Fast Cruising Catamarans - How Fast ?

[fastcat435]

Originally Posted by ldrhawke

Right on!

Designer comments on ,"Longer is Better"

Obviously light material in construction of any cat helps, but at a certain point it make no economic sense. When mainly trying to keep a cat light, by using exotic new materials, that are costly to purchase and install; it quickly gets the point that it makes far more economic and performance sense to simply stretch the boat a few feet instead.

Striving mainly for lightness, by continually making structural sections thinner and lighter can be dangerous. At some point, even though they may have adequate measured strength to ultimate failure, there is the unanswered question of material fatigue from cycling and age.

There is also the comfort factor which isn't easy to measure or place a value on. A cruising catamaran can become too light. It then becomes akin to riding in a large Hobie cat, just look at the large ocean cat race boats as they bounce across the waves. A heavier cat is more stable and does not bounce off the waves like a cork, making the ride less physically and mentally fatiguing. Plus, shorter boats are less stable and hobby horse much more easily.

Also, often wave sound levels inside a lighter constructed boat go up. Plus, thinner poorer insulted hulls can sweat and cause mildew/odors to develop inside the boat. Thin cabin roof materials also transfers the suns heat more easily to make the cabin less comfortable. I've seen pictures of used cats that the owners have covered the complete cabin ceiling with tin foil trying to keep the suns heat out.

Isn't this the Cruisers Forum? I'm all for keeping the weight off and the performance in a catamaran, but sometimes I think this site sounds more like the Racers Forum?

The humorous part is to see the cruiser that spends $100,000's more to get a short lightly constructed cat and then loads it down with a Gen set, AC, Washer/drier, etc; only to end up with a mediocre performing catamaran in the end.

You are very right IDRhawk, by continually making structural sections thinner and lighter can be dangerous. However using less resin , stronger materials , sound absorbing materials all helps in making the boat lighter.
There is off course the cost issue , a kilo of e glass costs 2 Euro or $ 3,00 for 2.2 lbs
The same amount of carbon is 40 euro but less is needed so the price still goes up 10 fold .
On the total cost of a boat making the hull structure in a exotic lightweight composite double the cost of this structure but the end price has gone up with 20 to 25 %
A lot of extra money but for a much better performing boat.
Than the options as you mention like a gen set , washer dryer airco etc add a lot of weight.
This is however still preferable to a heavy cat where the same extras are loaded on.
All these extra,s can weight as much as 1000 kilo or 2200 lbs and in some cases that is almost half the payload of some cats. In case of a lightweight cat it is only 20 % of the payload.

I recall reading about the Orana that was supposed to be 8000 kilo net and actually was almost 10000 kilo in the water , the question is , was the payload also raised or is the extra weight subtracted from the payload? is that is the case not much payload is left after having added the items to make life comfortable on board.

Greetings

Gideon

[BigCat]

Yes, it is very expensive to save weight and difficult as well- but it is inexpensive to improve the statistics of a boat by stretching it instead of lightening it, with the same or better results in performance for a given payload and accommodation size. -Hence, my 'little big boat' philosophy.

[ldrhawke]

Originally Posted by fastcat435

You are right David

there is no Ideal boat , all boats ( cats ) are compromises and with some you can live and with some you cannot.
If speed is your thing than the weight has got to go down and taking it down by making the hull or anything structural is a recipe for disaster so the only ways to save on weight are
Using stronger materials like S glass, carbon fibre, Basalt fibre , epoxy, foam or lightweight balsa , making laminates instead of solids, And using prereg or resin infusion to minimize on the resin used.
Where most can be saved besides the above is on items in and on the boat like substituting glass with Lexan
A porcelain toilet bowl with a plastic or carbon version.
Using dyneema instead of polyester lines
PBO side stays , carbon rig
Lightweight batteries, Led Lighting and so on and on.
This does not weaken the structure but actually increases strength since a lighter boat has less stress.
It also provides the often needed payload to make a boat more luxurious without suffering to much in performance.
The idea is to create an enormous payload like 2200 lbs per 10 ft of length and that way we can end with the almost perfect cruising catamaran. ( Perfect does not exist)

Every time one thing is improved, it is almost always the case that something else has to be made worse.
And in case of getting weight out the cost is the worse part of it all.
It is very cost expensive to save on weight
It will always be a compromise although many sailors believe the have found the perfect boat.

Greetings
Gideon

Greetings

You are right....Virtually everything, including all construction materials and methods, you have listed are standards, or an option, with nearly all of todays catamaran builders and have been for almost the last ten years. I don't see any real difference on how a FastCat is built and many other boats are built.

Builders like Catana even used kevlar in the hulls a standard and carbon masts and booms are almost a standard, before they went under. Using polyurethane paint in in place of gelcoat has also been widely used in commercial boat building for years, and nearly exclusively in one off boat building of even longer.

Schionnings Waterline 1480 is a bigger boat than your 455, having a foot wider beam and longer waterline length, but it still weighs the same or less than your 455. They even use that heavy balsa construction that you frown upon and build a lighter boat per foot. The only real place I see a weight savings in your designs is that you are simply building smaller boats and trying to compare them to boats that are couple foot wider and have longer waterline length.

