Monohull converts to multihull sailing..........

[cruisersfarm]

My 4th and 5th (current boat) were cats, the rest monos.

The quality of life, in general, is greatly improved. For me, there were no cons...at all.

I strongly prefer the snappy cat motion as mono rolling and pitching makes me seasick occasionally. Cat motion does not.

Cat feel less like "exciting sailing" at first because the boat does nothing but sit there like a rock and fly through the water. There isn't much indication that you're blasting along, aside from the instruments.

Sleep is greatly improved because your body isn't rolling around in your bunk.

Cooking is far easier because your stuff stays put on the counter and nothing needs to be gimballed.

The list goes on andon and on....

Harder to find places to haul out may be the only drawback. But, many can haul out on hydraulic trailers or cranes too, so...

[tomfl]

Originally Posted by w32honu

This old monohull sailor wants to hear from you.....

How have you been rewarded with the conversion to multihull sailing?

Any regrets with the switch? Any bias' been left behind?

Has the switch impacted your pleasure of cruising?

Any converts gone back to monohull sailing?

What have been your pros and cons?

Thinking about taking the plunge.........

Tx.

Most of your questions are dependent on how a person would define things.

Several posts have mentioned what posters describe as a quick motion of a multihull compared to a smoother motion of a monohull. I have never noticed a quick motion on my cat, but I tend to pick weather windows and do a lot of sailing off the wind; something that results in, at least by my definition a smooth motion. A lot of what some folks call pounding can be eliminated/reduced by falling off 5/10 degrees; something that often increases speed enough that VMG does not suffer.

I notice a lot of multihull guys have electronics that monitor things like VMG. Something that requires a solid battery bank and a learning curve for a chart plotter. In fact I always seem to feel I need to spend more time with the user's manual for my chart plotter. Back in the day I use to sail my Dad's boat and used an old AM radio as an RDF.

Sails for most multihulls are often fully battened, while monohulls can/do get away with simple dacron sails. There is really no right/wrong answer to a lot of these questions or which one is the most rewarding.

I have changed the way I cruise. Trips that use to require getting up well before the sun and anchoring after dark are now all done in daylight, and anchoring is much closer to shore due to shoal draft most multihulls have. One downside of multihulls is they tend to not do as well as monohulls in cold weather, I freeze almost to death on mine.

Don't see going back to a monohull. Too much upside in a multihull. The biggest downside is cost.

There is no perfect boat. Before you take the plunge my advice would be to spend some time defining what you want to do with the boat. Where will you be sailing. Most of us will never round the three great capes, or cruise for months without seeing a grocery store. Few will even cross an ocean. Most of our sailing will be in good weather. A boat for this type of sailing is far different than one that could sail in the Southern Ocean.

Once you are able to define just what you want to do with a boat it is a lot easier to find the right one.

[Dulcesuenos]

Originally Posted by w32honu

Sorry guys it was not meant to be the multi vs. mono gig.

Was just curious about experiences as a convert.......pro or con.

We converted went from a nice mono a Bombay 31, and now are on our 4th cat. We love the ease of boarding,dinghy handling, fishing, sailing. All points of sail are less motion and less heel. Downwind is a dream, pointing seems just as good. We love the space and storage and have suffered no major lack of performance filling these spaces with stuff.
Living aboard 3+ years we love the stability at anchor.
The transition to spending your awake time in a large cockpit or saloon with big Windows to us, was awesome compared to living in a "cave".
We did try to buy 2 different csy 44's prior to our last cat. Still think about them from time to time


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[w32honu]

Thanks for all of the input. None of this has been about us in terms of choosing a boat. Just wanted to confirm that we are headed in the right direction. We have been most interested in your experiences........so thanks again.

Sounds like there is not a lot our there in the con side of the equation. The cost and extra marina expense with slips and hauls is well known. But without that as a personal experience those things are easy to overlook or push aside.......important. Might have to look that over again and nail down further the estimates.

Motion at sea is mentioned a lot. The Admiral and I are now mid 50's. So a more stable platform would be welcomed at this point. Although I would miss the "in the groove" feeling of sailing a monohull. I have a trimaran in my sights. Hull shape will produce less of the quick cork and quirk of the Cat motion. And she will heel a bit more than a Cat but not much. So, on the spectrum, I figure her motion will lie somewhere in between. But lying closer to the Cat than a mono.

