Reasons to stay "Monohull"

[Ribbit]

Originally Posted by valhalla360

Sure, get the one you like but that's like saying "marry the love of your life" when you don't know who that is.

Weeeelllllll! Lol!

I came soooooo close to marrying the love of my life, but it became clear (just in time) that it would probably be the biggest mistake in my life if I did.

No regrets, and she's still the love of my life.

[accomplice]

Originally Posted by arsenelupiga

nice post. I will only discuss part where you say your boat is optimised for fast & safe passages as this is my agenda too.

Although my cat can weight up to 15T, i puprosely keep it below 11,500kg. I may have to add another 500kg when living full time. That makes lots of difference in movement and stress on boat. It is true windward sail or motor directly in building seas beyond 1.5m is rougher on cat and I like avoiding it. Best approach is to motorsail windward in such conditions, if have to, i found so far to minimise stress on boat and avoid danger of boat stopping or even going back.

I like cats and this will not change. So I have to do with what I have.

However, what I learned is that optimising sailing/trimming skills make lots of difference on speed, boat movement and boat stress.

Optimally trimmed sails can give you extra 20% speed vs what is normal default setting.

my point is that i believe cruising cat can also be optimised for fast and safe passage making.

I agree. I stand by my main point, though, which is that different boats are optimized for different criteria. Cat's, while offering many advantages, force greater trade-offs in weight vs. performance.

Mono-'s can be weight sensitive too, but not to as great an extent. On my previous boat the 11 cases of beer for an extended cruise visibly altered the way she sat on her lines! (Now I don't drink as much)

I have also found that the best approach when faced with significant headwinds is to motorsail, in my case about 20 degrees off the true wind. The sails add a little lift, but because of their angle of attack not a huge amount, but also are not accompanied by much heel. However, the moderate heel combined with the sail solidly on one side of the boat lends a lot of stability.

Enjoy your cat. I have little doubt that she is the right boat for you.

[accomplice]

Originally Posted by Polux

Compared with a Tayana 58? Sure, the Tayana 58 regarding is length is a slow boat. Price for price you can get a much faster cat, not to mention a faster monohull, if what one likes is to have a boat optimized for fast passage making. Now regarding the quality of the interior woods I don't know. Most boats don't use anymore that type of interior and it is really a question of taste.

Regarding being safe all is relative, the Tayana skipper talks about sailing safely on a F11. In what concerns me someone that let himself be caught on a F11 is not doing something right and is on the wrong place at the wrong time of year. Even if there are boats more safer than others on a F11 there is no warranties that a small yacht (and 58ft is small for a F11) will survive.

Someone thinking that his boat is the best type boat to do something, being it cruising extensively, fast passage making or coastal cruising is certainly wrong because different sailors would have different preferences and would chose different best types of boats.

On the first point, I think you misunderstood. I did not claim my boat was the OPTIMAL passage maker, only that it was OPTIMIZED for safe, fast and comfortable passage-making -- as compared to being optimized for spaciousness while at anchor, or other common design criteria. In other words, it was a statement about the boat's tradeoffs, not about its achieving an optimal point on any single factor. As for it being slow, compared to what? and in what conditions? There certainly are faster boats out there. I find that on most passages I set a base speed below which I will not go below, and above which I am happy to travel but may slow down in the interest of safety, comfort, or fuel conservation. Put another way, it is as fast as I'm willing for it to be, short of hull-speed. Usually I plan that minimum speed at 7kts. Sometimes, if I'm impatient, I may set that minimum at 8 or 8.5 kts. Spending day after day above 8.5 kts under sail is not uncommon, but is still remarkable when it happens. That 7-8.5kts average for offshore passages is slower than some boats, faster than others. I recognize that there are many ocean going cats which will regularly double and some even triple that speed -- but they make other tradeoffs which are not consistent with my priorities.

As far as interior -- yes, it is a matter of taste -- as is the exterior, deck plan, hull shape and hull count. Part of why I believe I made the right choice is because I find my boat attractive inside and out. I would hope that any sailor would choose a boat whose aesthetic they felt stirred something inside them. If it doesn't, move on.

As for your claim that I was not doing something right or was in the wrong place at the wrong time of year, I can say that much better seamen than me have been caught in much worse conditions than I've experienced. I would not want to tempt fate by implying I was too good a route planner and weather forecaster to be caught in F11.

