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Rick-
Last I checked Performance Cruising didn't make any boats with cored main hulls. They do use end-grain balsa in their decks, but not in the hulls. The exception to the cored hulls are the amas on the Telstar, which are cored with Lantor Soric and made via a vacuum-infusion process IIRC.
I seriously doubt that a Catalac 8M is any safer or less safe than a Gemini. You seem to be biased against catamarans other than your Catalac, which is less than useful. The Catalac is relatively underpowered, compared to more modern catamarans of similar size.
If the Gemini catamaran had serious safety deficiencies, as you seem to be suggesting, I seriously doubt that they would be able to sell as many boats as they have.
I agree that a board can cause a cat to trip...but the decision to raise the boards or not is up to the captain of the boat...and proper seamanship and knowledge of the use of center/daggerboards is a necessity. The lack of such knowledge may contribute to a capsize, but doesn't indicate that the boat has a safety deficiency.
One thing a lot of monohull sailors don't seem to understand about multihulls is the reefing procedures. On a multihull you reef for the wind strength of the gusts, not the general wind level. On a monohull, you reef for the wind strength and let the boat handle the gusts.
Regarding the link that Chuteman has posted, the poster stated that he was fairly inexperienced, primarily a monohull sailor, and sailing with far too much sail area up. This all indicates that the boat was not at fault, but the sailor.... human error seems to be the primary cause of this capsize...as it is in most modern cruising multihull capsizes.
It is very likely that a Catalac 8m would have faired slightly better, given the same conditions and problems, as the Catalac is woefully under-powered with a total sail area of 348 sq. ft., compared to the Gemini, which has a mainsail of 340 sq. ft. alone...the 100% jib is likely over 200 sq. ft., giving the Gemini almost 80% more sail area, compared to the Catalac.
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Sailingdog
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Telstar 28
New England
You know what the first rule of sailing is? ...Love. You can learn all the math in the 'verse, but you take
a boat to the sea you don't love, she'll shake you off just as sure as the turning of the worlds. Love keeps
her going when she oughta fall down, tells you she's hurting 'fore she keens. Makes her a home.
—Cpt. Mal Reynolds, Serenity (edited)
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Still—DON'T READ THAT POST AGAIN.
Last edited by sailingdog; 10-22-2006 at 11:47 PM.
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