Any experience with African Cats

[pier]

Hallo Frank,
I might have the pleasure to buy a 435 from African Cat.
Thanks for any feedback about your brand new cat, you would like to post me.Pier

[schoonerdog]

Please tell how it sails, must be dream. Aside from the all carbon fiber Gunboat, you've got the fastest boat out there. And talk about ease of maintenance, I think you can even reach the 435 electric drive engine when retracted out of the water from the underside escape hatches? How absolutely cool is that! Retract it out of the water, no metal parts touching the water at all, no drag, no galvanic action, and then if you snag something or need to work on it, no need to haul out or get wet. I think these engines are reasonably light and small, how many of us could reach through their port, take off their engine, walk down to the UPS store and mail it out for work? Or have an engine failure, open up a small cubbie, put in a complete replacement engine and keep going? And the Valence batteries last for 2000 cycles? LED lighting throughout as well?

Fair winds and enjoy!

Originally Posted by pier

Hallo Frank,
I might have the pleasure to buy a 435 from African Cat.
Thanks for any feedback about your brand new cat, you would like to post me.Pier

[fastcat435]

We at African are presently testing the new underwater motogen as we call it
with the battery power on board the fastcat 435 we can motor at 50 % power ( 7 knots ) for 5 hours we do equip the cats with a emergency generator for if you are in a hurry or cruising thru the doldrums.The motors will not be needed frequently because of the excellent light wind performance. with 10 knots true 90 degrees 9 knots of speed. The motogens will mainly be used for generation of power and when goin into a harbor.Besides having the generator on board we also supply the cat with a standard masttop generator and 800 watt of solar power. when sailing at 5 knots you can start regenerating about 1 Kw per motogen at 10 knots 4 Kw per side when your batteries are full , you are warned to lift out the motogens.

Happy and safe sailing

[fastcat435]

On the FastCat 435 we can install the following generators as an option to give you shorter or longer motoring range for instance to get thru the doldrums.
Without generator and not taking into account the 840 watt of solar panels or the 400 masthead mounted wind generator.
the fastcat can cruise @ 7 knots for 3 hours before the batteries run flat.
Keep in mind that this cat sails well with wind speeds of less than 8 knots with 8 knots we reach 7 @ 90 degrees

1.10.000 watt power 144 volts.
With this choice you can run your motors full speed with full batteries for 3 to 4 hours and after that throttle back to 60 % power 7 knots.
This unit weights 200 kilo installed.

2.13.000 watt power 144 volts.
With this choice you can run your motors full speed with full batteries for 7 to 8 hours and after that throttle back to 75 % power 8 knots.
This unit weights 240 kilo installed.
3.17.000 watt power 144 volts.
With this choice you can run your motors full speed indefinitely or as long as your diesel supply lasts (150 hours with a full tank). Max speed is set to 9 knots.
This unit weights 280 kilo installed. The reason for adjusting the max speed to 9 knots (hull speed) is that going any faster wil disproportinally consume much more power. An example is setting the max. speed from 9 to 10 knots (possible) raises your power consumption with 75 %.!!!!!

[David M]

Originally Posted by Thanna5

Anyone looking at cats from SA should check out Bumfuzzle.com, and badboats.net . At least consider the downside.

I went to badboats.net and all I could find were a total of three posts. Not enough to even get a feel for supposed South African boat builder problems. Apparently there was one bad boy company with a number of different aliases which is now out of business.

Went to bumfuzzle.com. Interesting, a young couple sails around the world, but I don't get what their website has to do with this thread.

As far as electric drives go, I would feel better having a gen set which is large enough to power the electric drives at near hull speed infinitely...or at least until one runs out of diesel ...such as for getting out of the way of bad weather.

[TaoJones]

Originally Posted by David M

Went to bumfuzzle.com. Interesting, a young couple sails around the world, but I don't get what their website has to do with this thread.