Heavy weather at sea is rare, but it happens. If you haven't experienced it, then you're either not covering many miles, you're doing them in calmer waters than the North Atlantic, you've been incredibly lucky, or you've made an extraordinary deal with the gods. Offshore forecasts are imperfect, and sometimes they're mistaken. Sometimes that mistake happens right on top of you. That's pretty much the definition of being at the wrong place at the wrong time. While there are skippering issues that F11 event identified to me (e.g. train EVERY crew member of location and use of companionway slats), I do not believe any reasonable skipper would/could have avoided the conditions we experienced.

Sometimes you do catch forecasting errors in time. Had I not been lucky enough to catch a Navtex 18 months ago, we would have come into Bermuda at the same time TS Fay did. Fay was not on anyone's forecast when we had departed Newport -- it surprised and did a lot of damage to unprepared boats in St Marten too. Sometimes you get lucky, sometimes you don't.

The time I met that F11, approx 39N 71W, in early May, the pilot charts for that area show less than 5% chance of wave height above 12ft and average F4-5. The offshore forecast only several hours earlier was for 20-25kts, 6-10ft, scattered t-storms with wind and waves higher near t-storms. When you're out to sea, even the most conservative skipper doesn't turn around when he hears that -- it is well within "normal conditions" (the forecast behind us was the same anyway -- where would we go?). Reality doesn't always match forecasts, though. As the wind built past 30kts and the sun was setting, I called for a second reef -- before we could get the second reef in the wind was over 40kts and we took the main down altogether. As we passed 50kts a few minutes later we furled the staysail and ran under power and bare poles. Fortunately the wind didn't stay above 60kts for many hours and so the seas did not have time to grow very large. The startling thing about the sea was that as it started to blow hard, the tops of waves -- huge "chunks" of water -- were blown over the beam soaking me at the helm and filling the cockpit. I did not feel the boat was in danger at the time, but two of my crew and myself found it certainly got our heart-rate up. The fourth crew member was afraid, but mostly because she interpreted the yelling between my crew and myself as implying danger. Voice communication above decks in those conditions can be a challenge. I honestly don't know how the incident might've gone down if I were on a multihull instead. Would I have reefed more conservatively? Would I have been 50 miles ahead or behind where I was and experienced lighter winds? Would having turned up to drop the sail have exposed the boat to a roll-inducing gust? How would a cat have handled those conditions? I don't know. Arm-chair quarterbacking might have made different calls than I did -- I also don't know. I can say that that day I was very happy to have chosen the boat I did. My point in response to you is three-fold:

* Be careful with your underlying assumption that heavy weather is always avoidable at sea. When coastal, it almost always is avoidable. When offshore, it is usually avoidable, but not always.

* Confidence in your boat when the stuff hits the fan is priceless, both in $ and in other trade-offs (interior volume, number of seats at the cockpit table, the type of wood used on the interior, the speed she can make on a beam reach in flat seas, etc.). In other words, when the going gets tough, many of the things you thought were important become irrelevant.

* While some weather is slow in developing, other weather issues can seemingly come from nowhere and develop very quickly. Even without factoring in equipment failures and human error, be careful in assuming that you can always prepare the boat appropriately for rapidly developing conditions. Sometimes you will be caught off-guard.

As for there being no guarantees of survival -- no, the guarantees in life are few, and rarely favor survival. While I wouldn't want to be in F11 again, having done it I am more confident in my and my boat's abilities to handle it. Of course I realize that every situation is different, and that if I hadn't been about to reef, or if I had had an equipment failure, crew injury or MOB, things could've turned out very differently. I don't quite know where the line is, nor do I wish to find out, between serious but manageable storms on one hand, and survival situations on the other. My experience leads me to believe that, other things being equal, F11 on my boat is noteworthy and to be avoided, but does not by itself create a survival situation.

There are certainly better seamen than me, those who have sailed more miles on more vessels and in worse conditions. The sea is humbling. My preference is for a boat which affords me more room to be imperfect -- imperfect in my weather forecasting and routing, imperfect in my sail trim and choices, imperfect in training my crew, imperfect in my storm tactics, imperfect in my calculation of risk, etc. I recognize that I pay a price in having a boat that is more forgiving of my imperfection -- a price in some of the other trade-offs of boat design. This is why a mono-, the one I have carefully chosen, is the right boat for me. It certainly is not the right boat for everyone, but I assert that there are very valid reasons for someone to chose a mono-. That's what the OP was asking.

Regarding your last paragraph, regarding different people making different choices when faced with different priorities, I could not agree more.

