MULTIHULL MONOHULL SURVEY

[Tropic Cat]

This has to be a record for thread drift

[Steve Rust]

I was thinking the same thing Rick, you just beat me to it. Where are the moderators when.....oh, wait a minute

[Canibul]

I think they are just happy we are not fighting over how many hulls are enough....

[Tropic Cat]

Originally Posted by Steve Rust

I was thinking the same thing Rick, you just beat me to it. Where are the moderators when.....oh, wait a minute

Yeah, they're busy emailing me this morning about me being a bad boy again.

[Canibul]

Originally Posted by rickm505

Yeah, they're busy emailing me this morning about me being a bad boy again.

Oh no...please tell me you didn't point out the common knowledge among certain people that every sailor with an IQ above a certain number drives a multihull......

[Pelagic]

Originally Posted by Canibul

Oh no...please tell me you didn't point out the common knowledge among certain people that every sailor with an IQ above a certain number drives a multihull......

And those would be people with delusions of grandeur coupled with a bipolar need to find stability in their life either with masts facing up (or) down

(I`m probably gonna get an email for that)

[Southern Star]

Nah, these are at least intended to be funny - in a passive/aggressive sort of way.

brad

[Canibul]

Originally Posted by Pelagic

And those would be people with delusions of grandeur coupled with a bipolar need to find stability in their life either with masts facing up (or) down

(I`m probably gonna get an email for that)

Nah, I agree with you. Masts that stay vertical are good. And while I certainly would not have pointed out the inherent instability of people who choose masts that spend their lives looking like metronomes....I am glad that you did.

[ireaney]

Originally Posted by Canibul

Nah, I agree with you. Masts that stay vertical are good. And while I certainly would not have pointed out the inherent instability of people who choose masts that spend their lives looking like metronomes....I am glad that you did.

At last some good friendly banter between both camps.

Now I will probably get into trouble for this, BUT, are there any moderators on this forum that own multihulls??

Just curious!

The reason I ask is that some of the moderators react very strongly/emotionally and quickly to what appear to me to be very innocent questions and others like Hud3 seem to be very objective with sensible, intelligent and constructive answers, especially on the multihull thread side.

[Alan Wheeler]

To answer your first question..Yes.
The rest.... it has nothing to do with what boat we have. It has to do with the rules and that we usually are responding to a call of help from a member that feels they are being insulted. In the past, most of us "Staff members" never really looked in here. We are only alerted when someone tosses his toys and we get told. Because we have had so many issues here, we now frequent here to ensure everyone is playing nice.

[Hud3]

These multi/mono threads tend to generate a lot of "heat", but not much "light" (as in "enlightenment").

I recently came across an interesting post in the SSCA forum that describes the author's attempt to analyze actual data from records of boating accidents and insurance company acturial information. The poster, Sandy Daugherty, was an employee of the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB). The data were not perfect, but Sandy was able to make some interesting observations and draw a few conclusions.

The entire post is included below, with the kind permission of the author. Thanks, Sandy!

Hud


" Before I retired from the NTSB I had the opportunity to study the complete Coast Guard database of boating accidents and Summary
Data of proprietary actuarial information from sources within the Lloyds' Groups, with a focus on vessels with accomodations including permanent berths, head(s) and galley. I tried to exclude beach cats and tris, and daysailers by excluding boats under 24 feet.

The data was not user-friendly and required a lot of external correlation because many vessels were incorrectly classified. That ultimately prevented releasing any conclusions because GI+MGI=GO (garbage in plus more garbage in still equals garbage out.) This was also a problem with the older NTSB databases that included pre-digital-age reporting. However, I discovered in the process that there were few differences between monohul and multihull rates of occurrence. That's easy to understand; human error trumps mechanical failure and design deficiency evermore.

Here are some of the facts that did become apparent:
Vessels designed for racing and record attempts break. Vessels built for cruising don't break. People who race drive themselves and their vessels to the limit. [please forgive the pun] Cruisers drive their homes to the next nice place.

The rates of actual vessel loss (outside of competition) remained the same for monohulls and multihulls, over many years, with catamarans emerging slightly ahead of other vessels in the last years of available data. Reports of large numbers of catamaran roll-overs are probably anecdotal as accident statistics reveal a (slight) decline, with a slight increase in sinkings among monohulls. There was a lot of confusion in the data between catamarans and trimarans, which I can only suggest an interpretation for:

Vessels purpose built for competition are not recorded as such. Each accident had to be researched individually. Many were not insured, meaning that Insurance data would not take them into account. In fact, Many sinkings of monohulls were extremely difficult to document because they were never widely reported. This is changing as news media is becoming more interested, especially in colorful visuals.

A very small percentage of trimarans are sold for cruising, as a very small percentage of catamarans are sold for racing. The best correlation between racing and competition vessels was a ratio of lwl to mast height.

Where I was able to distinguish between cruising and competition vessels, I found that the rate of personal injuries and single fatalities was higher among monohulls. That should merit further study because those injuries appeared to occur in better weather conditions, not in worse. These accidents included cabin injuries, man-overboards, and deck injuries such as inadvertant jibes.

My conclusions were impaired by the quality of data, and my proposal of a National Transportation Safety Board Special Study was properly overshadowed by more important issues. But there is enough factual data to prove that cruising multihulls are no more, and possible less dangerous than cruising monohulls in all reported conditions of weather, traffic, and human frailty, regardless of location."

