Hey all, I'm relatively new to all this, but have a solid 3 year plan in place to bug out and circumnavigate.
As part of the plan, I'm
learning to sail. As part of that step, I've twice chartered cats from Moorings. Most recently, we just finished a week on a 3900 in
Tahiti.
So, can I ask a question?
We were sailing West from
Bora Bora to Maupiti on a port broad reach (with
wind at maybe 120 degrees off the bow) and maybe 1 or 1.5m swell from the SE (same as the wind).
And I'll swear we might as well have been sailing a bathtub.
Seriously, on
autopilot (Raymarine ST-something) the
boat was swinging back and forth through 40 degrees or more. I half-expected us to pull a 360 between waves.
Then, on our way from Maupiti to Raiatea, which was unfortunately directly upwind and waves, we literally could make NO progress. I mean, with 15kts of
wind and 60deg of angle to it, we were making 3kts. I figured it would take us something like 20 hours to make the 40 miles, so we put the
sails away and motored.
I know very clearly that I'm not the best sailor and I'm sure there was some improvements I could have made to trim things up a bit or whatever. But I'm a sharp guy, and...
Well, I guess my question is:
Really?!
There's no way I'm selling my wife on doing this trip in a
monohull. We have some means, and were planning on the FP
Saba 50 or something similar. But man, I'm not sure I can take heading around the whole planet in a glorified bucket-with-a-sail.
Is the Moorings 3900 particularly terrible? Am I doing it wrong? Or is this just how catamarans are?
And, no.. I'm not
buying a Gunboat, or really even an Outreamer or
Antares. It's going to have to be comfy as hell to get the girl excited.
Am I doomed? Or will the
Saba 50 (or similiar) be MUCH better?