Motion: full keel vs small catamaran.

[Wandering1]

Originally Posted by Renegde_Sailor

8T? When she rolled out on the travel lift She was weighing almost 14T.

My boat is super thick in the bow and gets thinner as she goes aft, on her sides she is about 3/4 and the transom is half an inch thick. she is also super thick down low and thins as you go up. They designed the layup to be strongest where it would need it most.

What make is your boat?

Sailboat data and the for sale ads have your boat at 8.6t

[Renegde_Sailor]

Originally Posted by smj

I think the rigging on most cats is a larger diameter than the rigging on most monohulls, but there’s also a lesser number of wires. On our last cat we had a 55’ rotating carbon fiber mast with a total of seven 8mm dyform wires, not very large. But you are right, a wind gust on a cat is transformed into power as she doesn’t heel.

Part of that equation though is an incredibly expensive spar being thrown in the mix which has high structural rigidity built in, and thus less of a requirement for stays. I just pulled a quote for a new mast for my boat, an aluminum mast 48' long was about 20k USD, A carbon mast was 78K! 😬

While I would love to slap a Carbon mast on this thing with some Dyneema rigging which would drastically reduce my weight aloft which would be freaking fantastic, but I just don't have the money to step into that level of awesomeness.

In the 32 years that we’ve owned catamarans we’ve never been charged more for a slip because of our wide beam, but we don’t spend a lot of time tied up in a slip. I do agree that the common trend nowadays is to charge a premium for the wider beamed catamaran.

I would have to think that is going to depend on where your cruising ground is, as up here in the Pacific North West the government has made it incredibly difficult to expand marinas, and thus dock space is at a premium so there is no letting you slide on a boat that cannot fit in a single slip or that requires and outside tie.

Outside of the USA without the Army Corps of Engineers strangling all marina expansion efforts to death, I can see where the situation would be different, however, for us as it is right now there are hundreds if not thousands of boats that cannot get a slip right now stuck at anchor and many not in safe harbors.

[/QUOTE]I agree about the cargo limitation, depending of course on the cat as they aren’t all created equally.
Our last cat was designed and delivered in Norway where most of them still live and sail, would that be considered high latitudes?

I am not familiar with the cats built up there what their purpose is be it racing or cruising or what their use cases is, so I cannot offer an educated opinion on it.

And again I will say my sailing experience on Cats is limited to some trips out on the Puget Sound on a Catana 47 and a Leopard 48. And with conversations I have had with their owners, along with a couple of others that I have spoken with and not sailed including a Wharam 50.

What they tell me is that the boats can handle the high latitudes, but they are incredibly uncomfortable especially in the short steep chop that the cruising ground to the north of us can deliver on a regular basis.

Very specifically what was communicated to me several times over was that in any kind of a beam sea when you have those short steep waves on a tight period that the hull has to climb the wave very quickly and come back down quickly and then the other has to repeat this in short order and in the process this can lead to the bridge being slapped by the wave as it traverses under the hull leading to a rapid loud see-saw effect with the occasional slamming and that the motion gets violent.

And on that note I think it is worth noting that all of these boats where headed south.

Don’t get me wrong, I started off on monohulls and love the looks of the classic mono. I really wish I could handle one because let’s face it, a huge difference in cost to buy. But I’m unable to handle the pendulum like motion, and at this point couldn’t deal with the performance of the vast majority.[/QUOTE]

There is something to be said for personal preference as well, I do know that I love the large bridge decks of the cats, it is nice having all that space up high where you can see out verses the cave like interior of a Monohull. The extra speed in calm conditions is nice as well, that Catana I sailed on was able to pump out 14-15 knots going to Seattle making the trip in half the time I can in my boat from Tacoma.

Each has certain advantages and detractors that is for sure. And personal preference and budget does play a huge role.

[Renegde_Sailor]

Originally Posted by Wandering1

Sailboat data and the for sale ads have your boat at 8.6t

Sailboat Data also lists my LWL as 30 feet when it is 36.

Someone fed them some bad data.

What make of boat is yours?

[Wandering1]

Originally Posted by Renegde_Sailor

Sailboat Data also lists my LWL as 30 feet when it is 36.

Someone fed them some bad data.

What make of boat is yours?

Yacht World have some for sale. They have the correct waterline length but still quote 8.6t.

We sail a Van de Stadt Trintella 44.

[Wandering1]

Originally Posted by smj

So only the Prout Snowgoose?

