Entries | Catamarans

Poetry in Motion - C Class Catamarans

The “Little America’s Cup” catamarans are like thoroughbreds - expensive and delicate creatures good for little else besides racing others of their kind. But oh… what a ride! Here’s UK Team Invictus putting the boat through its paces a few days before shipping the yacht to Newport, Rhode Island. Racing begins Aug 22, with coverage by Sailing Anarchy.

Traditional Vaka Heading East

A fleet of four traditional vaka will sail from Auckland on Wednesday April 14th (weather permitting) to French Polynesia, Cook Islands, Samoa, Tonga and Fiji.

Discovery was the prime motivator when the last vaka fleets crossed the Pacific more than 1000 years ago. This year’s voyage is one of rediscovery; aimed at re-establishing cultural links through traditional voyaging and raising awareness of the key environmental issues threatening the Pacific Ocean. This includes pollution, ocean noise, habitat destruction, overfishing, acidification and de-oxidation and climate change.

Built at the Salthouse yard at Greenhithe, Auckland, the 22m vessels carry up to16 crew and are based on a traditional Tahitian design. Modern boatbuilding techniques are combined with established craftsmanship. The hulls are constructed from E-glass and foam and lashed together with wooden beams and rope. Two of the vaka use a solar power system for an auxiliary propulsion system.

Sails Set For Pacific Endeavour

Beach Cruiser - Reloaded

The Beach Cruiser sketch from last March has progressed into a 3D model - my first 3D project in a long while - a good vehicle for relearning the ropes. To recap, Beach Cruiser is intended to be a multihull version of the popular "open boat" style of camping cruiser. Over the years, small cats have become somewhat the victims of their own success - evolving into pure race boats. It's a bit of a shame really, considering their roots come from the ocean crossing voyaging canoes of the Polynesians. Why not a beach cat "voyaging canoe"? A small trailer boat that maintains (much) of the performance of its race bred cousins, but with considerably more storage, comfort and seaworthiness. A boat for really going places... quickly!

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Neo 21 from Lunada Design

Chris Ostlind has floated a new design concept over at Lunada Design - a sliding beam camp cruising cat - the Neo 21. Chris notes that the usual beach cat makes a poor little cruiser (too wet, uncomfortable, tender, etc.) and with the Neo 21 he's made a valiant attempt to address these shortcomings, while keeping the one good reason to go with a multihull in the first place: speed under sail.

The construction is a combination of 1/4" plywood and cedar strip, covered with fiberglass and epoxy. The rig, rudders and boards are sourced from a suitable donor beach cat, such as a Hobie 18, but that is where the similarity ends. The boat features powerful, high volume hulls, high and dry bridgedeck clearance, comfortable seating for a crew of 2-4, an 8.5' trailering beam that expands to 11' on the water, a solid bridge deck and even a central pod. If high performance beach cruising appeals to you, this could be your ticket. How about a souped up version for the Watertribe Everglades Challenge?

Micro Cruising With Cindy

Miss Cindy is a 16 foot micro cruising catamaran designed and built by Tony Bigras of Vancouver BC in 2008. Tony cruised the little yacht from Baja California, down the Mexican Pacific coast, Nicaragua, Panama, up the Caribbean Sea to Cuba, and finally to Florida - quite the shakedown voyage! I’m reading Tony’s well written and photo documented account of the trip, and am currently somewhere south of Acapulco.

Miss Cindy is on the cutting edge of small cruiser design, employing a number of emerging features:

• Biplane rig - twin free-standing masts, one for each hull. The biplane rig has a number of benefits: the simplicity and security of an unstayed rig, a tendency to be self-steering and a lower center of effort. The downside is that the sails can interfere with each other on certain courses (reaching), and this problem is exacerbated by a narrow beam. Miss Cindy seems to be the exception to the rule, and that may have something to do with the choice of rig.
• Standing Lug - recently popularized by Matt Layden and his designs, the standing lug is balanced, powerful, close-winded, roller furling and very low aspect ratio - all good things, but especially on a biplane multihull cruiser.
• Lifting Body Hull - a sharp trapezoidal section combined with an extremely low aspect ratio keel gets Miss Cindy to windward. No daggerboard worries. This approach harks back to the beginning of the modern sailing multihull - the boardless beach cats of Waikiki.

Miss Cindy is now for sale in Florida!

Badges? We don’t need no stinking badges!

Old School

Beach cruisers are single gear bicycles with upright posture and balloon tires that put more emphasis on ride comfort and style than ultimate performance - the alternative to the ubiquitous road and mountain bikes. In that spirit, I present Beach Cruiser, the alternative beach cat. 19' LOA by 8'-6" beam, Beach Cruiser fits nicely on any beach cat trailer. The sail area of 220 sq. ft. also means that any beach cat rig can become a suitable power plant. However, that is where the similarity to the usual beach cat ends.

