53 foot Cat breaks in half

[senormechanico]

Originally Posted by Sand crab

Is his name Hot Rod?

LOLOL !

[44'cruisingcat]

Originally Posted by 19 and counting

Have a friend who built a cat that he is afraid to take out of the harbor after $300,000 plus in it. Love my monohull.

So you have a dumb friend, and you love your boat. Have a party.

[downunder]

Originally Posted by 19 and counting

Have a friend who built a cat that he is afraid to take out of the harbor after $300,000 plus in it. Love my monohull.

If it a known design by a reputable designer there should be no issues other than the friend not having confidence in his build quality.

If he as a builder has just knocked up his first boat to his own design perhaps he is prudent. It would also be prudent if he had designed and built his own monohull without the assistance of a NA.

[boatsmith]

Originally Posted by 44'cruisingcat

So you have a dumb friend, and you love your boat. Have a party.

+ a whole bunch

[boatsmith]

Originally Posted by 44'cruisingcat

So you have a dumb friend, and you love your boat. Have a party.

+ a whole bunch
It is a long way from anything James drew

[zboss]

This is a shame because a wharram is very high on my list of next boats. I'm saddened to see this happen to a wharram because I was always under the impression that they were true blue water vessels.

[a64pilot]

Originally Posted by zboss

This is a shame because a wharram is very high on my list of next boats. I'm saddened to see this happen to a wharram because I was always under the impression that they were true blue water vessels.

I'm not saying the owners did, but you can take any boat and make such extensive modifications to the point of rendering it un-seaworthy, and they might have.


Sent from my iPad using Cruisers Sailing Forum

[Sand crab]

Yup, not a Wharram.

[boatman61]

Originally Posted by Sand crab

Yup, not a Wharram.

+A1000....

[clockwork orange]

Originally Posted by zboss

This is a shame because a wharram is very high on my list of next boats. I'm saddened to see this happen to a wharram because I was always under the impression that they were true blue water vessels.

Don't let that bastardized piece of crap put you off owning a true Wharram, there are very few cats with a better safety record over such a long period of time as Wharrams boats.

Steve.

[SV THIRD DAY]

I have to call ******** on this story....a bunch of Cat cruiser I know tell me that Cats are unsinkable....

Sad story indeed and your heart just has to bleed for them in their loss.

[Sand crab]

It just gets curioser and curioser.

There's this from yachtingworld.
Rescue after catamaran 'broke in half'

The yacht, Nootka Dancer, is a bluewater cruiser designed by British catamaran pioneer James Wharram, built 23 years ago and modified by Canadian sailor John Eisen for heavier displacement to accommodate the extra gear and systems he wished to incorporate, and the boat sported an Aerorig freestanding rig.

However the ad listing the boat for sale states that this is a 2002 model. If this did start out as a Pahi then it was modified to the extreme.

The bury of the aerorig was brought up and I think it is to shallow. John Shuttleworth designed a 52' aerorig cat and he states:
Design of a 52ft. Aerorig catamaran.

After deciding on the position of the cabin top and the position of the rig, I found that it was necessary to make a small pod beneath the bridgedeck sole to take the lower bearing and keep the 1.9 meter bury required by the mast maker.

It looks like this same size cat has the aerorig sitting on a cross beam with a bury of about half of that. Is it the same size rig? I can't tell but one would think so or close to it.

[sww914]

Wow. So a one-off hull(s) built by somebody who probably had never built a catamaran before, even if it was a yard that built it, made of hardware store quality materials and then fitted with a modern, outside of the box rig which is very difficult to reduce windage and obviously induces huge stresses on the hulls which weren't designed for? That came apart? Wow. Whooda thunk it?

[garrobito]

Originally Posted by clockwork orange

Don't let that bastardized piece of crap put you off owning a true Wharram, there are very few cats with a better safety record over such a long period of time as Wharrams boats.

Steve.

...Thanks! A+++100000000!!!! :thu mb:

[sww914]

And think of the designer's position. You designed a series of revolutionary boats more than a quarter century ago and you made a little money. Now that some of the boats that were built have lost a lot of their value, stupid dreamers with $5.00 and a bad idea write you every week, maybe even every day, asking if it's OK if they redesign your boat to make it exactly the opposite of what you intended.
Most of them will never own a boat.
Most of them have never built a thing.
Most of them won't ever even finish the project even if they do get a boat.
Many of them won't leave the sight of land even if they did manage to both start and finish the thing.
You know all of this, as the designer who's been dealing with idiots full of the same bad ideas as the last idiot over the last 1/4 century.
At some point you might grow just a teeny bit lax in giving our recommendations, over and over, without anything coming of most of them.
That however, is unlikely. What is more likely is that the new(er) owner talked to the designer and then went ahead and did whatever he liked against the designer's recommendations and then has gone around spewing that they were all approved just because he actually got a couple of email replies from the poor dude trying to enjoy his retirement.