I had a look at the spec of your boat and one for sale on Internet. It ,looks like it would be a great weekender and something to take your holidays on. It looks fast and light with basic accommodation on a par to a 37ft snowgoose.
It's a long way from a bluewater boat in my opinion so not something I would compare to my boat for what we do. There is no cockpit shelter from sun or rain/wind. Just an outboard. Limited fuel and water capacity and anythting you add to make it more homely will impact on performance.
When we had our Prout snowgoose 37, we did an Atlantic circuit in her from the UK to the
Caribbean and back. We kept her super light. She did have a tall mast and laminate sails with all plywood doors, bunk tops tables, converted to cored panels. She would never compete with your boat on performance but she was a pretty safe cat in the ocean.
We decided after that trip that we would want a bigger boat for the next time. We considered an Outremer 45 but the huge increase in cost to upgrade still gave us a boat that couldn't take the weight of gear we were likely to accumulate with the lifestyle of living aboard almost full time. We have no regrets chossing the monohull. We would find it very hard to go back to a cat now.
We were anchored next to an HH cat a couple of days ago in a bumpy anchorage. Watching the quick jerky motion at anchor reminded us why we love the heavy deep draft with 6t of lead deep down almost eliminates roll at anchor. Its only one aspect of comfort on a boat but even with 40,000nm on the mono now, you do realise how much time you are at anchor in between ocean crossings.

[pianopraze]

Originally Posted by Tupaia

Any second hand (even new) boats require an element of work post purchase. Stick out for decent Prout, one will come up, probably two it's like waiting for a bus.

I really need to set my price range when I search.

Now I’m in love: https://www.rightboat.com/boats-for-...maran/rb545449

I was approved for a house loan on my income for that amount but doubt I’ll get a boat loan.

I probably couldn’t or shouldn’t drive something that large anyway.

[smj]

Originally Posted by Wandering1

I had a look at the spec of your boat and one for sale on Internet. It ,looks like it would be a great weekender and something to take your holidays on. It looks fast and light with basic accommodation on a par to a 37ft snowgoose.
It's a long way from a bluewater boat in my opinion so not something I would compare to my boat for what we do. There is no cockpit shelter from sun or rain/wind. Just an outboard. Limited fuel and water capacity and anythting you add to make it more homely will impact on performance.
When we had our Prout snowgoose 37, we did an Atlantic circuit in her from the UK to the
Caribbean and back. We kept her super light. She did have a tall mast and laminate sails with all plywood doors, bunk tops tables, converted to cored panels. She would never compete with your boat on performance but she was a pretty safe cat in the ocean.
We decided after that trip that we would want a bigger boat for the next time. We considered an Outremer 45 but the huge increase in cost to upgrade still gave us a boat that couldn't take the weight of gear we were likely to accumulate with the lifestyle of living aboard almost full time. We have no regrets chossing the monohull. We would find it very hard to go back to a cat now.
We were anchored next to an HH cat a couple of days ago in a bumpy anchorage. Watching the quick jerky motion at anchor reminded us why we love the heavy deep draft with 6t of lead deep down almost eliminates roll at anchor. Its only one aspect of comfort on a boat but even with 40,000nm on the mono now, you do realise how much time you are at anchor in between ocean crossings.

We lived on our TRT full time for 5.5 years. 2 queen staterooms, 2 single staterooms a separate 4’x3’ shower, a salon that had two 8’ long couches. We had plenty of sun protection with the cockpit hardtop. A very livable boat.
They have done numerous ocean crossings, some singlehanded. All the lines are led to within 4’ of the helm and you can easily see all 4 corners of the corners from the helms seat, a true sailors boat.
Yes she has twin outboards which push her at 6.5 cruising and 8 WOT but hardly used if there’s wind as she will sail at or close to wind speed in winds 15 kts or less.
I was down in the Caribbean in the mid to late 80’s on a monohull doing the usual pendulum roll in the anchorage, then I saw a catamaran……..it was a done deal!
I appreciate your love of your monohull but there’s no way I could own one, I’ve been to spoiled!

[Renegde_Sailor]

Originally Posted by Wandering1

Yacht World have some for sale. They have the correct waterline length but still quote 8.6t.

We sail a Van de Stadt Trintella 44.

The problem here, is that there is more to discerning the differences between boats, not all 42' boats are going to weigh the same, let alone comparing a 42' aft cockpit sailing boat with a 44' center cockpit cruising boat.

Your Trintella has a 13' 5.5" beam, my Spencer 42 has an 11'4" beam, That right there alone is a couple of tons of weight, Especially when you consider all of the interior fixings that exist within that extra 25 1/2" of width.

To drive that point home, if you consider 4' of freeboard and an average of 2' of draft, call it 42' long to make up for the rake of the bow, that is 504 cubic feet of volume your boat has over mine. Putting that into context if we go with that average of 2' of draft that is 168 cubic feet of boat below the water line, that is 10,738 lbs of displacement (sea water @ 63.92 lbs/cuft) which Ironically makes up most of the dispalcement difference between your boat and mine using the listed displacement on sailboat data of 31,966 lbs.

