When--exactly--are cats faster?

[ItDepends]

Originally Posted by wingssail

Every year we have a three day race (among other races).

Day one a 12 mile round the buoy race with mostly reaching (but with a 2 mile beat).

Day 2 a 10 mile upwind race to a destination.

Day 3 a 12 mile downwind to another destination.

Usually the wind is 10-15 knots and flat water.

There are mostly full time cruising monohulls and a few cruising Cats, including well sailed Lagoons with new sails.

The cats never do well in race 1 or 2. Some years (rarely) they win day 3 and even on those years, if the race was a bit longer, they'd lose every time. (they get a head start but the monohulls are catching up, but run out of runway.)

But wingsail, how is this POSSIBLE???? Everybody KNOWS cats are faster than monohulls!!!! EVERYBODY (not!)

[ItDepends]

Originally Posted by Rumrace

Doesn’t the Amel 53 have two masts and great in low winds while the Cat is after winds higher up. Am I confusing Amels?

The Amel 53 does have two masts. It usually does better than cats in light winds, but it is not an especially fast monohull in very light winds.

But the situation described is NOT light winds at all and the wind was from well abaft the beam. I still think the cat SHOULD have been WAY faster, but it wasn’t.

I know lots of ways to kill a knot or two of boat speed. Just don’t pay attention. Certainly my boat doesn’t ALWAYS sail to its full potential. I am a cruiser, Ihave never been in a race, ever. What baffles me is how to drop 30% of your boat’s speed potential and keep sailing. I could have taken two reefs and not lost that much. Or dosed the main entirely and sailed jib and jigger and still only been down a little.

Obviously some people make it possible…

Honestly, I think the situation is a case of a sailor who doesn’t understand apparent wind. All they had to do was press a little bit harder, and the apparent wind would have come forward of the beam, and suddenly they would have taken off. The faster they went the more wind they would have had. I was stuck in a hole. With the apparent wind aft of the beam, the faster I went, the less wind on my sails. With hull speed limitations, I just could not climb up to the point where I start making wind. That’s exactly what a cat SHOULD do….

[ItDepends]

Originally Posted by Chotu

For up wind work, the question is:

Do these cats have dagger boards or do they have mini keels? Big difference.

Obviously a Lagoon 450S does NOT have dagger boards….

And my offer of betting half my beer money on an upwind/downwind race does NOT apply to any dagger board cat. I’d still accept the challenge, but just for fun.

My beer means too much to me to risk it in THAT case…

The only cat that unequivocally smoked us on a straight line sail was a big Catana when sailing south inside Eleuthera from Current Cut to Cape Eleuthera. Damn they were fast! We sucked spray.

[chrisr]

2 thoughts ;

this is a cruising forum...who gives a toss which / who / what is faster ? isn't there more important things in life ?

and if you don't subscribe to that, saw recently an outremer 50 that did Galapagos to to the Marquesas in 13 days. monos regularly take 25-30 days - including amels

cheers,

[ItDepends]

Originally Posted by chrisr

2 thoughts ;

this is a cruising forum...who gives a toss which / who / what is faster ? isn't there more important things in life ?

and if you don't subscribe to that, saw recently an outremer 50 that did Galapagos to to the Marquesas in 13 days. monos regularly take 25-30 days - including amels

cheers,

In reply to that I have three thoughts:

1. When was the first sailboat race? When they built the second sailboat.
2. What do you call two sailboats going in the same direction? A race.
3. I fully EXPECT to have an Outremer leave me in her wake. Every time. In fact, that is actually the point. I EXPECT under the conditions described to have a Lagoon toast me. The question was actually why didn’t it.

Unfortunately, I seem to have had to answer my own question (see above), but the posting was still helpful to me in forcing me to think about it and come up with the answer that satisfied me…

[fxykty]

Our cats [emoji250] [emoji250] are faster than anything chasing them, so far. They are both 4 months old and learning to be wary of the local dock dogs [emoji240] [emoji190].

Regarding sailing, it depends. Boat type, wind angle, seas, wind strength, skipper attention, etc. I certainly know that my wife is pretty good at distracting me from watching the telltales.

[NaClyDog]

Originally Posted by Sam Woodbridge

To answer the OP’s question. I think “It Depends”

Well played Mr. Woodbridge, well played.

[Sam Woodbridge]

Thank you NaClyDog and Itdepends.

I was curious when I saw the thread, but so surprised no one pointed “It Depends” out.

Great thread and good reading! I’ve been curious about the same thing, but I still think “it depends”

Sam

[Cheechako]

Sailed a long day in the West Indies with our buddy boat. We were in a TPI Lagoon 42 cat with full batten main and good sails and Max Props... and they were in their custom Paul Luke built, Perry designed aluminum 48 foot cutter.

