Cruising Catamarans Offshore - Page 6

jackstee · #51 02-21-2005

Hi again
Sorry lost the plot.
sailed some small cats, as well as the one we built ( for one day ).
Capsized during my first race, typical blunder for monohull sailer. Creaming along and got a gust, let the main out and headed into the wind. WRONG. This speeds you up and digs the lee hull into the water. Over you go.

Learn a couple of sailing rulls about cats before you buy one.

PS.
The Heavenly Tins are a great small cat.

PCP · #52 02-21-2005

garyp, that is an interesting article about catamarans design:

"Evaluating a cruising catamaran"
on http://www.sailbuyersguide.com/articles/boatpages/EvaluatingACruisingCatamaran.cfm

dogboater · #53 02-21-2005

Paulo: Your 2002 Route du Rhum statements were not correct. I don''t know why no one noticed. The multihulls that crashed were all ORMA 60''s, trimarans designed to sail on one ama with the main hull out of the water at over 30 knots, singlehanded. To compare them to cruising cats is ... well, you get the picture. Lots of monos failed to finish that race as well, dismastings and lots of broken boats. There are enough misconceptions out there about cruising cats that we don''t need to add any more.
Tom

PCP · #54 02-22-2005

I have said:

"I remember that in the 2002 "Route du Rhum" (transatlantic race) four 60ft cats capsized, (I know that they were race cats, but ocean going big race cats and by the way, none of the monohull capsized ) and they were skippered by some of the best sailors around. In fact could it be me or you, it made no difference, without sails , 60/70 knots of wind on the mast was all that was necessary to capsize them."

And that is all true.

They are big ocean racing cats, 60ft ORMA boats. ORMA means "Ocean Racing Multihulls Association".

A racing cat is much more stable comparing with a cruising cat.

They only go with "the main hull out of the water " if they run too much sail.
In that storm they carried very little sail or no sail at all.

About the performance (and safety) of the multihulls against monohulls in very bad weather conditions, like in that race, some more facts:

from cruising world magazine:

"Here’s a partial list of the damage report for the 2002 Rhum race: Fifteen of the 18 trimarans in the event retired because of capsize, collision, a dismasting, or because they simply started to break apart."

That race begun with 59 boats , 33 monohulls and 26 multihulls.
Monohulls (33) retired from the race 11.
Multihulls (26) retired from the race 18.

"Kingfisher Devours Cats - Who says Two Hulls Are Better Than One?"

http://www.caribbeanracing.com/artman/publish/article_168.shtml

and dogboater... I do like fast cats, but things are what they are...

Paulo

dogboater · #55 02-22-2005

3 nice pictures of how these boats are sailed.

http://www.solarnavigator.net/nigel_irens.htm

The ORMA 60 rules don''t specify tris but beam is unlimited so tris take better advantage of this than cats. They are absolutely the formula one of sailboats, no comparison to a passenger vessel is possible. Cruising catamarans almost without exception have very conservative rigs. There just aren''t a lot of examples out there of cruising catamarans getting knocked over. There are over 800 Gemini built, sailing millions of miles and I''m only aware of 2 stories of people sailing them over. I''m sure there are more but it doesn''t happen very often. Read Chuck Kanter''s latest book, it pretty well destroys the myth of capsizing a cruising catamaran. During the 1979 Fastnet disaster 2 Prout cats were shadowing the fleet, not allowed to enter. Both were fine with one skipper calling it merely "ghastly weather for sailing".
JMHO, Tom

PCP · #56 02-23-2005

Tom said:

"There just aren''t a lot of examples out there of cruising catamarans getting knocked over. There are over 800 Gemini built, sailing millions of miles and I''m only aware of 2 stories of people sailing them over. I''m sure there are more but it doesn''t happen very often."

I agree with you.

Of course it is also true that there are not a lot of examples of ocean going monohulls being knocked over. And that is also true that a multihull capsized stays capsized and a true ocean monohull will not stay capsized.

All is relative, and I believe that the Gemini are good cats with a good safety margin.

Do you know the Seawind cat? I also like that one. They say the boat can make 40º to the wind. I would like to see that. If it is true, it is really impressive.

