Before buying your monohull, did you consider ...

[rockDAWG]

Did you consider others multi-hull boats? I have no experience in multi-hull except a week of sailing a Hobie cat 16.

[Hesper]

Not for a minute. In addition to all it's other required attributes, a boat must be beautiful. Multihulls aren't.

[sailingdog]

When I was looking to buy my boat, I did look at both monohulls and multihulls... I've sailed on both a lot and decided to go with a multihull for several reasons.

[Insails]

Originally Posted by sailingdog

When I was looking to buy my boat, I did look at both monohulls and multihulls... I've sailed on both a lot and decided to go with a multihull for several reasons.

speed huh)

[sailingdog]

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder... and there are ugly monohulls as well as beautiful multihulls... All the heavy metals in your keel must have affected your IQ...

Originally Posted by Hesper

Not for a minute. In addition to all it's other required attributes, a boat must be beautiful. Multihulls aren't.

[TQA]

For a cruising catamaran to start making sense to me you need to be looking at 42 foot + , When you load up the smaller ones their performance starts to suffer.

At 45 feet they really start to work. However other than a couple of Prouts the price starts a 1/4M.$

Just too much for me.

[jcalvinmarks]

For the size and price range I was looking at, there weren't really any multihull options. I wanted a small (22 feet or less), affordable (under $3,000) boat with a cabin. A multihull with any appreciable size cabin in that size range would probably be a) pretty rare, and b) accordingly expensive. Otherwise, I'd be in a Hobie, which was not what I had in mind, so it was a monohull for me.

From a strictly aesthetic point of view, multihulls are certainly very unconventional-looking craft. Which is neither here nor there. But if you want classic lines and a very traditional hull form and sail plan, a multihull isn't going to appeal to you very much. I don't care for the ultra-sleek ultra-modern multihulls, like L'Hydroptere and the newest America's Cup boats. But a Piver trimaran or even SD's Telstar can have a certain appeal ... if you squint your eyes and **** your head to the side.

But yes, there are all kinds of ugly monohulls.

[mpickering]

My next boat will likely be a multihull. It'll probably be a 34-35 foot Gemini and simply treat from a load perspective as my C-27 (load for the passage at hand). I will look at 42+ foot cats provided they may sit in my price range in a few years.

The advantages of even a small multihull like the Gemini for a cruising couple as compared to something like a Beneteau 35 are very compelling. My wife will likely prefer the lack of heeling, speed and comfort of the smaller cat as compared to an equivalent or larger monohull. We're going to compare mid-to-high 30s Beneteaus to cruising cats at the Annapolis sailboat show in October.

I happen to like the lines of the Gemini and the 42 foot cruising cats. But my wife also love the lines of the Beneteaus so it may be a wash.

Matt

[4arch]

Considering how many people come to this site with a budget of about $50k for acquiring a cruising boat, there are hardly any multihulls available in that price range and the ones that are available are very old, very tired, and not particularly spacious.

[Jeff_H]

I seriously considered a used Condor 40 trimarran before buying my boat. I had owned and designed multihulls in the past. The pluses were shallow draft, and a lot more speed. I decided that the negatives that I found compelling were, a cramped interior, no place to tie up something that wide, a huge increased cost to haul and paint the bottom, issues with docking single hand.

I have sailed on Cruising cats. Any that I can afford I find dull and not as fast as the monohull I ultimately purchased. The more exciting Cats are way out of my price range, and frankly do not appeal to me as cruising designs.

Jeff