Though it isn't easy to find David, Pat Schulte kept a detailed log of his correspondence with the builders of his Wildcat 35 after he began experiencing serious problems. Here's a link to the pertinent page:

bumfuzzle/charter cats email correspondence

If a person wants to find the page from the Bumfuzzle home page, click on Transport, then the stern view of their sailboat, then scroll to the bottom of the page that opens which lists Bum's vital information. There you'll see the following short paragraph:

"Thinking about buying a Charter Cats (name now changed to Classic Cats) boat? They build the Wildcat 350, the Jaguar 36, and also a power cat. Be sure and check out their response to the problems we had with our boat first. click here"

TaoJones

[fastcat435]

I do not know what a company like charter cats has to do with companys like Gunboat , St Francis catamarans , Voyage cats , Robertson and Caine ( moorings )
Or African Cats. Gunboat company is american owned and African Ctas is European owned , both companys that build in South Africa because of the lower labolr costs.

[RandyAbernethy]

Why does the Fast Cat site show pictures of Pegasus, a Saint Francis 48, on the Fastcat 50 pictures page?

[craig boorman]

Walking topsides on the Voyage 440 and 430 has never been a safety issue with me as they have lifelines and hand rails in case you need them. I am now sailing my second Voyage Yacht if that says anything about S.A. cats.

[fastcat435]

Hallo Randy as you are aware we are the agents for Duncan Lethbridge in Europe and agreed with him to market the St francis as the African St Francis 50 We are proud that such nice cats are made in Africa

[Frank Artville]

There is an owner of a Fast Cat who has a website, I believe it is in German, but it could also be in the Belgium language.

Nieuwe pagina 1

I was not impressed by the daily distances sailed on the trip South Africa to Madeira.

The 12hour mileage postings in the month of October are not higher than 89M and the lowest is 21M.

Most 12 hr distances are 50M-65M, and that is supposed to be in the trade winds. That makes for <150M / 24 hr. Maybe someone can explain this to me ? I assume I missed out of something?

[fastcat435]

Being the Owner of Africa Cats I followed this trip with the first all electric
( non retractable ) FastCat 435 and I can tell you that they have been tacking most of the trip , yes there are trade winds but they had them on the nose 90 % of the time and the Idea was since it is a electric driven boat with a emergency generator for long periods without wind to use the generator little as possible , they have used all of 136 liters of diesel over a 10.00 NM trip coming from Durban Via cape Town St. Helena cape verdy islands , they had to return there after a week of sailing because one of the crew members caught a infection and needed to be hospitalized , they waited for a week for the recovery before going on there way again
They have seen top speeds of 22 knots and have been going as slow as 4 knots over the ground with a counter current of 2 knots.
I did the same trip with good winds 3 years ago and broke the record from Durban to cape Town for catamarans in 3 days and 4 hours , almost 1000 NM and 7 days from Cape Town to St helena , 1680 NM
It is all a matter of wind and if it comes from the right direction that certainly helps

Gideon Goudsmit

p.s. the website is in Dutch

[Keegan]

Originally Posted by Frank Artville

There is an owner of a Fast Cat who has a website, I believe it is in German, but it could also be in the Belgium language.

Nieuwe pagina 1

I was not impressed by the daily distances sailed on the trip South Africa to Madeira.

The 12hour mileage postings in the month of October are not higher than 89M and the lowest is 21M.

Most 12 hr distances are 50M-65M, and that is supposed to be in the trade winds. That makes for <150M / 24 hr. Maybe someone can explain this to me ? I assume I missed out of something?

It is very hard to judge the performance of a boat based on one voyage especially when you are not on the boat taking part in sailing it. There are too many factors that can hinder the true performance metric. i.e. wind, weather and current.

Keegan

[leehaefele]

I bought a used Leopard 38. I wanted a cat from a company with a lot of history. Many cat companies have only made 50 boats, during that time they may have changed the model several times. Downside was that it was a used Moorings charter boat and had bad care and maintenance. Moorings actually painted over side impacts with gelcoat, these reappeared a year later.
I also operate a Leopard owners e.mail list.

[GordMay]

Originally Posted by fastcat435

Being the Owner of Africa Cats ...
Gideon Goudsmit

We're fortunate to have such an experienced cruiser, and innovative & knowledgeable boatbuilder aboard the CruisersForum.

For more information about African Cats contact:
Gideon Goudsmit
Tel. +31 (0) 297 582 881
Fax +31 (0) 297 532 477
Email: Info@africancats.com
Web: African Cats: comfortable lightweight performance leisure catamarans