Enjoy your cat, but please don't assume that you're too talented a skipper to encounter bad weather.

[Goosebumps]

I got a question I am extremely curious to see response to! Anyone here know of any catamaran owner who left cats for monohull? I hope many so cats become cheaper for me!

[Polux]

Originally Posted by accomplice

On the first point, I think you misunderstood. I did not claim my boat was the OPTIMAL passage maker, only that it was OPTIMIZED for safe, fast and comfortable passage-making -- as compared to being optimized for spaciousness while at anchor, or other common design criteria. In other words, it was a statement about the boat's tradeoffs, not about its achieving an optimal point on any single factor. As for it being slow, compared to what? and in what conditions? ...

Regarding your last paragraph, regarding different people making different choices when faced with different priorities, I could not agree more.

Enjoy your cat ....

I do not have a cat. I was only objecting you saying that your boat was optimized for fast passage making.

Compared in what the mono hull world is called a fast passage making (a boat optimized for fast passage making) a yacht like the Tayana 58 is very far from that, starting for all the weight on the real wood interior, the weight of the boat, design of the hull, type of keel and so on.

For comfortable and safe passages, no doubt about that. Fast passage makers are also safe but speed diminishes always in some measure the comfort even if some don't object to that willingly trading that for the sailing pleasure they enjoy during passages.

Of course the speed of a boat is related with length, even if not on a direct measure, so you would have to compare the Tayana 58 with the boats with about the same length, but even if comparing with smaller boats I am pretty sure your boat would be slower on passage than most 45ft fast passage makers and probably slower than some 40fter.

You would tell me that those boats have not a comparable luxurious interior with real wood and all and you will be right but that is because they are optimized as fast passage makers a thing the Tayana is not.

Again, not saying that your boat is not perfect for you. I am sure it is, but not a boat maximized for fast passage making at all.

Not saying also that you would like a boat maximized for fast passage making, I am pretty sure you would not like it, but others would prefer it, the ones that like an optimized monohull fast passage maker above all.

A 60 ft optimized for fast passage making:
https://www.atlanticyachtandship.ru/...e/2009/115601/

[Polux]

Originally Posted by andreavanduyn

Nobody mentions the TRIMARAN as the best choice; quite another animal as the catamaran.....

Why not?

The Neel 45' has proven this is a step up from the cats concerning safety and comfort with similar if not higher speed.......

Nobody?

The Op mentioned cats and monohulls, not trimarans:

Originally Posted by Jadam79

Greetings,

I'm asking this here vs a more "vs" question on the cat side of things
....
So my question: what keeps the monohull market so plentiful when you hear all the good "benefits" of catamaran sailing? It seems like everyone would want a cat vs a monohull based on the rants I read? With cost subtracted from the equation please (I do not yet know the extent of my budget), why do you stay monohull?

Thank you so much

Regards,

Adam J

But I agree that the Neel is an option regarding cats. Most other modern trimarans (on the market) are different animals not offering the same interior space of a monohull, much less the one of a cat, even if some of them offer unbeatable sail performances, at least if you can stay on the lines controlling the boat.

Those to have seaworthiness to make sailing not too edgy while cruising and to offer a similar cruising interior have to be big and hugely expensive. That's why over 40ft cruising trimarans are a rarity in today's market, most being boats adapted from racing boats and still maintaining much of it's condition of racing boats.

The few attempts that were made to create a production bigger than 40ft fast performance trimaran of conventional type had failed commercially.

The Nell is a different thing and the 45 performance version showed on the ARC that it could be a damn fast boat, beating on the occasion two Outremer 51, but the truth is that even if the Neel 45 offers a decent cruiser interior, it is not very well designed (the interior) and some questions have been raised about the built quality.

[Dockhead]

Originally Posted by Polux

. . Of course the speed of a boat is related with length, even if not on a direct measure, so you would have to compare the Tayana 58 with the boats with about the same length, but even if comparing with smaller boats I am pretty sure your boat would be slower on passage than most 45ft fast passage makers and probably slower than some 40fter.

We've talked about this before, I do not believe that this is right.

Evans Starzinger did an extensive study of real ocean passage speeds of hundreds of boats, and using serious statistical methodology, found an extremely strong correlation between waterline length and real life passage speeds.

I have observed this in real life myself.

When you are sailing comfortably, in a manner which is sustainable by a short-handed crew on a long passage, and on a mono, the average speed gravitates to about 1 1/2 knots below hull speed, on all kinds of boats including both heavy and very light ones. This is in good wind conditions.

