VA)
Jack Martin & Associates, phone (410) 267-8755 (MD)

A full description of your vessel as a catamaran sailboat or a trimaran sailboat will help the paperwork flow through other companies’ underwriting departments.

-Chuck Kanter
————————————————————————
Chuck Kanter and his wife Corinne are both successful authors. Chuck’s Cruising On More Than One Hull and Sailor’s Multihull Guide compose part of his 25 years’ experience sailing, surveying, delivering and otherwise messing about in multihulls. The Kanters can usually be found plying the waters of the Bahamas, Caribbean or Florida Keys.

The post Multihull Insurance Issues appeared first on Cruising World.

A catamaran’s light, narrow hulls slice the sea with little resistance while the twin hulls’ wide stance provides enormous stability at low heel angles. The easily driven and enormously stiff platform offers the potential for higher speeds under sail or power and increased range under power.

However, the twin light hulls float high on the water to provide interior headroom. These, combined with voluminous connective bridge decks, create more windage than low-slung monohulls. As wave-making and frictional drag decreases, windage becomes a greater percentage of total drag. Also, designers and crews are enticed to fill the cat’s enormous lateral space with accommodations and gear. Although cruising cats can be designed with a reasonable anticipated payload, each pound composes a higher percentage of a light vessel’s weight, so performance is affected more. Weight and windage can eventually destroy any performance advantage that the multihull offers. As bulk increases, the higher center of gravity and sail plan detract from ultimate stability, which can be critical in a storm offshore.

In this special section, we’ll review the latest multihulls to hit the cruising market, and outline the range of choices that designers make to create catamarans that lie along a wide spectrum, from flat-out racing machines to full-powered auxiliaries.

At a cost to stability but to promote maneuverability and docking, the designer may choose a narrower beam, which requires less strength, so it can be built lighter. The designer can redeploy this weight by making the hulls more voluminous and/or giving the boat more payload capacity, increasing drag but also regaining some stability. Of course, a narrower, heavier, more commodious boat would be even more stable if widened again, allowing a larger rig for more speed.

The designer seeks the compromise that will fulfill its prime directive while he shuffles numerous other attributes as well, such as choosing boards for better upwind performance or keels for simplicity and freeing the accommodation. For pure speed, he will likely choose boards, very narrow hulls, very wide beam, low freeboard, high sail area and no bridge deck, but the boat will likely be wet, spartan and difficult to maneuver in tight quarters. For living in harbor with palatial accommodations, he designs wide hulls, extreme freeboard, very high cabin, and full bridge deck. But don’t count on this boat giving significantly faster passages, or even greater speed over short courses, than many performance-oriented monohulls, although it may give brilliant bursts when reaching in moderate-to-stiff airs. The safest and fastest cats for ocean passages will feature moderate freeboards, high underwing clearance, low bridge-deck cabin height and moderately broad beam.

Many designs are available only on a custom or semi-custom basis, but most of today’s production cats combine satisfying, often exhilarating sailing with spacious and comfortable living aboard.

Cat Facts On Beam

Wide Beam Benefits: Greater righting arm and wider “footprint” on large-wave contours to optimize stability for greater sail-carrying power, speed and ultimate storm stability; minimal rolling; more space for bridge-deck accommodation; wider sheeting angles to optimize off-wind sailing with jibs and spinnakers.

Narrow Beam Benefits: Quicker turning; easier docking and fitting slips; reduced connective structure weight; less stress on boat structure; more rigid structure for rig stability.

Although the boat’s maneuverability and stability are ruled by the spacing of the hulls’ centerlines, overall beam measurements are more widely available and can be used for comparisons. Overall beams in excess of 50 percent of boat length are normal, and some trimarans are even “square,” or as wide as they are long. However, there is a point when the boat becomes less stable longitudinally or diagonally than athwartships, so there is a balance. For ultimate performance, multihull designer Peter Wormwood once remarked, “When you’ve made the boat wide enough that you’re not sure whether it will first capsize to the side or pitchpole, then you have the dimensions about right,” but for maneuvering in tight quarters and finding docking space, narrower beams still make more sense and will result in a boat unlikely to pitchpole.

Cat Facts On Bridge (Wing) Deck Configurations, Underwing Clearances And Freeboard

Short Bridge Deck With Low Cabin Or No Bridge Deck Benefits: Reduces weight and windage for better speed and pointing ability; minimizes weight in ends to reduce pitching; sail plan can be carried lower to increase stability for safety and sail-carrying power; large passing waves can vent through open areas of connective, reducing pounding and overturning moment from storm seas; a low-profile bridge with underwing high off the water for less (or no) pounding from normal offshore waves can still contain berths with sitting headroom.