[Keegan]

Originally Posted by Hud3

These multi/mono threads tend to generate a lot of "heat", but not much "light" (as in "enlightenment").


My conclusions were impaired by the quality of data, and my proposal of a National Transportation Safety Board Special Study was properly overshadowed by more important issues. But there is enough factual data to prove that cruising multihulls are no more, and possible less dangerous than cruising monohulls in all reported conditions of weather, traffic, and human frailty, regardless of location."

Interesting information Hud. It is not surprising that most cruising boats whether mono or multi have a similar safety record if there is an adequate skill level of the crew. Thanks.

Since this is also a casual as well as social forum, I would suspect that some threads dont really need to result in enlightenment, but enlightenment is always a nice result when it happens.

[ireaney]

Originally Posted by Hud3

These multi/mono threads tend to generate a lot of "heat", but not much "light" (as in "enlightenment").

I recently came across an interesting post in the SSCA forum that describes the author's attempt to analyze actual data from records of boating accidents and insurance company acturial information. The poster, Sandy Daugherty, was an employee of the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB). The data were not perfect, but Sandy was able to make some interesting observations and draw a few conclusions.

The entire post is included below, with the kind permission of the author. Thanks, Sandy!

Hud


" Before I retired from the NTSB I had the opportunity to study the complete Coast Guard database of boating accidents and Summary
Data of proprietary actuarial information from sources within the Lloyds' Groups, with a focus on vessels with accomodations including permanent berths, head(s) and galley. I tried to exclude beach cats and tris, and daysailers by excluding boats under 24 feet.

The data was not user-friendly and required a lot of external correlation because many vessels were incorrectly classified. That ultimately prevented releasing any conclusions because GI+MGI=GO (garbage in plus more garbage in still equals garbage out.) This was also a problem with the older NTSB databases that included pre-digital-age reporting. However, I discovered in the process that there were few differences between monohul and multihull rates of occurrence. That's easy to understand; human error trumps mechanical failure and design deficiency evermore.

Here are some of the facts that did become apparent:
Vessels designed for racing and record attempts break. Vessels built for cruising don't break. People who race drive themselves and their vessels to the limit. [please forgive the pun] Cruisers drive their homes to the next nice place.

The rates of actual vessel loss (outside of competition) remained the same for monohulls and multihulls, over many years, with catamarans emerging slightly ahead of other vessels in the last years of available data. Reports of large numbers of catamaran roll-overs are probably anecdotal as accident statistics reveal a (slight) decline, with a slight increase in sinkings among monohulls. There was a lot of confusion in the data between catamarans and trimarans, which I can only suggest an interpretation for:

Vessels purpose built for competition are not recorded as such. Each accident had to be researched individually. Many were not insured, meaning that Insurance data would not take them into account. In fact, Many sinkings of monohulls were extremely difficult to document because they were never widely reported. This is changing as news media is becoming more interested, especially in colorful visuals.

A very small percentage of trimarans are sold for cruising, as a very small percentage of catamarans are sold for racing. The best correlation between racing and competition vessels was a ratio of lwl to mast height.

Where I was able to distinguish between cruising and competition vessels, I found that the rate of personal injuries and single fatalities was higher among monohulls. That should merit further study because those injuries appeared to occur in better weather conditions, not in worse. These accidents included cabin injuries, man-overboards, and deck injuries such as inadvertant jibes.

My conclusions were impaired by the quality of data, and my proposal of a National Transportation Safety Board Special Study was properly overshadowed by more important issues. But there is enough factual data to prove that cruising multihulls are no more, and possible less dangerous than cruising monohulls in all reported conditions of weather, traffic, and human frailty, regardless of location."

Well said and thanks again for good information, IMHO it seems to me that really most accidents and problems are caused by bad seamanship and a lack of experience and that 99% of the time the type of craft is immaterial, unless it was like the tri that the American Author (forgot his name) built last year out of goods from Home Depot and was going to circumnavigated until his welds broke about 50 miles out.

[Hud3]

I believe you're talking about David Vann and his trimaran named "Tin Can". Yeah, that's in a class by itself!

I've always believed that most boats are designed built to be safe for their intended purpose, and as long as they are sailed with skill and maintained properly, there will rarely be problems. Problems arise when people make mistakes--errors in judgment, loss of concentration (fatigue), sailing beyond one's skill level. I know that's true for some of my own "close calls", as I've learned the ropes over the years.

Sailing cruising catamarans safely requires a somewhat different set of skills or techniques, and an experience level to anticipate what the boat may do in various challenging wind and wave circumstances. I would wager that many of the multihull incidents debated in some of these threads are precipitated by "operator error", not an inherent flaw in the design of boats themselves. Of course, "operator error" applies to monohulls, too!

[sandy daugherty]

What a great forum, Hud! Thank you for telling me about it!
I lost a tooth recently. It's wrapped up in a lottery ticket under my pillow, with a gentle note to the tooth fairy describing the infinite advantages of my winning enough money to buy, dock, and care for a MaineCat 41 and a hybrid Outremer 42 together. I need both so I can finally decide which is the best way to sail. The next drawing is Friday, so I'll be busy placing those orders next week.