On the Verge of Flipping-Over a Cruising Cat...

[yeloya]

39 feet well known brand and make cat, my wife + two guests with me on board, 25-27 knts just at 90 degree (apparent) on my starboard, boat speed on water 10,5-10,7 knots, almost flat water (2 max 3 ft swells from the wind direction) no reef and everything seems to be under conrol with the exception of the rudder that is pulling strongly towards the wind. At certain point, the cat suddenly swang towards the wind and almost simultaneously the starboard hull took off. We were heeled for about 5-7 sec up to 25-30 degree. I steered immediately further to the wind (nothing to do with seamanship just an instinct..) which fortunately worked well and the cat stabilized, we took down the sails immediately and came back to marina just 2 nm away. The people that has seen us from the marina confirmed that one hull was completely out of water for a while. Not to mention that I was dead scared and still cannot believe that we could recover form the situation without being fliiped over. (from what I know, contrary to mıonohulls, the cats are very tough to be heeled but once they reach 7-10 degree, they go down easily)

I must have mde many mistake to fall into this position. Nevertheless, to my knowledge whatever you do, a well designed cruising the cat would never and ever run into this kind of trouble.. (remember almost flat water, the true wind not exceeding 25 knots and from behind, boat speed around 11 knots..)
Meanwhile I must say that I am not an experienced sailors as much as most of you guys in this forum. But I have sailed many times in much tougher conditions various cats (and even some monos) and I didn't even come close to anything like this.
I am ruling out the possibility of serious design error as the make is well established and proven. We checked out the boat and there was nothing wrong with the riggins or mechanics.

So what must have gone wrong, any thoughts ?? How this could have happened ?

Cheers

Yeloya