How many cats have flipped ?

[Dockhead]

Originally Posted by jmh2002

Possibly not being sailed to it's potential of course (charter boat), but...

Links if you are interested:
2019 Bali 4.1 Charter Experience - Cruisers & Sailing Forums
https://www.bali-catamarans.com/en/c...ns/bali-4-1-2/

Well, it's got over 100m2 of white sails for 10 tonnes of displacement. 12 meter waterline. Definitely not sailed to its potential. You could sail a barrel, with those specifications, faster than that.

[jmh2002]

Originally Posted by B23iL23

Spot on. We used to un-jam the kicker/vang and take it to a winch so we could dump and de-power in a hurry. No reason why the same can't be done on a cat when the conditions warrant it.

At the risk of derailing the thread your post reminds me of blast reaching in 35kn of wind at a Sardinian regatta (spinnaker still up!) and being yelled at by the back of the boat because 'the vang is failing, the vang is failing, shxt!' - but upon running to check things, 'um, no, that appears to be the safety valve opening at 4500psi so as not to break the mast in half...'

[jmh2002]

Originally Posted by Dockhead

Well, it's got over 100m2 of white sails for 10 tonnes of displacement. 12 meter waterline. Definitely not sailed to its potential. You could sail a barrel, with those specifications, faster than that.

Yes, it should sail somehow ok, but then again trimming for an easy 15kn reach should be easy too.

[a64pilot]

Originally Posted by Dockhead

I can't imagine how tubby a boat would have to be, to make only 6 knots in 15 knots of wind on any kind of reach. I doubt that this boat was sailed properly.


I don't think I've ever been on a boat which couldn't make hull speed in those conditions. Over 9 knots on my present boat even before the carbon sails I have now.

I’ve seen it, in the Bahamas, with Cats, more than once.
However I assume a couple of things,
They were overloaded and being Charter vessels, I assume the sails may have been undersized, but I was surprised to not be out run by many Charter Cats.
Now I’m not berating Cats, but think that just cause something has two hulls doesn’t make it fast.

[mikereed100]

Originally Posted by Dockhead

You don't need to be able to outrun a weather system, to avoid it. The faster you can go, the better your chances and the less warning you need, which is important because the more advanced the warning is, the less reliable it is.


A fast cat or any kind of fast boat has a big advantage in this regard. The high downwind speed capability of performance cats is also a really big advantage when running off or even heading off to deal with a big gust.



I was seriously thinking about buying an Atlantic 57 before I got so interested in the Arctic. The sailing abilities of a boat like that open up whole new horizons for passagemaking.

We recently met a nice couple in Chile who had just returned from a visit to Antarctica in their custom 46' cruising cat. By sailing hard they were able to scoot across the Drake Passage in between systems, making the roughly 500 mile crossing in 2.5 days each way. To be sure, they were pushing hard and it was not a relaxing passage, but they were able to avoid unpleasant weather by taking advantage of their boat's ability to rack up the miles when pushed. I suspect your Moody is capable of the same.

We have found that one of the attributes of our cat that we like best is it's ability to move at a comfortable speed in lighter winds with very little sail up. This allows us to sail with the main deeply reefed in combination with our small, staysail jib and still make 5-6 knots with winds in the low teens. When squalls hit we simply speed up. Out static stability with this sail combination is something like 60 knots. As we always sail without crew, this allows us to (usually) get plenty of rest and sleep on passages.

[jmh2002]

^^^ Nice

[Dockhead]

Originally Posted by mikereed100

. . . .We have found that one of the attributes of our cat that we like best is it's ability to move at a comfortable speed in lighter winds with very little sail up. This allows us to sail with the main deeply reefed in combination with our small, staysail jib and still make 5-6 knots with winds in the low teens. When squalls hit we simply speed up. Out static stability with this sail combination is something like 60 knots. As we always sail without crew, this allows us to (usually) get plenty of rest and sleep on passages.

That's the thing about easily driven hulls (cat or mono, but much easier to achieve on a cat). A tubby boat needs a lot of sail area to get it moving, so then you're dealing with that lot of sail area when things get lively. Is that "safe"? Not in my book. I always admired that about Dashew's Sundeers with the very modest rigs but such a low D/L (under 100, similar to a performance cat's), that they could sail in almost any wind, yet never be a handful in strong conditions. As an additional bonus, the low windage from the modest rig improves the ability upwind.


Yes, I get this, and I like it.

[jmh2002]

And Dashew is also a proponent of using speed to evade or take advantage of weather too.

[Dockhead]

Originally Posted by jmh2002

And Dashew is also a proponent of using speed to evade or take advantage of weather too.

Dashew is a smart guy with an awful lot of good ideas.


I don't want to be bobbing around in some slow tub just waiting to get smacked. Speed is control over geography. Speed is life, as the pilots say. Speed is even the key to upwind ability, which is why performance cats do so well upwind contrary to cats' reputation for not going upwind.

