Why do you guys like monohulls so much?

[fxykty]

Originally Posted by outbound_308

as a prospective buyer I would say the things that concerned me were already mentioned by another poster. Number one was load carrying capacity, two was that I don't enjoy sailing them. Hull slap is really annoying and I don't know how anyone would get rest on a passage doing that. Third when I look at a old hylas, Oyster, HR , Amel etc the quality is still evident over time. it's still a beautiful boat I have yet to see a 20-30 old cat that looked usable or decent. Maybe some of the new ones coming out will still look good over time.



I think you should just get what you like, and there is nothing wrong with what you like by the way. to each their own. I have two friends that like sailing mono's and have for years but when they retire it's going to be a cat because they want their wives to go with them.

Regarding older boats, “modern” cruising cat designs started getting designed and built in larger numbers in the nineties. Prior to that commercially it was mainly Prouts and Wharrams. Looking at just two companies:
- Lagoon had a whole range of large, fast performance cruising cats (47, 55, 57, 67, 67S). from the early nineties. Lagoon’s iconic 380, 410, 440 boats date from the early 2000s.
- Outremer produced their first generation cats (40, 45, 50, 55, 64) starting in the late eighties and through the nineties and 2000s.

So you’ve got a much shorter period of modern design with catamarans, and many of the early (pre-90s) designs are either poor performance with heavy and cramped builds or performance-oriented with minimal accommodations (by modern standards). Actually, not unlike many production monohulls from the 50s, 60s and 70s.

Regarding load carrying, by the time you get to mid-40 foot with most cruising cats the load carrying capacity is not an issue. On a Lagoon 380 or Catana 43, sure, you have to limit yourself, though not to any monastic level, but a Lagoon 440 or Leopard 46, nope, practically no limits.

Regarding hull slap, I assume you mean bridge deck slap. It’s analogous to heel with monos. Yes, some cats suffer more than others, and some points of sail combined with rougher conditions are worse, but it’s not something to keep you awake at night or even notice the vast majority of time.

Do you ever hear of cats heaving to so as to get rest, cook food, or go to the head? No! But it seems to be routine for some monos. Go figure.

Our boat has a lovely sheerline (a trompe l’oeil that provides us with an effective rub rail), long slender hulls, and sails like an angel singing - an absolute beauty in all ways to our eyes.

That’s all the really matters, right, regardless of number of hulls?

[dfelsent]

Originally Posted by Chotu

Pretty accurate!!!



I’m a Mac guy for technical reasons (OSX is a Unix flavor).



I’m a (performance) catamaran guy for the same reasons (unsinkable, faster, etc).

I beg to differ.
I too am a tech guy. I run OS X , Linux , and windows. And embedded systems. And do other kinds of engineering.

I’ve enjoyed multihulls, cats and tris.

I prefer owning a monohull.

[dfelsent]

Originally Posted by dfelsent

I beg to differ.
I too am a tech guy. I run OS X , Linux , and windows. And embedded systems. And do other kinds of engineering.

I’ve enjoyed multihulls, cats and tris.

I prefer owning a monohull.

But. I looked hard at fast monos and at tris.

[Chotu]

Originally Posted by dfelsent

But. I looked hard at fast monos and at tris.

See??? Ha ha ha. They drew your tech side in a bit. They are feats of engineering. Hard to resist the temptation.

I look at the Vendee globe race monks the same way I look at multihulls. Fascinating and I’d love to take one out.

[wingssail]

Originally Posted by smj

You said cruising catamarans and cruising monohulls make the same speed overall. I agree there are different classifications of “cruising”, so I used the top 3 most popular cruising catamarans as an example and wanted their monohull performance equals.

I don't for a minute believe that is where you are headed, but OK...

You misunderstood what I was saying. On a given crossing, cruisers on cats and cruisers on monohulls have the passage lengths are not significantly different. I based this on my own observations and on ARC results (eliminating the top boats and last boats in either catagory the durations are similar). Around here we have passages of 100-400 miles. The cats and monos don't have significantly different passage durations.

It does not matter which boat has the higest maximum speed on his polar diagram. If you don't get to your destination any faster, then ultimate speed is not really a determining factor.

Now if you get into high performance vessels crewed by agressive sailors, the results change. I'm talking about Mom and Pop cruisers.

And in closed course racing in my vicinity the catamarans which show up in cruising configuration (cruising gear and provisions, usually one of the "top 3 most popular cruising catamarans"), cannot come close, NOT CLOSE, to normal cruising monohulls such as the like of which I listed in post #134.

In fact we have to make special courses for them just to get them to enter.

(the courses which the catamarn sailors prefer include:
Long starting lines skewed so that a cat can cross it on starboard tack.
The shortest of weather legs.
The long reaches while the rest of the fleet go windward leeward.)

[smj]

Originally Posted by wingssail

I don't for a minute believe that is where you are headed, but OK...

You misunderstood what I was saying. On a given crossing, cruisers on cats and cruisers on monohulls have the passage lengths are not significantly different. I based this on my own observations and on ARC results (eliminating the top boats and last boats in either catagory the durations are similar). Around here we have passages of 100-400 miles. The cats and monos don't have significantly different passage durations.

It does not matter which boat has the higest maximum speed on his polar diagram. If you don't get to your destination any faster, then ultimate speed is not really a determining factor.

