Quote:
Originally Posted by SaltyMonkey
Examples, pretty please?
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I am not sure if we are limiting this to what I will call
blue water cruising boats or excluding day sailers. But I would guess Hobie cats sales are huge compared to condomarans. Almost certain the Fboats and Corsairs sell more than the condomarans. Of course true fast
Water boats">blue
water boats like Gunboats, TAGs, and Outremers are far fewer than condomarans. I am not sure Geminis are condomarans or not but they are certainly not high performance boats and they may be the most popular (by number sold) sorta cruising cats.
Back in the 70s right after I got my undergrad degree I was involved in a group build of two Norm Cross tris, a 24 and a 32. The 24 was a quick sheet
plywood build and the 32 was glass
core. I don't
recall seeing any other multihulls around Tampa Bay at the time if you ignore the Hobies.
Not it is common to see Fboats running away from everything in most places where sailing is popular. Again ignoring Hobie Farrier is probably the guy that made multihulls popular for the non beach cat crowd. Once you have been on an Fboat it is hard for me to imagine going back to a
monohull. All of Farriers designs under 32 feet are easy to set up and take down and
trailer, and more importantly easy and stupid fun to sail. They have a light tiller and are almost always the fastest
boat in the harbor. I doubt any Hobie or Fboat guy would go back to a
monohull.
There are some reasons to like monohulls in certain situations. Rounding the two great capes is one. But realistically how many of us are going to do that.
The reason multihulls are so popular is that they tend to be significantly faster than similar monohulls, have more room than similar monohulls, and are easier to sail than similar monohulls. Many cats have twin screws which makes low speed driving easier than a
single screw monohull. The biggest downside to multihulls is the
price.