Hi, Rgesner, and welcome to CF --
If you're looking for "everything" in a cat (or mono), then yes, it is indeed frustrating. For just about every decision made, there is a compromise involved. In order to get a greater payload, you are looking at either a longer boat (more $$$) or fatter hulls (less performance). No way around it. You can compensate a bit with the fatter hulls by increasing sail area, but that also involves a taller
mast, stronger (heavier)
rigging, and of course greater weight aloft, so you've "lost" some of the payload gained in order to keep your performance constant.
You might want to prioritize what you want in a boat and start looking at ones that fit more in line with those priorities. If light air sailing and top average speed isn't all that important to you, then you can increase your payload capacity without costing you an important priority. You will tend to pay for that decision in other ways, though. Such boats tend to have bigger engines that require bigger fuel
tanks (if you're going to have a decent motoring range) and you will use them more, because the boats won't sail very well in light
wind, so you
motor more. (In fact, I would say that we encounter far more light
wind conditions than heavy. Unfortunately, the boat needs to be able to cope with the latter in order to keep you safe.)
If you are really a performance oriented sailor, then you compromise the luxuries. Simply look at the speed machines and you can tell that they are pretty darn spartan and have considerably less internal room. Again, you can compensate for this -- some -- by using light weight materials (e.g., carbon = $$$). You can also be an absolute weight-watching obsessive. But, the problem here for
liveaboard cruising is that if you're going very far away from civilization, then you also need to be pretty self-sufficient, and that means taking a lot of stuff with you.
So, I suggest that before you pull out the rest of your hair, first come to an awareness and agreement with your
liveaboard crewmates about what's absolutely important, what would be good to have (but willing to give up), and what you really don't care about. That will help you get started.
By the way, on your list, I noticed that you have some details that seem out of whack to me: 250 lbs for an
outboard and fuel (Get a 15hp Yamaha 2-stroke, not only are they incredibly reliable with
parts available everywhere, they weight 75 lbs. 12 gallons of gas is about 75 lbs., so that saves you 100 lbs.) 150 lbs of
propane is a lot of
propane and will last a very long time. A 40 lb bottle lasted us for months. Depending on the efficiency of your boat and engines, you may be over-estimating the amount of fuel you need on board. Our boat gets .67 gph per
engine. 1
engine gets us 6.5 knots (so long as sea state and currents are agreeable). 100 gallons gives us a theoretical motoring range of 1000 miles. Not enough to get us across an ocean, but that's what the
sails are for.
A big area of potential weight savings is going to
LiFePo4 batteries -- more amp/hrs, higher charge acceptance, and 1/3 to 1/2 the weight. I calculated that by making the switch I could increase my usable
power budget by 50%, reduce
charging time by 50%, and take off half the weight of my gel cells, thereby increasing my payload by about 300 lbs.
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