Now if you get into high performance vessels crewed by agressive sailors, the results change. I'm talking about Mom and Pop cruisers.

And in closed course racing in my vicinity the catamarans which show up in cruising configuration (cruising gear and provisions, usually one of the "top 3 most popular cruising catamarans"), cannot come close, NOT CLOSE, to normal cruising monohulls such as the like of which I listed in post #134.

In fact we have to make special courses for them just to get them to enter.

(the courses which the catamarn sailors prefer include:
Long starting lines skewed so that a cat can cross it on starboard tack.
The shortest of weather legs.
The long reaches while the rest of the fleet go windward leeward.)

Thanks for your reply. I’d agree, the top 3 cruising catamarans have far less than stellar performance and would probably rate along with the slower “bullet proof” cruising monos.
I also agree that ultimate speed is not the determining factor, it’s the ability to sail well in light winds, something most people seem to overlook.

[fxykty]

Originally Posted by smj

Thanks for your reply. I’d agree, the top 3 cruising catamarans have far less than stellar performance and would probably rate along with the slower “bullet proof” cruising monos.
I also agree that ultimate speed is not the determining factor, it’s the ability to sail well in light winds, something most people seem to overlook.

Agree also that it’s not ultimate speed that’s important.

Rather, it’s the boat’s ability to maintain a reasonable average speed. That means not slowing down too much when it gets lighter or further downwind, and being able to go faster easily when conditions permit. Most boats with reasonable sailing ability can avoid going too slow (depending on wind speed and angle of course), but going faster is more difficult, especially as hull speed is approached. That’s where longer waterlines really shine.

I saw somewhere on CF recently that a long term average boat speed for many cruising boats is around 5 knots. That seems slow, but presumably includes anchoring/berthing and other slow speed manoeuvres as well as day sailing and passage making.

[mglonnro]

Originally Posted by fxykty

I saw somewhere on CF recently that a long term average boat speed for many cruising boats is around 5 knots. That seems slow, but presumably includes anchoring/berthing and other slow speed manoeuvres as well as day sailing and passage making.

And time spent sitting patiently around waiting for wind, going 1.8 knots ...

I just checked our logs and from 67.5M SOG samples so far:

- average of all speeds >= 1.5 knots is 5.02 knots
- 0.5% median is 5.00 knots

Myth: plausible.

[chris95040]

Originally Posted by Stu Jackson

I'm an old geezer, but the MHs are not pleasing to my eye.

Agreed. Is there no way to build a cat without the ‘evil alien insect’ aesthetic?

[Joli]

Passage times are greatly affected by the conditions encountered along the course. If the breeze dies away and you have to wait or motor the the average goes to hell. Our passage time averages for anything over 200 miles is 5.5 to 9 knots.
We've also found passage times go to hell if you forget to turn off the tracker while sitting at anchor enjoying an adult beverage after completing the passage.

[barnakiel]

Well if you average all US citizen height, it will come around 5ft some inches.


This does not mean everybody in the street is 5ft some inches.


Averages have nothing to do with actual speeds attained over long passages by specific crews / boats.


Long ago I took down all available ARC and Transpac data - some 10 editions or so - and did some number crunching. It seemed average pure TTG speed was 1 sqrt (lwl). Give or take.



Mind both are typically broad reach / running courses. The figures tell us nothing about how fast these boats make it to the top mark. If you ever sailed round the cans you will know upwind the whole picture shifts.


b.

[barnakiel]

Originally Posted by chris95040

Agreed. Is there no way to build a cat without the ‘evil alien insect’ aesthetic?

You have only ever seen one cat?


What about a Wharram, a Lagoon 38, etc. do they look like an evil alien insect?


b.

[river251]

Originally Posted by barnakiel

The argument of 'cat stays upside down'. I mean, do we really need to get this kind of discussion every bloody single time we talk hulls?


People who claim mono supremacy based in their apparent ability to 'come back' have never been onboard a boat that rolled over.






b.

Last night I watched the documentary on the Queen's birthday storm. My god. The couple on the cat had to leave their boat. It was still floating at the time but it wasn't safe. Several monohulls were knocked down or rolled 360. The people on these monos were devastated. Broken backs, broken bones, demasted, no radio, dingies and other equipment ripped away, rudderless, swamped. One crew was not rescued in time. After that, in my opinion, the argument that a monohull is fine after a knockdown or a roll is ludicrous. Sometimes they are, sometimes they're not. I know that was a rare storm but knockdowns are not that rare from what I've read.

[newhaul]

Originally Posted by barnakiel

You have only ever seen one cat?


What about a Wharram, a Lagoon 38, etc. do they look like an evil alien insect?


b.

Yes and yes they do
The warrams look like a couple of big canoes that were ducttaped together
Boats are all good but aestheticly for me it's a good mono

[chris95040]

Originally Posted by barnakiel

You have only ever seen one cat?


What about a Wharram, a Lagoon 38, etc. do they look like an evil alien insect?


b.

The majority of cats I’ve seen look like the bad guy transformer toys from when I was a kid, yes.

I’ll admit some look less like that and more like an office park ( big lagoons) or an attempt to get off a desert island (wharram).

Just talking looks here, I know nothing else about them.