To have passage speeds of more than hull speed -1, the work load goes up steeply. And here is where a higher performance boat distinguishes itself -- by responding to more intensive sailing and attempts to get the speed up. With very, very high performance boats, like Pogos, you might break right through hull speed and be able to do noon to noons at more than hull speed, but this is a really exceptional situation requiring a really hot boat and really intense effort.

So in my opinion, there is no way that any 45 footer other than a fully crewed, aggressively sailed, and hot race boat, is going to have passage speeds faster than that Tayana 58 in winds which are strong enough to get the Tayana moving.

I agree with your theory about catamarans on long passages being sailed at a certain practical level, which diverges from their potential, but for some reason you fail to see the same effect with higher performance monos.

The reason why this is so, is physics. The power required to drive the boat starts to go up steeply not AT hull speed, but 1 or 2 knots below. So depending on the specific boat, there is a "groove" somewhere around 1 1/2 knots below hull speed where the boat can be kept moving with a modest amount of power which does not require intense sail trimming or helming to maintain. Even if your boat is light and fast, which may make it much easier to break through that speed barrier, it still takes a lot of effort and concentration to do it, which very few people will actually do, short handed on a multi-day passage which is not a race.

That Tayana 58 is 20% heavier than my Moody 54, and has a waterline length which is 1 foot shorter, but I take the owner at his word when he says it will knock out 200 mile days, all day long. That's because that's a pace just about 1 knot below his hull speed, which is somewhere in his "groove". There is no 45 foot boat which will do that without a very intense effort. You are judging by ratings which have nothing to do with realistic conditions of days-long passages in good wind.

My boat has no pretensions to racing, and has a conservative SA/D appropriate to this latitude. I sail all over NE Europe from Biscay to Russia, as you may know, but our home port is in the Solent, which has the highest concentration of racing boats racing activity in the world.

You can imagine how many racers, encountering me sailing up or down the Solent, put on the gas to try to pass me -- based on the well known principle that any time two sailboats are sailing near each other in vaguely the same direction, it's a race.

How many do you think have succeeded? Well, Rambler, a famous super maxi, owned by the brother of a friend of mine, blew by me one time as if I were standing still. No surprise there. Same thing happened once with an Open 60. But other than that, in seven years of intensely sailing these waters, and hundreds of such battles -- zero. Nada.

A Hanse 575 passed me in the North Sea in light winds last summer, sailing downwind towards Rotterdam. A brand new boat with an American flag. We tried and tried but couldn't catch her. At the time we had a totally wrong headsail up, my blade jib made for strong conditions, and this was < 10 knots of wind, but I think that even with the right sails it wouldn't have been possible. That boat has 1.5 feet more waterline for 500kg less displacement, and being new was probably actually much lighter, since mine is loaded down with gear and parts.

Obviously there are wind conditions and points of sail where a well sailed 40 foot racing boat will eat my lunch. But my point is that in realistic every day conditions, waterline length rules. It's the king. Even a very modestly fast boat like mine, for a cruising boat, reasonably light, bulb keel -- will have no trouble making hull speed minus one in a huge range of conditions. That's 8.5 knots. A smaller boat with 10 feet or 7 feet less waterline length, will need to generate huge amounts of power, to get to the same speed which is an easy lope for my boat.

By the same token, I don't recall ever having passed a boat with significantly more waterline length than mine. I had the privilege of racing Jolie Brise, the historic wooden gaff cutter which won the first Fastnet race in the 1920's. You might think that 100 years of progress in sails and rigging and hull forms would make it an easy match. But no. We raced 50 miles from Weymouth to Southampton Water and I couldn't shake her. I did have an initial advantage leaving Weymouth in light winds, and hove-to to let her catch up, but after that the wind picked up and we were neck and neck. I was first through the Needles by just a couple of cables, which had narrowed to one by the time we got to Southampton Water. Her waterline length? Same as mine -- about 47 feet. 100 years of progress affected only the work load, which was far less on my boat, than it was on Jolie Brise.

[andreavanduyn]

Our 'mission' is to find a more comfortable / stable platform to sail in any wind and relatively fast = a 50+ footer as you have and we owned ( Orion 50') recently or a trimaran as cats do not perform apart from Outremers which are small inside and very expensive.

So we sold our Orion ketch and look for building or buying a trimaran for price level of lower than an Outremer catamaran or 50+ solid good yacht as you have and we used to own; alike a Tayana or Ta Shing or such.