St. Francis has tried building their 48, which you call your FastCat 48, using the infusion method and didn't find a significant weight savings over vacuum bagging. They are now even going to vinylester resin in the new 50's. I've heard the asking price on your old Fastcat 48 which you show on your web site and state is a FastCat 48 (actually a SF 48) is more than a brand new loaded SF 50? That's confusing?

We have had the cost of raw materials, for hull construction, discussion on the list before. If I remember correctly, the major cost for building a cat is labor. The raw construction materials cost for a catamaran hull is only 10 to 15% of the total boat selling price. When boat builder try to justify that an increase in raw hull material cost, as justification for a major increase in selling price...it's a stretch. Carbon cloth is normally only used in high stress areas and very few pounds are used. Even, kevlar reinforcement in hulls doesn't add significant costs.

I have a quote for a bare 46' catamaran hull ready to install furniture, resin infused using vinylester resin and dvinycell foam throughout, and the materials alone broken out only cost $55,000.

Sure, using less thick foam for construction material is an option to save weight, all boat builders have that option, the risk is pushing into race boat design and having more hull flex. There would be nothing more disconcerting to me than going below in a heavy sea and watching my boat pulse like race boats do.

Lexan windows have been widely used for years, but you can also expect to replace them every 6 to 8 years, as they start to craze and crack. When I recently replaced all the crazed window in my boat, the plastic manufacturer, said only use a high quality on cast acrylic, because Lexan has very low UV resistance and crazes quickly. IMHO, tempered laminated safety glass is a far better option, even with the slight weight penalty. It will look good for fifty years. The cost to replace crazed plastic windows every five or eight years is major.

As purchased items, anyone could specify their builder to supply lithium batteries or the highest efficiency solar cells, if they wanted to pay the considerable extra cost.

You bring up payload capability all the time. We have had the discussion before. I look at many of the photos of your boats sitting in the water and sailing, and they all set submerge close to the water line. Your stated load carrying capability per inch of submergence which is actually less other cats the same size. You've agreed before that a fully loaded FastCat would sit nearly a foot deeper in the water than lightly loaded one.

It appears that you are rather generous with your load rating system. I just don't think I would want to sail this boat in the photo with it submerged a foot deeper. If it is an overload test, please show me a photo of this same boat lightly loaded with the waterline a foot higher out of the water. What is the basis of your waterline and load rating?

[freetime]

For me it looks like the 435 is in a wave on that pic? Need pics before/after this pic to know...

About choise of material for hulls, The Hanse with an E after is epoxy if i understund right. Is it Only epoxy and how much do you save with this? What is good and what is bad with epoxy?

Any catamaran build in epoxy?

[David M]

Originally Posted by ldrhawke

Builders like Catana even used kevlar in the hulls a standard and carbon masts and booms are almost a standard, before they went under.

Wait...Catana went under?? Their website gives no indication of this.

Catamarans CATANA

[catty]

Bob Perry (Designer) summed up the speed issues for the Gunboat 62 (regarding the Heineken regatta race ) on the sailing anarchy cruising forum with the following.....

quote


I think it can be one of three things:
The boat was heavier than designed. With their small footprint in the water cats have a low Lbs per inch immersion number so they do not like being overloaded.However, what's the point of having a "cruising boat" if you can't load it with all the stuff that people find necessary today. You buy a huge platform and then they tell you that you can't have a plasma TV? The boat should have been designed with those weights as a given in the first place.

The boat could have been poorly sailed.

Even good cats are generally not upwind rockets and as I understand it this race had a lot of beating. Consider the windage on a big cat.

I have never seen a big cruising cat sail to the same level of performance as a good monohull of the same size. But, if one could I suspect the GUNBOAT would be the one that could.

unquote.



Seems reasonable?

[ldrhawke]

Originally Posted by David M

Wait...Catana went under?? Their website gives no indication of this.

Catamarans CATANA

Not good news....on the verge. Catana not able to sell the 50' they are making on spec.

Poncin Yachts Shares Slump on Creditor Protection (Update3)
By Albertina Torsoli

June 4 (Bloomberg) -- Poncin Yachts, the French maker of Harmony sailboats, slumped to a nine-week low in Paris trading after receiving protection from creditors for six months and saying the company may sell assets.

Poncin fell 43 cents, or 13 percent, to 2.77 euros, the lowest since April 3. The stock has lost 40 percent this year, cutting the company's market value to 26 million euros ($40 million). The shares resumed trading today after having been suspended on May 30.

The court order will allow Poncin, based in the port of La Rochelle, on the Atlantic coast, to renegotiate 22 million euros of debt, the boatmaker said June 2. The global financial crisis has led to a drop in demand for its Harmony sailboats in countries such as Spain, Chief Executive Officer Olivier Poncin said in an interview yesterday.

``The creditor protection is bad news,'' said Annie Bonal, an analyst at Gilbert Dupont in Paris, who lowered her recommendation to ``sell'' from ``accumulate'' yesterday, cutting a price estimate by 34 percent to 2.10 euros. ``It's not a given that they will succeed in renegotiating the debt.''

