Power Cat vs Sailing Cat

[atoll]

powercat with a parachute for crossing oceans? now there's an idea!
anybody done it?
would you need to reef a parachute or just go faster in squalls.......

[beauris]

a bit of both with the bamba 50 ( theres a 42 coming out)

BAMBA 50'-2012

[flagatorclearwa]

I too am struggling with the powercat vs. sailing cat issue. I'm unclear just how often I'd need to figure on replacing sails, rigging, etc. Is this based on miles/hours of sailing, or just the passage of time? I want to cruise Florida, the Caribbean and the Caribbean coast of Mexico and Central America, maybe Colombia. Best I can discern from Google Maps my longest passage would likely be around 400 nm (e.g., Roatan to Cayman Islands, Isla Mujeres to Havana, etc.). 90% of my time will be in marinas or at anchor. For me it’s about the destination, not the journey (I know that’s opposite from how a “true sailor” feels). From the comments in this thread, I probably would only have the sails up a small amount of time per year, but on those days when conditions are perfect, it sure seems like it would be nice to have the sailing option. BTW I would need to learn to sail. I handled my 41 ft. Sundancer fine, so the powercat path would be easier.

[SVHarmonie]

The reason that sailboats rule among the long distance cruisiers is not so much that they are a more economical way to cruise, but they give you essentially infinite range.

For most boats a complete suite of sails are the same order of magnitude in cost as a new engine, and typically will last 10 years, or 100,000 miles which ever comes first.

Steve Dashew has made the argument that a well designed power boat CAN have the range needed to cross oceans and do it for essentially the same cost (long term) as a sailboat. Of course, he made this argument after he changed from sail to power, so it might be a bit self-justifying. In any event, costs are nor radically different.

If your cruising is short range, and less than 400 miles is certainly that, then you can pick a sailboat OR a powerboat as you desire. Either work. Of course not all sailboats or all motorboats are suited, but that’s a whole other story.

[Sailingveterinarian]

Be sure to check into fuel capacity and range of power cat

[mcarthur]

How often to replace sails AND rigging is sometimes up to you, and sometimes forced on you by insurance. It sounds like a powercat may be better if the finances work out. If you really are maxing out at 400nm, you'll find many boats that can do it at a fair clip and get you into a marine/harbor safely, fast and early. Perhaps a sailing dinghy on a powercat, or even non-cat powerboat (sacre bleu!), may satisfy the "sound of the wind in the ears" for those 5% of "perfect" times?

[rajsach]

Interesting thread. I read through all of it. Here’s my perspective and personal experience.
I’ve had a couple of sailboats earlier in my life and then took a hiatus. About five years ago I bought a 44 foot Leopard sailing catamaran. I loved it and everything about Sailing. However, I live in Puerto Rico and we always found ourselves going east on departure. We were always beating against the wind and the waves when we left. I still work so we always found ourselves sailing on a schedule. It became miserable after a while. We ended up buying a power cat. 51 foot leopard. I outfitted it like a sailboat. I put a total of 1400w of solar panels on the hardtop , put in 1200amp/h of lithium batteries and upgraded the electrical system and put large inverters on board. I can power the entire boat including air conditioners with just solar, inverter and the batteries. So at anchor ,atleast during the day, it’s pretty much like a sailboat. We do quick one to two week trips. We found that moving to a power cat really made our boating life a lot more enjoyable. I agree with all of the previous posts that if you are going to go long distances, a sail boat is the way to go. However if you want to do short jaunts of up to 2-4 hundred miles or less then power cats are the way to go. We average about 20 gallons per hour using both engines cruising at 17knots . Obviously, you could slow down and use one engine and increase your range considerably. We like to get there quickly and enjoy our destination. I don’t think I’ll ever talk my wife into going back to Sailing again.

[valhalla360]

Originally Posted by Thenaz007

So if it is $17K for new sails every (indulge me) 7 years and (again indulge me) $3/gallon for gas, your break even is 800 gallons of gas per year. If your rationale is you want to be there not get there you will maybe get around 2 mpg. So if you would SAIL less than 1600 miles a year you are losing money. This is eight 200 mile passages. Again you could argue different numbers and criteria but the rule of thumb looks to be if you are actually actively cruising (going somewhere else once a month) you should at least break even. To me that means its a personal choice, and everyone has one.

When looking at the typical sailboat on the ICW, they motor 90% of the time (that's our experience having done the great loop), so not only do they have the sailing related costs, they still have the fuel costs.

And if you slow down the power cat to sail cat motoring speeds, there won't be much difference in fuel consumption.

So unless you are a real sailing purist, don't count on any significant fuel savings.

Honestly, been keeping an eye out for a sail cat that's lost it's rig, so we can pick it up cheap and use it as a power cat.