We start believing that we can have a tri built here in Eastern Europe with quality interior of wood with atmosphere as we had in our Orion 50'.
Superb woodworkers here and salaries not alike in Western Europe.....

Question starts coming up in our mind ; can we have others also buy into this yachting niche?

What would you 50+ mono hull owners think of a trimaran alike Neel 45' as replacement when interior is smarter and better...?

[arsenelupiga]

Originally Posted by Polux

Compared with a Tayana 58? Sure, the Tayana 58 regarding is length is a slow boat. Price for price you can get a much faster cat, not to mention a faster monohull, if what one likes is to have a boat optimized for fast passage making. Now regarding the quality of the interior woods I don't know. Most boats don't use anymore that type of interior and it is really a question of taste.

Regarding being safe all is relative, the Tayana skipper talks about sailing safely on a F11. In what concerns me someone that let himself be caught on a F11 is not doing something right and is on the wrong place at the wrong time of year. Even if there are boats more safer than others on a F11 there is no warranties that a small yacht (and 58ft is small for a F11) will survive.

Someone thinking that his boat is the best type boat to do something, being it cruising extensively, fast passage making or coastal cruising is certainly wrong because different sailors would have different preferences and would chose different best types of boats.

my experience none thus far but there are F11 and F11 i guess. Outcome of 1 meeting with F11 should not bee too generalised to stay on safer side.

If you not lucky get to drive in freak wave that is 2 x or more significant wave height and that is no good. Or in freak hole that I learned recently exist.

I like to have lunch in front net while sailing when not too rough. All sporty cats I tried are not designed for that. Everything is about optimum shape to sail windward.

And this is one of my top reasons for cat

[Goosebumps]

no response to my question if anyone knows cat owner downgrafing to monohull I take as confirmation no such cat iwner exists

[Goosebumps]

I notice few here real liveaboards to post! liveaboard 10 years on monohull on the hook me in my 34 foot cat cant even imagine possible, unless of course a +50 footer that cant be singlehanded

[Goosebumps]

I cannot imagine anyone being in a F11 actually living to talk about it afterwards

[barnakiel]

Originally Posted by Goosebumps

no response to my question if anyone knows cat owner downgrafing to monohull I take as confirmation no such cat iwner exists

Yes. E.g. Martin Dolecek. Started on a Tiki catamaran now sailing rtw in a mono.

b.

[barnakiel]

Cruising mono monkeys, normally, in the EU, are now 40+, ft, and y.o..

People can simply afford more and so they do.

b.

[accomplice]

Originally Posted by Dockhead

We've talked about this before, I do not believe that this is right.

Evans Starzinger did an extensive study of real ocean passage speeds of hundreds of boats, and using serious statistical methodology, found an extremely strong correlation between waterline length and real life passage speeds.

I have observed this in real life myself.

When you are sailing comfortably, in a manner which is sustainable by a short-handed crew on a long passage, and on a mono, the average speed gravitates to about 1 1/2 knots below hull speed, on all kinds of boats including both heavy and very light ones. This is in good wind conditions.

To have passage speeds of more than hull speed -1, the work load goes up steeply. And here is where a higher performance boat distinguishes itself -- by responding to more intensive sailing and attempts to get the speed up. With very, very high performance boats, like Pogos, you might break right through hull speed and be able to do noon to noons at more than hull speed, but this is a really exceptional situation requiring a really hot boat and really intense effort.

So in my opinion, there is no way that any 45 footer other than a fully crewed, aggressively sailed, and hot race boat, is going to have passage speeds faster than that Tayana 58 in winds which are strong enough to get the Tayana moving.

Yes, yes, yes. Thank you for putting it so well.

Boat designs are compromises and trade-offs. As you point out, Dockhead, it takes more wind to get our boat moving than a lighter displacement vessel, but that downside is negligible in my usage (on a delivery, I'll turn on the auxilliary if not making sufficient progress to my destination) and comes with advantages in handling rare heavy weather and in providing greater comfort in moderate conditions. This trade-off may not be right for everyone, but it works for me.

Polux, some may like the aesthetic and design tradeoffs of boats like the Atlantic 60. There are many aspects of that boat that would not work for us. This is part of why having more than one design/configuration/model/size of boat in the world benefits all sailors. The OP's priorities may land him in a mono-, or perhaps a multi-. Asking questions about the tradeoffs of particular designs is a reasonable and intelligent way to make a more informed decision.