Longer-To-Full Bridge Deck With Full Cabin Benefits: Greater interior space; well-lit saloon with good view unites hulls’ interior layout; more rigid support for rig (especially if extended to jibstay attachment) which reduces shock loads and fatigue of fittings; longer bridge deck spreads stress between hulls and connectives, keeps deck drier and eliminates area of inter-hull trampoline, which must be replaced periodically.

Benefits Of Heights Off The Water: Freeboard provides a drier ride and more interior volume for headroom and accommodations in hulls; bridge-deck cabin height provides headroom; raised bridge-deck underwing reduces slamming by waves for comfort, speed and less structural stress.

Benefits Of Low Heights Off The Water: Lowers the center of gravity, increasing the range of stability (important offshore in storm conditions); lowers rig height, giving more sail-carrying power and dampened pitching; minimizes windage for better pointing ability; more pleasing aesthetics. Low freeboard gives less wind drift and wave impact in heavy seas; easier boarding and disembarking from the side to promote docking.

Bridge-deck underwing clearance forward is vital, but it is important throughout the length of the bridge deck. Clearance is less of an issue in flat water, but offshore it is imperative for comfort and safety. Waves slamming underwings have damaged many boats. When the going gets tough, slamming of the wing can really rattle things around in the boat — it has even bounced people out of their berths — adding structural and psychological stress and slowing the boat, perhaps even preventing progress to weather. Wider-spaced and longer hulls span more ocean, allowing swell and chop to affect the underwing more and demanding more wing clearance. Many boats use complex curves under their wings, which helps to dissipate any slamming and excess loads.

Multihulls appear as ugly boxes to some sailors while others think they are as elegant as seabirds. One catamaran aficionado wisely directed his designer to draw up a boat with a typical 50-footer’s accommodations, then make the boat 65 feet long. The result was elegant and not much more costly. Freeboard for a given length is one key to catamaran aesthetics. A heavy monohull sits deep in the water, so freeboard to provide headroom need not be excessive. A light catamaran’s hulls cannot be very deep, so freeboard tends to be high. Even a trimaran’s freeboard is lower because the boat’s weight is supported by a single deeper hull, and its freeboard is masked somewhat by sleeker outer hulls. Many multihull designers note that it becomes exceedingly difficult to create an elegant cat with a luxurious accommodation and standing-headroom across the bridge deck in a vessel less than 40 feet long.

Cat Facts On Displacement/ Length Ratios

Light Displacement Benefits: Less weight and narrower hulls have to move less water so are faster; quicker acceleration and deceleration provides livelier ride; shallower draft; less energy to power up or stop, so can use smaller, lighter and less expensive sails, engine and other gear to achieve a given performance; less expensive to build unless using exotic construction methods/materials.

Heavier Displacement Benefits: More forgiving sailing — less sensitive to perfect helming and sail trim; carries way farther; easier tacking; greater stability; greater volume for accommodation and payload; slower, more comfortable motion though usually greater pitching.

Catamaran weight is a critical issue and published catamaran displacements have proven highly suspect. Due to designer optimism and construction quality control, errors of 10 or even 20 percent or greater have been common. Also, sailors often overload their boats. Rarely are actual boat weights verified by weighing or measuring them when floating and recalculating their displacements. Added weight increases stability but also increases structural loads and dramatically affects comparative ratios such as sail area/displacement and the reserve buoyancy available to carry payload safely and efficiently.

For fair comparisons and if available, use the boat’s true half-load displacement (with gear ready to sail minus crew and cruising payload). Don’t be confused with empty boat weight or total cruising weight, which may differ by as much as 50 to 100 percent. Also, beware of claimed displacements significantly less than other boats with comparable bulk and accommodations unless the lighter boat is built with sophisticated techniques and materials. Otherwise, the figures are faulty or the construction must be correspondingly lighter.

Cat Facts On Hull Shapes In Section And Hull L/B Ratios

** Beamy Hull Benefits:** More payload capacity; shallower draft and increased maneuverability for a given displacement.

Narrow Hull Benefits: As hulls narrow from 8:1 to 12:1 or greater, wave making resistance decreases dramatically, yielding speeds in excess of traditional concepts of “hull speed” as well as less pounding and better tracking.

Semicircular Sections Benefits: Minimizes wetted surface for better light-air performance; balances soft motion in choppy waves, load-carrying and shallow draft; relatively easy to build. Drawbacks include limited interior volume and tunnel-like feel — flared topsides help mediate this. Quasi-semicircular — wider than deep underwater — increases load carrying while increasing resistance from wetted surface and lost hull fineness.

Flared Bell Benefits: Greatly increased interior volume, especially at and above seat/berth heights while retaining ideal underwater shape. Drawbacks: Added windage and structural weight; more wave resistance in a chop; more difficult to build.

V’d And Rounded V Sections Benefits: Good wave penetration for soft motion; simpler to build from sheet materials; deeper for same displacement so lower freeboard; good tracking. Drawbacks: Provide little pitch dampening; very narrow sole in the hull; slower to turn.