[Thenaz007]

I also am coming from the position of being an owner of a fairly large cruiser with twin 454's. I just could not believe it when I motored 80% of the time in the BVI on a 42' Cat and only spent $82 in gas. We motored a couple hours a day, which would certainly not mirror gas consumption probably anywhere else, but it seriously changed my obsession with needing to sail to cut fuel costs in retirement.

[mvweebles]

Originally Posted by rajsach

. About five years ago I bought a 44 foot Leopard sailing catamaran. I loved it and everything about Sailing. However, I live in Puerto Rico and we always found ourselves going east on departure. We were always beating against the wind and the waves when we left. I still work so we always found ourselves sailing on a schedule. ...... I don’t think I’ll ever talk my wife into going back to Sailing again.

I have probably 1000 nms on a friend's Horizon 52 Power Cat. He too is an ex-sailor (Brewer 46 PH mono) and we've both done 1000's of hours on offshore-capable trawler yachts (think: Nordhavn). He's not crazy about the motion on his PowerCat - especially in even a modest beam-sea of 3-feet. Wondering your reaction?

I find these types of threads mildly amusing as people compare fuel consumption of a powerboat with a sailboat. A similarly sized powerboat traveling at saiboat speed will consume roughly the same amount of diesel. The difference is that many people, given a choice, do not want to go sailboat speeds. A sistership to my Willard 36 went from California to Hawaii - roughly 2400 nms and burned 330 gallons of diesel over 14-days.

Steve Dashew has kept records for 40+ years. They use 3400 hours for replacement of sails. I'm sure many will argue that too short or they replace them too quickly, but it's their numbers. Most well maintained diesels in a trawler will go at least 10,000 hours between overhauls. And let's not forget sailboats have engines too. So 2-3 sail/rigging changes per engine overhaul.

There are several people who have cruised both sail and trawler (not simply owned each, but actively cruised). In their opinion, the costs are about the same. Vast majority go from sail to trawler, very few the other direction, but it's not exactly rare but is uncommon. I know of one guy who had a Valiant 40. He got lucky and made a few bucks and bought a Nordhavn 57, about $2m at the time. After about 18-months he sold the Nordhavn and had a 50-foot sailboat built that was more or less an over-sized Valiant 40.

I personally self-identify more with sailors than powerboaters as I greatly prefer simple boats and enjoy life at jogging speed. She is off-grid capable with 800W of solar and 1000AH LFP batteries. For the ICW and The Loop, would strongly recommend keeping the air-draft as low as possible to avoid delays and maximize the area you can see. If I were broke and on a shoestring budget, no doubt I'd go back to sail. But I find being on the water is what I love - and I am perplexed by the journey vs destination distinction. I love the journey on a powerboat as much as I do on a sailboat, but can't speak for others.

Speed is a luxury. A boat that can do 15-kts vs my 7.5 isn't just twice as fast, but it opens-up almost 4x the amount of territory you can see. Yes, fuel burn is 4x too (at least), but if you're a working stiff on something resembling a schedule, voyaging at 15 kts speed vs jogging speed may make sense.

Finally, I did the Baja Ha Ha on a friends Willard 40 in 2004, a 7.5 kt boat so not much faster than most of the 160 sailboats in the fleet. We arrived in anchorages rested, relaxed, and ready for a glass of red wine. Much of the fleet arrived up to 2-days later in haggard condition who appeared to have just completed the Bataan Death March.

To each their own. For the ICW, definitely a Power Cat.

Peter

[flagatorclearwa]

How often to replace sails AND rigging is sometimes up to you, and sometimes forced on you by insurance.

For most boats a complete suite of sails are the same order of magnitude in cost as a new engine, and typically will last 10 years, or 100,000 miles which ever comes first.

I’m looking at 2007-2012 cats, so I doubt they’ll be anywhere close to 100,000 miles of sailing (I’d probably only put 1000 miles a year on sails). 10 years could be a problem.

Is it that they disintegrate and become totally worthless, or do they just start looking ratty and people are willing to spend the money to replace them? I could afford the nicest new $80,000 truck but I still drive my 2007 F-150 because although she’s showing her age she works just fine. Especially if the sails are furled most of the time, I could live with ratty.

Be sure to check into fuel capacity and range of power cat

In studying the specs on powercats, it seems that even the bigger +-300hp engines burn about the same rate as smaller (50-100hp) diesels when running at trawler speeds, and provide adequate range. My thought is that having bigger engines could be important if I’m alone trying to do a 400nm passage. At trawler speeds, that’s a 40-hour passage. That doesn’t seem viable singlehanded, at least not for me. With the bigger engines, it’s not going to be cheap, but I can do it in a very long (20+ hr) day. Other than those occasional long passages, my normal passages will be around 100nm or less (island-hopping, East Coast FL - Bahamas, West Coast FL - Key West, etc.), and I can do them easily at trawler speeds.