Paulo

dogboater · #57 02-23-2005

Unlike Bumfuzzle here''s a site done by a couple of sailors on a Seawind 1000:
http://www.instantweb.com/s/siudzinski/

As to how well the Seawind points, I can''t answer that. As a general rule cats with fixed keels like the Seawind don''t sail as high as a boat with dagger or center boards. While cruising I have yet to be passed by a similar sized monohull on any point of sail. Those that have passed me in light air were all motor sailing. I am aware that there are lots of fast 30'' monos out ther that could blow by me, just not those cruising which is what we''re talking about. On the down side (for my boat at least) really beating is not fun. It''ll pound pretty good, slow down and speed up quickly and in general make you pay attention to all the stuff that you normally don''t stow. Since you have to stow everything on a mono no matter what I guess you wouldn''t have stuff flying around.
Paulo, you''ve changed the definition again, now it''s "true ocean monohull" to survive a knock down. I still maintain that there are lots of monos out there that wouldn''t survive or recover from a knockdown. And a fair number that sink very quickly. All it takes is a failed thruhull, stuffing box, hit something and get holed. Thousands of pounds trying to pull the boat under scares me soooo much more than capsizing my boat that I can''t put it in words.
Hope this is''t taken as a rant but jmho on affordable cats doing a little offshore work.

PCP · #58 02-24-2005

Tom, I am not a fundamentalist and I have already said that I like fast Cats. I entered this discussion when somebody had said that "it was almost impossible to capsize a cruising cat" and what I have said has to do with this statement that I have considered vastly exaggerated.

I was curious to see if you are right about the incidence rate of capsizing accidents between monos and cats (of course you have to considerer a correction factor, because there are many monohulls to each cat).

I have made a quick search on the net (only last years), using the key words "capsized, rescue and sailboat” to see what happened.

About monohulls, the ones that capsized, or stayed capsized were dinghies( not considering racing ones that capsized when they lost the keel).

On the other hand, I have found plenty of notices that have made its way to the press about capsized cruising cats (not considering racing ones). And, opposing your personal risk assessment, there are a lot more rescues due to capsizing than the ones due to collision, or sinking, even if they also are reported.

Most of the notices are from 2004. I guess that old news are wiped out of the net, otherwise I would find a lot more regarding other years. Take a look:

http://piersystem.com/external/index.cfm?cid=443&fuseaction=EXTERNAL.docview&docu mentID=55660

http://www.torresen.com/sailing/content_archives/000827.php

http://www.cospas-sarsat.org/FirstPage/article5.htm

http://www.cospas-sarsat.org/FirstPage/article5.htm

http://www.mcga.gov.uk/c4mca/mcga-dops_pr_newsroom-press-releases-release.htm?mcga_news_id=2189&month=4&year=2003

I believe that ocean cats have a good safety margin, but I consider also that ocean monohulls are safer.

Main difference (in my opinion) is that an ocean monohull can take a lot more "errors" made by the skipper and need a lot less attention. The boat can take care of himself (almost) no matter what. With a Cat you have to pay a lot more attention to the wind, to the sail the boat carries, regarding the wind. It is not only the speed that is bigger; everything happens a lot faster in a cat, including capsizing.

Tom, I hope that you don''t think I don''t like cats (I intend to take a test sail in a Dragonfly this spring, and for that I have to travel 6000kms), or even that I dislike cats.

I believe in a fair evaluation of sailboats and I believe that there is not a perfect sailing boat, but a right boat to each sailor, and they can be and are very different boats.

I love diversity.

Paulo

thorJ30 · #59 02-24-2005

it IS almost impossible to capsize a cruising cat.

from your 5 examples above collected from 3 years around the whole world ....

example 1. ok great lakes are tricky ...

eaxample 2 another great lakes THIS WAS A RACE , again Paulo you seem to deliberately scare people with racing incidents ...

example 3 and 4 are the same incident on a booze cruise catamarane in hawaii ...

example 5 ... well maybe

From your 5 examples I can only view 2 as being valid for comparison ....

Now you have enough time on your hands to find the other 2 incidents in the last 5 years .. when you done I will spend 10 minutes to find 50 sunken monohulls ....

it IS almost impossible to capsize a cruising cat.

Thor

928frenzy · #60 02-24-2005

Never say never. It has happened, and (unfortunately) it will happen again.

Since there are far more monohulls than there are cats, one would expect to find more monos capsized and sunk than cats. That proves nothing.

Monos get knocked down more often than sailors like to admit, but they usually come back at least once. The same isn''t true for cats.

~ Happy trails and sails to you ~ _/) ~