Hull shapes tend to be complex, often mixed. Obviously, most are sharper and more V’d forward, but the current trend is toward beamier hulls aft to dampen pitching and increase payload. The waterline beam and payload buoyancy of more V’d hulls increases quickly as they depress under load, but so does drag from increasing hull beam and wetted surface. Semicircular hulls depress less quickly initially, but then more evenly under increasing loads, which increases wetted surface but retains hull beam. However, if boats with transoms begin to drag their sterns from overloading, heeling, or pitching, performance suffers. Waves may create resistance when transoms dip or if the knuckle of bell-shaped hulls is lowered too much by overloading. Asymmetrical hulls and box sections appear on some designs, but are rare on production cruisers.

Cruising payload — the weight of crews and stores — varies, but 2,000 to 4,000 pounds seems reasonable for most sailors. You can compare different boats’ load-carrying capacity by using pounds per inch immersion (PPI), the amount of weight it takes to sink the boat one inch deeper on its lines. To approximate PPI, multiply the hull waterline beam times its waterline length times .6 times two (for both hulls) and divide by 64.

Cat Facts On Sail Areas

Large Sail Area (higher numbers) Benefits: Speed; added sail power momentum helps resist pitching.

Small Sail Area Benefits: Easier handling; reduces costs of rig and sails; less likely to accidentally sail into a capsize; shorter, lighter rig produces less pitching moment. Developed by Edmond Bruce, father of the Bruce anchor, the Bruce Number is the square root of the sail area in square feet divided by the cube root of the displacement in pounds. This is similar to the performance indicator Sail Area/Displacement ratio. Both are power-to-weight comparisons. Bruce theorized that the Bruce Number should approximate the speed that a vessel can sail compared to wind speed. If greater than one, the boat can exceed wind speed on some points in some conditions. When comparing boats, it is important to use working sail with 100 percent foretriangle (not the genoa area that is sometimes used in brochures) and half-load displacement.

As noted, light rigs produce less pitching moment, but often in the real world, boats that are undercanvased will pitch more than boats harder pressed, because sail power contributes to momentum and the dynamic mass of the sailing machine, resisting knocks from waves. Wave conditions and course will dictate the most efficient amount of sail to fly.

Cat Facts About Safety

After some capsizes and notable structural failures in the 1960s and 1970s, it was only natural for people to doubt modern, western multihulls, even though well proven at sea for millennia. Today, several experimental righting systems have been tested, but few multihulls are fit with them and almost none are self-righting. However, it is extremely rare for a cruising boat to capsize, and even rarer for it to be sailed into a capsize. In addition, most are unsinkable, and most provide multiple collision-protection bulkheads. There is also evidence that sailing with minimal heel provides some added safety to the crew.

Although statistics are sparse, a study of 35 publicized multihull capsizes between 1975 and 1985 contained only three cruisers, one anchored in a 170-knot hurricane. Ninety-one percent were racers, designed and sailed to the edge, and 60 percent occurred during racing or record attempts. A full 54 percent of the boats were eventually salvaged, some floating for months before retrieval. Ninety percent of the crews survived, and half of those lost were on a single boat shadowing the infamous 1979 Fastnet Race that claimed so many monohullers. What percentage of sunken or even rolled monohulls and their crews survive? We just don’t know. Designer Chris White also has studied statistics and can only conclude that, in recent decades, multihulls have proven to be up to 23 percent safer than monohulls, but again admits that the samples available are too small to make definitive conclusions. At worst, it appears that multihull capsizes are marginally more common than monohull sinkings, and in the cruising world are exceedingly less common.

Like all vessels, the multihull must be prepared for the worst with a plan for making the hulls habitable upside down, including handholds under the wing, access hatches to allow entry and exit from the hulls, places for the crew to perch and sleep inside, and secured stores, especially emergency equipment. So prepared, multihulls have proven to be exceedingly safe, making superb survival craft.

Due to their wide beam, light multihulls actually provide a lot more righting moment, measured in foot pounds, than monohulls of similar length, but they reach maximum stability at low angles of heel (as soon as a cat’s weather hull lifts from the water). Cruising cats should never be pushed to “fly” a hull, but storm forces may lift one. Maximum stability can be approximated by multiplying 1/2 of the centerline-to-centerline beam (or 75 percent of overall beam for narrow cruisers; up to 90 percent for wide racers) times the catamaran’s displacement. Dynamic stability is more complex and is affected by factors such as the slope of large waves, but especially by the height of the boat’s center of gravity. To maximize the angle at which the boat will reright, weight must be carried as low as possible.

————————————————————————
Steve Callahan is Cruising World’s senior editor.

The post Catamaran Overview: Catapulting to the Future appeared first on Cruising World.