[charliehows]

All I can add is my own experience - I've owned multihulls and monohulls and sailed both on occasion in fairly heavy weather. Trying to cut up against the wind and sea in a multihull was a chastening experience - coming off the top of moderately large swells and waiting to see if the wind would produce enough lift under the hullbridge to tip the boat over was enough to encourage me to change course and run off the wind (the last bit of the turn that exposed the beam to the weather was particularly exciting...) and seek shelter. In similiar or worse conditions on a monohull my main concern was hull integrity - the heavy hits from the rough seas were...disconcerting, but probably not a real risk as the hull showed no subsequent signs of any damage at all. I suspect the statistical evidence reflects the relative rarity that multis are subjected to serious weather where its necessary to attempt points of sail that expose them to danger - most big boats are, after all, predominantly gin palaces that spend most of their time in the marina.

[Morph]

Re Charliehows comments above. His experience of sailing a cat in heavy weather is entirely dependent on the design of the catamaran--as it would on monos. I've sailed Seawinds (the 1000 and the 1250) and they are pretty ordinary upwind and the angle is terrible. When I first put the rig on my boat (A Whitehaven 11.7 with dagger boards) I took her out in the worst weather I could find offshore (out of Sydney harbour heads) it was a classic east coast low, 5+m seas and 35+ winds on the nose--I wanted to see whether she could sail off a lee shore. With two reefs in the main and a couple of wraps on the genoa we were doing 10 upwind with the hull lifting on the crests. Taking in a third reef slowed us to 8 knots no hull lifting and happily (the boat was happy--I was throwing up it was pretty wild out there) beating into 5m seas off the lee shore.

The sail back to harbour we hit over 20 knots..
Sailing a cat is different, there is not that 'feel' for when things are going pear shaped. we had very strict rules offshore about when to reef. If I saw 16 knots (true) the first reef went in, at 23 knots, the second reef was in, above 30 the third. This is what kept us safe. We might reef earlier upwind just to keep the speed down so that the comfort level was better--bashing into waves hard on the wind at 10 knots is exhausting for any length of time.

[fxykty]

Originally Posted by charliehows

... Trying to cut up against the wind and sea in a multihull was a chastening experience - coming off the top of moderately large swells and waiting to see if the wind would produce enough lift under the hullbridge to tip the boat over was enough to encourage me to change course and run off the wind (the last bit of the turn that exposed the beam to the weather was particularly exciting...) and seek shelter. ...

Your experience is why I and several other experienced multihullers on this forum are not impressed by the current solid foredeck designs. It’s not just about the possibility of water from above but also wind from below as you experienced.

Performance design attributes aren’t just about sailing fast. Large trampoline areas and short bridge decks are attributes of performance oriented cruising catamaran designs for a reason - safety. Our manual even comes with a warning to ensure future trampoline nets have sufficient openness - in our case that effectively means open weave netting with not less than 25mm square openings.

However, this is at the cost of interior space, which is why we are seeing ever more square, and consequently less seaworthy, catamarans on the market. For a coconut circumnavigation in good weather sure. Much beyond, maybe not.

[Morph]

Agree entirely with Fxykty. We replaced our old open weave tramp to Ferrari cloth (on the advice of a sail maker who said all the production sailing cats use it) which does not let enough water through-- on a trip down the coast we got hit by an unexpected squall and our bow buried and instead of letting the water go through, for the first (and only time) we had to dump the main in an emergency (an exercise the crew and I had practiced) to get the bows up. Immediately got to shore and replaced the cloth with netting--God knows what solid decks would have been like! The Outremers etc have it right.

[jmh2002]

Originally Posted by Dockhead

Dashew is a smart guy with an awful lot of good ideas.


I don't want to be bobbing around in some slow tub just waiting to get smacked. Speed is control over geography. Speed is life, as the pilots say. Speed is even the key to upwind ability, which is why performance cats do so well upwind contrary to cats' reputation for not going upwind.

Yeah, Dashew is definitely a smart guy.

I don't want to be bobbing around in some slow tub either. A long time ago, when I used to deliver race boats (mostly monos), they were very basic boats with very little comforts, pipe berths, 1 burner hob, no refrigeration, no autopilot (hand steering for 1000nm or more), no dodger, nothing.

But, even on delivery, with 2-3 crew, using reduced sail area, they were still FAST because of the easily driven hull. And if necessary more sail area could be added too.

This really helped with extra weather related options.

[jmh2002]

All good replies in the last few posts.

Outremer says it all, right there in the name, in French.

James Wharram has been fixed on all these sensible virtues for decades: open netting, open decking, low profile, low windage, low centre of effort, low drag (retractable propulsion), long waterline length vs accommodation (so, a 50ft Wharram to get 40ft space), etc, etc.

Pity that there are so many crappy Wharrams around, because whilst they will never be in the same league performance wise as an Outremer or similar, a well built, well setup, and well sailed one will give good cruising performance for the average sailor, and/or compared to the average cruising monohull (eg: a Pahi 52 should have no trouble averaging 10kn in typical trade wind conditions) - here is a nicer example:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KNqp80W7o1k

Not at all like the condomaran that I posted earlier, which now has a full solid front deck too (sold as advantageous!):

https://www.bali-catamarans.com/en/c...1-2/#exterieur