Olivier Poncin, who founded the company in 2001, said yesterday the boatmaker is in talks about the sale of assets including its Kelt unit. Kelt makes White Shark and Sea Hawk motor boats and had sales of 9.6 million euros in the year through August, accounting for about 18 percent of Poncin Yachts' total. The unit reported a loss of 788,000 euros.

Wealthy Clients

To win wealthier clients, whose fortunes are less affected by an economic slowdown, Poncin Yachts will start producing Harmony sailboats only by orders and focus on luxury vessels such as Catana catamarans, the CEO said yesterday.

``They are basically stopping the production of Harmony sailboats and it's based on this theme that they had introduced the company on the market,'' said Bonal. ``Even Catana, which will be their main focus, still loses money. It's essential that they sell Kelt now.''

Poncin said yesterday that no decision has been made on the sale of assets and he isn't willing to sell at any price. The company plans to present a business plan before the end of 2008.

``What we have now is six months to come up with a plan,'' Poncin said in an interview with France's BFM radio today. ``We will have a plan. We will have a good plan.''

[ldrhawke]

Originally Posted by David M

Wait...Catana went under?? Their website gives no indication of this.

Catamarans CATANA

As a creditor would you extend credit to a company with this financial chart history? The Catana division isn't in any better shape. It will take a miracle to keep it out of bankruptcy. It will go the way of PDQ.

[44'cruisingcat]

Originally Posted by catty

Bob Perry (Designer) summed up the speed issues for the Gunboat 62 (regarding the Heineken regatta race ) on the sailing anarchy cruising forum with the following.....

quote

..............
I have never seen a big cruising cat sail to the same level of performance as a good monohull of the same size.......

unquote.



Seems reasonable?

He really musn't be looking very hard:

18 knots in 20 knots from a 50 footer:

YouTube - Catamaran Sailing Very Fast

16 knots in 20-22 knots from a 38 footer:

YouTube - Oram Mango 38, 16 knots in 20 - 22

10 knots in 10 knots from a 33 footer:

YouTube - Catamaran Sailing Catalina Channel

Any comparable video's of CRUISING mono's?

[ldrhawke]

or...this 42 and 20 knots

[jzk]

Originally Posted by 44'cruisingcat

He really musn't be looking very hard:

18 knots in 20 knots from a 50 footer:

16 knots in 20-22 knots from a 38 footer:

10 knots in 10 knots from a 33 footer:

Any comparable video's of CRUISING mono's?

FYI, Indigo II is a seventy-one footer, not a fifty footer.

[rob denney]

[quote=freetime;188687]


Haha...Harry....The Harryproa is lovely..How many sail today?
True about speed...

The most important is that the boat is fun to sail! And can sail in low winds...

Ok, A Lagoon AND a Hobie

Why a Lagoon? Slow and expensive, at least compared to the boat in the video, which is for sale for $260,000 ready to cruise as the owner died just after it was launched.

How many harrys? A lighter version (2 and a bit tonnes in sailing trim) of the video boat is taking blind people sailing at wind speed and above in Holland (they love it) and a 12m version is sailing in Australia. Plus I have built a bunch of crappy 12m prototypes to find out what works and what doesn't. There are also a couple of 7.5m/25' beach versions.

While I agree that there is not much you can do to the current cruising catamaran configuration to make it fast enough to qualify as a performance boat, there is plenty that can be done with multihulls as the harryproas have shown. You just need to look outside the box.

Regards,

Rob

[David M]

One thing to be said about cats and tri's, they are the ones currently smashing the Port X to Port Y sailing records. Obviously these are not your typical cruising boats.

If we want to compare boat speed then lets compare stripped out carbon fiber monohulls to stripped out carbon fiber multihulls and not cruising multihulls to stripped out monohulls.

I would consider a Gunboat 62 or Gunboat 66 much closer to a cruiser than an all out racer. I don't see any pipe berths on them at least.

[BigCat]

Yes, the Fastcat 435, when on its marks according to published figures, has the rather high displacement length ratio of 153.5. Even lightship, its D/L ratio is 94. This is not exceptionally light, by any means. The BigCat 65, with 880 gallons in its tanks and an all chain rode has a lower D/L ratio that the Fastcat 435 'lightship!' More proof, if any was needed, of the superiority of the 'little big boat' philosophy. This is with the BigCat 65 no carbon fiber except in the masts, and no foam or epoxy, and yet it is designed to ABS rules for offshore yachts. If the Fastcat 435 just sailed to Norway is any sign, when loaded for cruising, the Fastcat 435 is a lot heavier even than claimed, as its bridgedeck clearance was 7.29" less than claimed.

[gramos]

i was very fortunate one day, a friend called and said " get your kitbag were going out on CLUB MED for a blast ! " so we went out in 10/12 knots of wind in the solent (uk) and with the code 0 up we lifted the starboard hull at around 16 knots and leapt to 22 knots ! flying a hull in 11 knots of wind , that was exhilerating indeed ! 115 ft beach cat !

Originally Posted by freetime

How fast is the fastest you have sailed with your cruisingcatamaran?

Brand, Model, wind, speed?