Additionally your T44 is a full 2' longer, again in that, substantially more weight, then you consider that the T44 has a substantially wider stern to accomodate your aft cabin, and you have 12-14" more freeboard to allow for the flat decks on the boat.

As well the T44 has a flat back transom, the S42 has a long overhang that is much lighter by comparison. If the T44 had a similar overhang she would be 48-50 feet long.

Now on the drawings I have it says that the design displacement is 18,000 lbs tons with the 7K keel, mine has the 8k meaning her design was 19,000 lbs however, on the travel lift when she came out of the water 3 months ago she was weighing 27,000 lbs with all of my gear aboard so I am inclined to believe that John Brandlmayer was a bit light in his calculations that were done all the way back in 1965 when he designed her, especially considering that where I painted the water line looks to be exactly where it is on the drawings and when in the water there is about an half inch of bottom paint above the water to the boot stripe at the stern and three in the bow. (I am loaded a bit aft heavy at the moment)

What I also know is that the reason my boat being hull #7 was the first to have the 8K keel because the original owner Mike Gibbons, an Engineer at Boeing who worked on the 747, had her built custom to his specifications and from what I can discern he requested the 8K ballast which resulted in a much more sure footed boat that performed incredibly well and thus is why later on 8K ballast went to be the standard.

To that I would like to add that since 2016 I have run the Spencer Yacht Owners group and have dedicated a huge amount of my time to cataloging and documenting the 26 S42's that were made, and have been able to find 23 of the original 26, 20 of them I know to still be actively sailing considering that the last one was built in 1973 I would say that is a testament to their robustness.

Furthermore the Spencer's have earned a tough reputation being sailed by sailors like Hal Roth, who took his Spencer 35 around Cape Horn and had many other sailing adventures on her, and Hal had developed a very solid working relationship with John Brandlmayer in the 1960's and had no qualms telling him everything that was wrong with his boat, which is why the Spencer 35's have the MK1 and MK2 because John fixed many of those problems with the feedback from Hal.

You may be asking why that is significant, well this is because the S42 is the hull of the S35 scaled up to 42 feet and massaged a bit with many of the lessons Hal learned aboard whisper applied.

I think it is also worth mentioning that Hal's Whisper was thrown up on the rocks after dragging anchor in South America and spent a week there getting thrashed by storms, was then pulled off by a tug and floated on her own bottom to where he hauled her, patched her up and she is still sailing living on the east coast of the USA today 50 years later.

As for the S42 listed on yacht world, that would be hull#4, she has the 7k ballast keel, and is an incredibly well done boat, a guy by the name of Jerry Parkhurst did a complete rebuild of her replacing her interior and the entire rig, absolutely fantastic boat one that someone would be well off owning, but she will not be as sure footed as the later S42's with the heavier ballast, although I suspect ditching the wood mast for aluminum probably mitigated a fair bit of that as the aluminum boom I just put on my boat weighted half what the solid spruce boom did.

Then there is also the problem of Tons, which tons is someone quoting? Imperial or Metric, as 1MT = 1000KG = 2,204lbs, which is 2.204T.

8.6MT is ~ 19,000 lbs, yet 19,000 lbs is 9.5T.

Even more so on your T44 which is 31,966 lbs which is 15.983T or 14.5 MT Just going between units there throws a ton and a half difference in the numbers.

Originally Posted by Wandering1

Something doesn't stack up. Your boat is 42ft but only weighs 8.5t. You suggest the hull is 1" thick with a stem 2" thick but your boat only weighs 8.5t. My 44ft boat weighs 18t. 10t more than your 42 ft boat so how is your boat built out of 1" thick laminate and so light?
A Prout snowgoose weighs 5.5t. It has no lead ballast so if you knock off the 3t of ballast from your boat, your 42ft mono is actually fat lighter than the 35ft cat that the OP is talking about

So going back to your original quote, Sailboat Data says you are 14.5MT, which is only 6 more than the listed on mine. We can conduct an interesting experiment here and see what a Spencer 42 scaled to have a similar beam to yours is as the Spencer 53 is my hull scaled to 53' with some tweaking to the keel and a skeg hung rudder.

The Spencer 53 has a beam of 13.17' compared to your 13.45', meaning that to get to your beam my hull would have to scale past 53'!

What is really quite interesting there is that at 53' she has a displacement of 30K lbs or 13.6MT! Thus meaning a 53' Spencer is almost a full Metric Ton lighter than your boat! Well, at least based off of sailboat data displacement numbers.

Interestingly enough both boats have right around 6000kg of ballast and similar draft with yours being a touch deeper.

In summary, you cannot tell the whole tale of a boat here without first examining the design of a boat and how she is constructed, using boat length is a misnomer if used as an absolute because there are so many more variables to the design, and your boat is also a very heavy boat for it's length due to the wide beam.

