How often you see catamaran flying a hull?

[ranchero76]

Looks impressive

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8YPExhb_cio

A bit pricey though, at 3.4 million...

[tomfl]

About as often as I see a Gunboat knockoff. Never.

[44'cruisingcat]

OTB cat's, open bridgedeck racing boats, you see them flying hulls pretty regularly.


Never seen a bridgedeck cruising boat fly a hull. I've seen the occasional photo, a Gunboat or a Schionning G-Force - cruiser/racers, but never seen it in real life.

[SV DestinyAscen]

Hope they're pushing the limits during testing/seatrial - otherwise it is just dumb marketing material. Like the sort of thing some idiot would say "here watch this" before turning their expensive toy into a youtube video.

[Interloper]

It's pretty rare for a big cruising cat. And I suspect the manufacturer might have a don't try this at home disclaimer prepared. From what I gather a big cruising catamaran should have put a reef (or more) in before it's flying a hull.

[chris mac]

It's kinda like asking how often you see a motorbike catwalk down the highway.
Performance bikes are built to do it, cruisers aren't. You could do it on a cruiser but its not easy and you will do damage.
Performance catamarans are designed to do it. HH 66 website even says it will fly a hull at 16 knots. It is built for it.
If any of you want to put up the money, I would gladly come crew. :-)

[Eggbah]

Comforting...

That's not the norm, right?

[chris mac]

Originally Posted by Eggbah

Comforting...

That's not the norm, right?

That boat is specially designed and worth millions, specifically to be that high performance. A cat any of us mere mortals can afford will not be able to do it outside of extremely rare and cataclysmic events.

[donradcliffe]

Originally Posted by chris mac

It's kinda like asking how often you see a motorbike catwalk down the highway.
Performance bikes are built to do it, cruisers aren't. You could do it on a cruiser but its not easy and you will do damage.
Performance catamarans are designed to do it. HH 66 website even says it will fly a hull at 16 knots. It is built for it.
If any of you want to put up the money, I would gladly come crew. :-)

If it will fly a hull in 16 knots of wind, it can flip in 17 knots. Lots of fun on someone else's boat with a support boat following.

[Rapanui]

If they are lucky, just before you hear a Mayday, Mayday Relay, or MRCC initiating a search after EPIRB/PLB activation.

If they are not.........

[Polux]

Originally Posted by donradcliffe

If it will fly a hull in 16 knots of wind, it can flip in 17 knots. Lots of fun on someone else's boat with a support boat following.

And a full very experienced crew taking care of the sails and wheel controlling the boat and ready to let go the sails and the car if needed.

In fact I have saw that in some stupid promotional photos of performance catamarans:


But what baffles me is that while the Tag is making it obviously with a lot of wind, the HH66 is making it clearly with much less wind. Look at the flat sea on the movie (035). That makes it a risky cruising boat.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8YPExhb_cio

They say more than 20k but certainly the sea does not like a 20k sea and even the 16k you mention seem a bit limit to me. Probably they are talking about apparent wind speed? It looks 14, 15K. 16 to 18K is normally the point for the first reef on most sailboats.

One will be tempted to cruise with all sail up on light conditions like those, even not flying a hull, but not far from it even without knowing it. If a squall hits the boat increasing substantially the wind intensity the cat would then fly a hull but the chances are that just for very short seconds before capsizing, specially if the boat is on autopilot, as cruising boats normally are.

[ranchero76]

I wouldn't be worried that much. Obviously it's empty boat on sea trial, not loaded with all stuff cruising cat. I bet in normal conditions it won't be as easy to fly hull on it. Sure it'll need experienced sailors to operate.

[valhalla360]

Originally Posted by chris mac

That boat is specially designed and worth millions, specifically to be that high performance. A cat any of us mere mortals can afford will not be able to do it outside of extremely rare and cataclysmic events.

Not hardly, I've heard people claim they flew a hull on a Gemini. Most people are not smart enough to try though because even with an experienced crew, it's just too easy to have an oops and you have many thousands of dollars worth of damage if not a complete loss.

Stupid regardless of how many $$$ it took to buy the boat.

[Suijin]

I have a fair amount of time at the helm of day sailing and racing cats, and I believe that allowing a cruising cat to get anywhere near flying a hull is asking for disaster. You lose a lot of stability and it does not take much in terms of a gust or a steering error to make things go pear shaped. Granted, the issue is magnified on smaller cats, but the same principle applies no matter the size.

[brownoarsman]

Polux-what would have made that a real video is if they'd changed out the saildrive zincs while flying the hull!

https://youtu.be/MQm5BnhTBEQ