Maybe doing the math is forcing the conclusion: a sailboat really isn’t an option if I want to safely singlehand 400nm passages? Or are there 37-45 ft sailboats that can motor at 16 kts with 400nm range?

[flagatorclearwa]

Originally Posted by rajsach

We ended up buying a power cat. 51 foot leopard. I outfitted it like a sailboat. I put a total of 1400w of solar panels on the hardtop , put in 1200amp/h of lithium batteries and upgraded the electrical system and put large inverters on board. I can power the entire boat including air conditioners with just solar, inverter and the batteries. So at anchor ,atleast during the day, it’s pretty much like a sailboat.

I've read conflicting opinions about whether this is viable, but you're doing it so there you go. I really only care about aircon to sleep. Can you make it through 8 hours just on batteries? I think I would have a hard time sleeping well with a gen droning, I absolutely cannot sleep in heat, and all of my time will be in the tropics. I knew/know that technology would/will make solar aircon viable; I just didn't know if that day had arrived. At the very least it would be nice for just the master cabin, since it's just me. I'd probably only need 5000BTU.

[flagatorclearwa]

Originally Posted by Thenaz007

I also am coming from the position of being an owner of a fairly large cruiser with twin 454's. I just could not believe it when I motored 80% of the time in the BVI on a 42' Cat and only spent $82 in gas. We motored a couple hours a day, which would certainly not mirror gas consumption probably anywhere else, but it seriously changed my obsession with needing to sail to cut fuel costs in retirement.

Wow. And those are not fuel sippers!

[mikedefieslife]

Originally Posted by flagatorclearwa

I’m looking at 2007-2012 cats, so I doubt they’ll be anywhere close to 100,000 miles of sailing (I’d probably only put 1000 miles a year on sails). 10 years could be a problem.

Is it that they disintegrate and become totally worthless, or do they just start looking ratty and people are willing to spend the money to replace them? I could afford the nicest new $80,000 truck but I still drive my 2007 F-150 because although she’s showing her age she works just fine. Especially if the sails are furled most of the time, I could live with ratty.

It's neither. The rigging and sails could looks nearly as new as the day they were bought even after 20 years. It depends on how the boat is used.

The problem is with the rigging, that you can inspect it, do tests on it, but you just don't know after 10-15 years how it's going to hold, hence normally 15 years if the maximum insurers will allow. Others will insure the boat but deduct 30% if the rigging is old.

That being said, if you are just cruising around and not covering vast distances, the rigging might last you your whole ownership of the boat.

Cheap dacron sails stretch. They are still a triangle after 10-15-20 years but their shape has gone. If you are mostly sailing downwind then it's of no consequence. If you want to sail up wind, it is.

Things like the UV covers will start fail as the stitching breaks.

Again though, a set of sails for a 40-44' boat might only be $4,000 if buying cheap from precision sails. Or could be closer to $30,000 is buying the top of the line carbon laminates.

[flagatorclearwa]

Originally Posted by mikedefieslife

It's neither. The rigging and sails could looks nearly as new as the day they were bought even after 20 years. It depends on how the boat is used.

The problem is with the rigging, that you can inspect it, do tests on it, but you just don't know after 10-15 years how it's going to hold, hence normally 15 years if the maximum insurers will allow. Others will insure the boat but deduct 30% if the rigging is old.

That being said, if you are just cruising around and not covering vast distances, the rigging might last you your whole ownership of the boat.

Cheap dacron sails stretch. They are still a triangle after 10-15-20 years but their shape has gone. If you are mostly sailing downwind then it's of no consequence. If you want to sail up wind, it is.

Things like the UV covers will start fail as the stitching breaks.

Again though, a set of sails for a 40-44' boat might only be $4,000 if buying cheap from precision sails. Or could be closer to $30,000 is buying the top of the line carbon laminates.

OK that is VERY helpful. I'm a fair-weather boater that's mainly going to do 100nm island hops, with an occasional 300-400nm passage. I have no interest in seeing only water for weeks at a time (really not even multiple days at a time!). If I had a sailcat, I'd only whip out the sails if it was beautiful and easy, which I presume means downwind? If a sail/rigging had a problem on a passage, I'd just motor.

So then it seems safe to say that, if I buy a sailcat with sails in good shape, I might not face major sail/rigging expenses for the 3-5 years I'd probably own the boat? Some of the boats I'm looking at are coming off charter. My guess would be that a charter sailcat does not spend that much time actually sailing?