[smj]

Originally Posted by pianopraze

I really need to set my price range when I search.

Now I’m in love: https://www.rightboat.com/boats-for-...maran/rb545449

I was approved for a house loan on my income for that amount but doubt I’ll get a boat loan.

I probably couldn’t or shouldn’t drive something that large anyway.

Prout 50 in Guatemala for $125k

https://www.facebook.com/groups/Cata...8728232260641/
Prout 50 in Florida for $115k
https://www.sailboatlistings.com/view/104435

[pianopraze]

Originally Posted by smj

Prout 50 in Guatemala for $125k

https://www.facebook.com/groups/Cata...8728232260641/
Prout 50 in Florida for $115k
https://www.sailboatlistings.com/view/104435

Now I’m crying. I showed my wife she said "I want it, let’s purchase that. Is it beachable?"

I doubt I could get loan on 125k but I could afford it… after I get rid of this 1500/month apartment.



The 115k in Florida needs a complete refit and I was aware of it. It would take a lot of time and money - which I wouldn’t have with a 115k purchase price.

[thomm225]

Wait, are you planning on taking this wife sailing offshore along the coast or have you already been doing that?

If you have not and that is your plan, she won't like it especially when the wind and waves get up just a little say in 20 knot winds.

Especially if she doesn't feel comfortable on certain boats when they are at a marina.

[pianopraze]

Originally Posted by thomm225

Wait, are you planning on taking this wife sailing offshore along the coast or have you already been doing that?

If you have not and that is your plan, she won't like it especially when the wind and waves get up just a little say in 20 knot winds.

Especially if she doesn't feel comfortable on certain boats when they are at a marina.

She felt safe coastal cruising in our Prout. Only certain hard slamming in short period waves distressed her. We never went out too far or in anything too heavy though. Just around icw and central Florida. No other waves/sea states bothered her.

She felt uncomfortable with the motion on fin keeled boats we tried,

I would feel safer on, say, the full keel 35k Formosa 41 for sale in Ft Lauderdale. But I am introvert who lives in his head.

And for Florida/Caribbean she might be the wiser wanting a cat. Much easier in all that shallow water. Only long ocean voyage planned is to Philippines… someday, years ahead. And I could take her brothers as crew and let her fly.

Plan is another year or two coastal around Florida to get more experience/pay off boat then Caribbean for a few years. Thats why I like the 20k price a lot better than 120k. I would have to get 20 year loan on a 120k boat.

We already plan to fly a couple of her brothers over and I can have crew when we get to certain places in Caribbean. One is trained diesel mechanic. First few years it’s just her, our teen, 3 year old and me.

[Don C L]

So I may have missed it, have you ruled out chartering some before buying one?

[pianopraze]

Originally Posted by Don C L

So I may have missed it, have you ruled out chartering some before buying one?

Not interested in chartering. The boats we are looking at would be like old sub 75k full keels or Prouts/gemini/pdq/edelcats etc.

We are not looking at charter size catamarans.

I really don’t want to go over 75k.

This would be our second small catamaran.

Wife continues to say absolutely no on a full keel. I was hoping to take her out on one let her feel the motion next spring but she’s dead set on a catamaran.

[thomm225]

Originally Posted by pianopraze

She felt safe coastal cruising in our Prout. Only certain hard slamming in short period waves distressed her. We never went out too far or in anything too heavy though. Just around icw and central Florida. No other waves/sea states bothered her.

She felt uncomfortable with the motion on fin keeled boats we tried,

I would feel safer on, say, the full keel 35k Formosa 41 for sale in Ft Lauderdale. But I am introvert who lives in his head.

And for Florida/Caribbean she might be the wiser wanting a cat. Much easier in all that shallow water. Only long ocean voyage planned is to Philippines… someday, years ahead. And I could take her brothers as crew and let her fly.

Plan is another year or two coastal around Florida to get more experience/pay off boat then Caribbean for a few years. Thats why I like the 20k price a lot better than 120k. I would have to get 20 year loan on a 120k boat.

We already plan to fly a couple of her brothers over and I can have crew when we get to certain places in Caribbean. One is trained diesel mechanic. First few years it’s just her, our teen, 3 year old and me.

Shallow water can get rough really fast.

I think the first time you are caught in any type of rough weather at all, she may be done with it.

Like waves breaking over the side or something braking like your dodger allowing wave spray to come through or your furler with the sail flailing around like crazy.

I knew a guy with a new Catalina 36 in Pensacola, FL that planned the cruising for years. Any time there was rough water, he'd tell his buddies not to tell his wife.

So when he and his wife retired to the cruising life a few years later, they lasted about 6 months before selling the boat and moving to an inland lake.

Your wife needs to see what it's all about before you go buying a big blue water cruiser unless you plan to sail solo or singlehanded.