Tropical living. Not sure that the multi does this better or not. But you guys assure me that they do and that is good enough for me. We spent most of our youth growing up on Hawaii. I have been trying to escape these New England winters for some time now. Cannot wait......

Room and livability. No real answer to this one. Or the only one I would attempt is that we all adapt. No one boat will do it all. I basically drew the layout and specs for the boat we are considering....... so she fits our needs pretty well. Two separate cabins is good and the multi's do this well. Ours would be fore and aft being a tri.

Shoal draft. Not much to say bout this. It is all good. I have been trying to get a good feel for the LAR mini keel. Whether the performance of that keel is adequate or not. I have come to the conclusion that it is for a cruising boat. But there is a lot of info out there in the Forum and on the net about this topic. No need to debate that here............unless you guys want to share your own personal experience. The tri we are looking at would draw 3' 9" which is pretty shoal draft in my book. So any depth greater than 4' becomes an anchorage. True the guy drawing 2' 9" might be in closer, but my guess he is not much more than a boat length away.

Cheers gang!! Thanks for the input. Everyone likes to talk about their boats and cruising experiences. So keep em coming........

[DocRox]

Sailboats are like potato chips, nobody can have just One.

[belizesailor]

Originally Posted by w32honu

....
Motion at sea is mentioned a lot. The Admiral and I are now mid 50's. So a more stable platform would be welcomed at this point. Although I would miss the "in the groove" feeling of sailing a monohull. I have a trimaran in my sights. Hull shape will produce less of the quick cork and quirk of the Cat motion. And she will heel a bit more than a Cat but not much. So, on the spectrum, I figure her motion will lie somewhere in between. But lying closer to the Cat than a mono.

......

I haven't spent a lot of time near coastal/offshore on a lot of tri's, but some on Corsairs...and they are very wet with unpleasant motion in any sigmficant seas or even a heavy chop. Impossible to sleep off watch. Maybe the bigger heavier older design of tris are better in rough conditions?

[clockwork orange]

The older tri designs were very much better than any of the modern options which are much too performance oriented to make sensible cruisers. Some of the older designers had a good eye too , Norm Cross, Bernie Rodriguez, Jay Kantola come to mind and drew some very nice looking and sailing boats. By extending the cabins out over the wingdecks to provide wide rectangular civilized berths as well as a wide appearance of space is important with a skinny main hull. They cant do this with the modern tris that need to travel the highways. Id be interested to know what tri design the OP is considering.

Steve.

[Andrew Grace]

I was sitting on my cat at the Marina today and noticed the 80 foot mono in front of us was continually moving around on its berth swaying from side to side(this is in a marina!!) , decided to then go on board and see what it's like in theseconditions, within 2 minutes I was feeling seasick ....... And this was at a Boatshow,

forget cost , speed , the real difference is comfort when at anchor or in the Marina! If you are on a monohull

[robert sailor]

Originally Posted by Andrew Grace

I was sitting on my cat at the Marina today and noticed the 80 foot mono in front of us was continually moving around on its berth swaying from side to side(this is in a marina!!) , decided to then go on board and see what it's like in theseconditions, within 2 minutes I was feeling seasick ....... And this was at a Boatshow,

forget cost , speed , the real difference is comfort when at anchor or in the Marina! If you are on a monohull

If that is all it takes to get sea sick your going to have issues on your cat. I have to say that I've never heard of anyone getting sea sick in a marina, it's funny actually and I get the sense you are serious about this.

[seabreez]

How have you been rewarded with the conversion to multihull sailing?

Any regrets with the switch? Any bias' been left behind?

Has the switch impacted your pleasure of cruising?

Any converts gone back to monohull sailing?

Always wanted a sailing vessel but the area and the winds are not favorable in this area. I have done a lot of sailing and in mono and tri and cats. Every time I would go back and sail a mono and had different people aboard I would question myself and wondered why I did not choose a tri or a cat, as I always wanted the roooominess of then. When I sailed the cats and the tri, I always wanted to sail the tri form the smoothness and the ease of cutting through the water and the ease of sailing. And to answer your question, I do not want to go back to a mono. I like the stabilility of tris and cats and the ease of also beaching them for repairs or painting or simply checking.... It's me... Roger

[w32honu]

Originally Posted by clockwork orange

The older tri designs were very much better than any of the modern options which are much too performance oriented to make sensible cruisers. Some of the older designers had a good eye too , Norm Cross, Bernie Rodriguez, Jay Kantola come to mind and drew some very nice looking and sailing boats. By extending the cabins out over the wingdecks to provide wide rectangular civilized berths as well as a wide appearance of space is important with a skinny main hull. They cant do this with the modern tris that need to travel the highways. Id be interested to know what tri design the OP is considering.