I found inspiration in the 1960's design work of C/S/K - the California based team responsible for classics like Aikane, Patty Cat II and Polycon. Beach Cruiser has narrow and boardless asymmetrical hulls, which while not the ultimate in efficiency, are beach friendly, and these deep and narrow hulls also deliver a terrific ride. The hulls taper into integrated rudders at the stern that should leave a clean wake and equally important, gains style points. The reverse sheerline sweeps forward to wave cutter bows, giving a nod to the Polynesian roots of the craft, and of course, everyone onboard wears Aloha shirts and boardshorts.

Beach Cruiser has actual raised seating and a solid bridgedeck between, which will make it an order of magnitude more comfortable than the typical beach cat. The wing area forward of the main beam will help keep spray down, as will the high 18" bridgedeck clearance.

The seats have big hatches to access the storage lazarettes in each hull, with more storage fwd of the main beam. Plenty of room for everything a beach cruiser could need (including tiki torches) with enough space to sleep a couple under a boom tent in the cockpit. Hang loose!

Slider

Multihull beach cruisers are something I spend a little too much of my time thinking about, and it’s nice to discover kindred spirits. Ray Aldridge of Florida has progressed considerably beyond the thinking stage and built one of the sweetest little beach cruisers I’ve ever seen. Slider is well named, squeezing between the fantasy island of sailing nirvana and the rocks of economic/bureaucratic reality.

First off, the boat fits inside the magical 16’ x 8’ envelope, getting the max out of 2 sheets of plywood and the legal trailering width. No fancy folding or sliding parts, the boat is nearly as easy to launch as a Sea Doo. The sprit rig suits the realities of trailer life as well, giving a short and easily stepped mast, and spars that fit tidily on the trailer - which BTW - can be any old beach cat hauler, no assembly required.

The boat is set up perfectly for a pair of sailors, each with their own official cockpit and cupholder. The bridge deck is literally a wood deck, with space for the cooler, crab pot, tent, and the occasional sunbathing mermaid.

The single, off-center daggerboard is all that’s required of a boat designed to view hull flying with suspicion; an unlikely event considering the low and modest sail area. I love the boarding ladder hinging off the forward crossbeam, good for both surf and turf.

Slidercat.com



Slider in Light Air
Upwind in Slider
Slider Goes to Navarre Beach

LOA: 16’
Weight: 480 lbs.
Draft: 11“
Sail Area: 140 sq. ft.

Edel 4XCat 33

The Jan/Feb 2008 issue of Multihulls World includes a boat test of the Edel 4XCat 33 from ADN, which I happen to like quite a lot. The ADN design team is seeking that sweet spot between performance daysailer and luxury cruiser - a performance cruiser. It's a niche currently dominated by folding trimarans and its nice to see this creative catamaran version. More pics after the jump.

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The Cat Came Back

Via the Boat Design Forum: Tornado sailors, Steve Lohmayer and Jamie Livingston, going under the team name of Lumpy and Bumpy, have won the annual Watertribe Everglades Challenge in a record time of just under 36 hours.

The Everglades Challenge is a 300+ mile adventure racing event that runs from Tampa Bay's Ft. DeSoto beach to Key Largo. The previous record for the event was set last year with a time of two days, 8 hours, 56 minutes by a 22 foot, double-handed skiff.

Lohmayer and Livingston passed fellow multihuller, Randy Smyth, about two thirds of the way down the course, when his trimaran suffered an unknown breakage, forcing Smyth to retire. Randy then found transportation to the finish line to greet the Tornado team upon their victorious arrival.

It's nice to see a multihull take the cup of this spectacularly challenging race. The Tornado class catamaran is (by multihull standards) an ancient design, from the drawing board of Rod MacAlpine-Downie Jr. 20' x 10' x 233 sq. ft. SA, the boat is one of those rare creations that somehow seems greater than the sum of its parts. A perennial Olympic class, the cat was recently eliminated - causing great dismay among multihull fans.

Sailing Over Melting Ice

Something about this project has captured my imagination - Sébastien Roubinet is attempting to sail the Northwest Passage (Alaska to Greenland) this summer - yea, SAIL it! Thus far, only nuclear subs and diesel-powered ice-breakers have managed the fabled voyage (a voyage that inspired many an explorer, including Captain Cook's Third Voyage (thanks to Peter for the correction), who met his bloody end in Hawaii - "stoned" by the irate islanders as a false god...) but thanks to global warming, Roubinet thinks it might now be possible to navigate the passage via sail!

His ingenious vessel is half sailing catamaran, half ice yacht, and somehow it seems appropriate to see Captain Cook's dream realized by an artifact from the culture that played such a big part in his life, and death.

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