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Originally Posted by Jeannius Maxingout.... Great video. Wonderful to see how stable everything was and how little drama even in 40 knots of breeze. |
Most people are surprised when they see how stable things are in a catamaran in 40 to 50 knots of wind and twenty foot seas. The secret is slowing the boat down enough so that it's no longer smashing into walls of water or jumping off waves.
We had surfed up to eighteen knots and things were getting worrisome before we put out our drogues. If the autopilot failed, we could have had major strife at those speeds.
When both of our drogues were out, our boat speed dropped down to four and a half knots. It was amazing to watch the seas lift our stern as we sailed comfortably along without any worries. We didn't take a drop of water in our cockpit. What you see in the video was exactly the way it was. The monohulls that we were with continued sailing at eight to ten knots, and they had to deal with knockdowns and water filling the cockpit.
The monohulls arrived in Graciosa Island in the Canaries about twelve hours earlier than us, so that is the price we paid for slowing down to four and a half knots.
We talked with the monohulls as we were going through the same storm, and what I heard made me glad that I was on a catamaran. They were suffering while we were sleeping.
One of the advantages of a catamaran is that it has such great directional stability from having two hulls in the water. It's like being on railroad tracks downwind. And when you put a couple of powerful drogues behind your yacht, it effectively increases the length of your yacht to more than a hundred feet overall - Boat length plus drogue length. When you slow the boat down, and add massive directional stability to the situation using drogues, you go through your 40 knot gale and still get your sleep.
Catamarans are awesome.
Dave
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