Steve.

There is a new "Fast Cruiser" design from John Marples. His older FC were the 37 (winner of the 2005 OSTAR) and the 44. The profile and look of the boat is pretty much just like the 37. It is her bigger sister. This one is 40 feet and somewhat updated in terms of hull shape. The older boats were/are more of a cambered deep "V." This boat uses the F-6 mold which produces a bit more of a "U" shaped body.....especially aft in the run. It is still a Constant Camber boat and so, in terms of shape, has that as a limitation. So from "V" to "U" the reality is a compromise.......somewhere in the middle. Nice thing is that the more buoyant section does not require as much rocker which was a bit of a performance limitation in the older boats. And this hull shape should provide a nice ride at sea.....less of a quirky and quick motion.

Honest payload of 3000# with a 10,600 overall displacement. Bruce number is 1.25

There is 26 feet of beam. 63% of LWL from mid point ama to ama. The floats are a tad better than 120% overall displacement.

I have to be honest this is not an all up new design. It borrows heavily from the mid cockpit 40 in terms of hull shape. But redesigned to the FC cabin configuration. In that respect I suppose one design always borrows from the previous as things morph along.

There is an aft cabin which is really just one large berth, well ventilated. Then cockpit. Companion way. U shaped galley. Salon with traditional settee arrangement. Outboard to port and starboard are two good seagoing berths set up in the wing pods. Main bulkhead into a overly large and open multi-use space......head, dressing, storage, whatever. Fwd Aka bulkhead into a V-berth cabin. Two cabins nicely separated with two good seagoing berths.

Thats about it in a nut shell. She fits well into the cruising boat side of the equation and should perform just fine. I have long admired some of JM's work. He has hit the sweet spot on a few of his designs. I would welcome and be interested in any comments or experiences along these lines......

[Dulcesuenos]

Don't get too caught up on draft. Yes you can anchor with 6" below you but how bad will the damage be if a squall rears up and you have 2' waves beating into the bottom? We prefer to think of shallow draft to allow us to travel via skinny water and beach at time. Yes we can anchor closer to the beach but prefer to have at least a few feet under us as often as possible in consideration of tide. We draw 3.6 loaded.

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[Goosebumps]

Originally Posted by w32honu

This old monohull sailor wants to hear from you.....

How have you been rewarded with the conversion to multihull sailing?

Any regrets with the switch? Any bias' been left behind?

Has the switch impacted your pleasure of cruising?

Any converts gone back to monohull sailing?

What have been your pros and cons?

Thinking about taking the plunge.........
j
Tx.

I really wonder whats up with CF posts about monohulls vs multi recently?

Why do some monohullers seem to need to be supported in their chouce?

I understand their insecurity however, wouldnt anyone given such a choice and

know what he/she talking about choose without any qualms whatsoever to choose multi?

In my case the only way I would ever go back to my soup spilling mono is when

my present multi breaks up in two monos! And this I state after many mono

experiences and multihull lveaboard on the hook of East African coast never in

marina since 2005.

[w32honu]

huh?????

[w32honu]

Originally Posted by Dulcesuenos

Don't get too caught up on draft. Yes you can anchor with 6" below you but how bad will the damage be if a squall rears up and you have 2' waves beating into the bottom? We prefer to think of shallow draft to allow us to travel via skinny water and beach at time. Yes we can anchor closer to the beach but prefer to have at least a few feet under us as often as possible in consideration of tide. We draw 3.6 loaded.

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Points well taken..... This interest of ours all started with a "last boat" type of thing. A boat capable of cruising thin water but also capable of off shore passage making.

That anchoring scenario was just to point out that there is not much difference in 2' 6" of draft and say 3' 9" of draft. Although the daggerboard and centerboard folks will strongly disagree. And they have a point. Just not sure myself. On a day to day basis when out cruising I am not sure how often 12 inches of additional draft will make or break the experience. It is that compromise/trade off sort of thing.