We had a good 'boat for boat' sail that day in 5-20 MPH winds. When the wind was closer to the beam the cat did well, when it was further forward the mono did better. End of day they were probably 1/2 mile ahead of us. We fast idled the lee motor to keep up as end of day the wind went further forward and we were making water and charging batteries also. . We tried cracking off for speed a bit but it didn't help much.

There were a few times on other stronger wind days we got the Lagoon up to 12.5-13 knots of speed, but it was not common.

[sailorboy1]

I wonder why it matters to people if their boat is faster/slower than other boats.

[smj]

Originally Posted by sailorboy1

I wonder why it matters to people if their boat is faster/slower than other boats.

Was just thinking the same thing……..but no doubt mines faster than yours[emoji23]

[sailorboy1]

Originally Posted by smj

Was just thinking the same thing……..but no doubt mines faster than yours[emoji23]

That's ok, they will most likely still have beer when I get there. If not, well my boat has storage and refrigeration

[smj]

Originally Posted by sailorboy1

That's ok, they will most likely still have beer when I get there. If not, well my boat has storage and refrigeration

Absolutely, there are other priorities that trump speed!

[Joli]

Originally Posted by ItDepends

Before my questions, a bit of background. I have never owned a cat. But I did spend years teaching catamaran cruising in a major sailing school so I have a LOT of hours on them. I know what they do well, and where they struggle. I know monohulls, and what they do well and where they struggle. There are only a few people here who have more hours on both kinds of boats than I do. I know that neither type of boat is perfect for everybody. So I am not approaching this from a “us vs them” approach.

My current boat is an Amel 53, the “Super Maramu.” Although is is the quintessential cruising boat, It is much lighter than uninformed people think, and a faster sailor than people expect it to be. It has a SA/Disp ratio of 19.45, which puts it close to race-boat-light category. Ours is loaded for full time cruising, so probably comes in more like 18.9. We sail it well and fast.

It is not often that we get the chance to compare cruising boats head to head on the same course in the same conditions, instead we prefer to "armchair" it. Yesterday was one of those rare cases generating data. Granted, just ONE lnely data point, but still...

We sailed from Bequia to Grenada. It was a fast trip. According to MarineTraffic our average SOG port to port was 7.3 knot, and top speed 10.3. Winds were 18 to 25 at 133TWA. Sea condition was ideal, no swell and no more than 2 foot of chop. We were, of course, quartering through the equatorial current, so our STW averaged close to 8.9 knots. We had all plain sail up, unreefed, except we were using our working jib instead of our big genny. This was tradewind sailing at its best.

When we were less than hour out of Bequia another boat got underway from Admiralty Bay. Once they settled on course behind us, they were 4.5 miles behind. Over the next 8 hours they varied between 5 and 6.5 miles behind us. Marinetraffic reported their average SOG from port to port as 7.3 knots with a top speed of 10.2 knots. They basically followed our course line within a fraction of a mile the whole way. So basically, a dead heat, except they DID start their engine in the light and fluky winds in the lee of Grenada which we sailed through.

This was a Lagoon 450S. I know! I know! We are not talking a Catana or an HH here, but WTF??? I am not sailing a Swan or a J-Boat either. With 20+ knots of wind at 130 TWA, shouldn’t this boat have been doing close to 13 knots??? This is as close to perfect conditions for this boat as it is possible to get. I fully expected to get smoked on this trip , and would have been happy at the beginning to finish within SIGHT of the catamaran. Having them struggle just to keep the pace was a total surprise.

Are there really people out there who so bad at making their boats go they leave 50% of their speed potential on the table? all day?
Maybe 13 knots is just too scary for some people?
Or maybe the published polars from Lagoon are just marketing hogwash?
Or both?
Or something else?

We're currently in Woburn Bay Grenada, where are you?

Regarding boat speed, the great equalizer seems to be sea state. Anything much over 10 knots gets uncomfortable when the seas are forward of the beam.

We have multiple friends with Amels and Lagoons, they all seem to like their boats. We all get to where we want to go.

[Leighpilot]

Yeah that cat was not being sailed at top speed for any number of potential reasons.

We sail a 32ft Woods Eclipse with the slower LAR keels. . We just sailed around the Mull of Kintyre in slightly lighter winds 15-22kts and seldom went below 10 knots mostly up 12-13kts. We had a 6ft beam sea running so that slowed us down and we were reefed.

Your Amel has a D/L ratio of around 220 putting it in the moderate displacement range.