In this day where multihulls are cleary the fastest boats on the ocean, why do we even care about huge monohulls anymore?" Bob Perry,

[thinwater]

Try to find a marina that accepts multihulls.  Given that coastal cruisers spend 90% of their lives tied to the dock, if there isn't anywhere to the your boat up you aren't going to buy it.  Those marinas that do accept multis have limited space for them

I pay $125/month for 24-foot wide slip. I don't need deep water, like a mono, so it is actually considerably cheaper than a mono of the same length. The marina has many wide slips and a lot of multihulls.

You need to think declarative statements through.

 

[Wess]

I am in the US, my boat has been east coast, west coast, US and Canada on both coasts. Hull built on west coast, transported to east coast to fit out, transported back to west coast after exhausting east coast (by truck both times). 

Yes, I have been greatly intrigued by the Farrier 39 and considered one for awhile. And my multihull friends tell me I'd be much happier with a tri vs. a cat because it sails like a boat, not a barge and might actually go upwind. Certainly I've seen the smaller Farriers do that. The folding amas might make it possible to find a slip and get hauled too. The downside is that like most tris, the accommodations are about the same as a <30' monohull. 

Ummm...  my 36 foot trimaran folds up for easy road transport, sails at 10 knots SOG without even trying, has a forward and aft stateroom to sleep four in comfort (six if using the salon), standing headroom, a salon, full galley, hot and cold pressure water, a head and shower you can actually move around in and use... and don't ask how little it cost me. You would cry. You could not pay me to go back to a monohull.  And equally we can't find a cat that can do what our tri can.  Different strokes for different folks.

 

[DDW]

I could say the fact that you must claim standing headroom in a 36' boat is telling, but instead I am intrigued by what boat it is, and what the deck and accommodation plan looks like. The only one in that class I am familiar with is the F36/39 (discounting the Dragonfly), which I have already said I find intriguing. But the accommodation in it are about what you get in a 33' modern monohull. It is the nature of the beast, you have a very narrow hull. I think I could live with one by rearranging the interior for a couple only.

 

[floater]

Seems expensive. Save a bunch, add just one more hull: https://www.denisonyachtsales.com/yachts-for-sale/63-Marsaudon-Composites-Trimaran-2010-Umag/7901826

Even comes with youtube channel! Kickstart your your youtube career, bring your own bikini.

yeah. this machine is all about the wine and cheese. lol. 

 

[Zonker]

I guessing your cat had a waterline of 38'.

36' but that's splitting hairs

 

[tane]

...and what would the results be, if 2 over-motivated crews were pushing their boats equally hard, a mono & a multihull? A capsized cat & maybe a ripped spinnacker on the mono. - & sometimes being OVER-motivated is not so easily recognized by oneself...

a mono is just so much more forgiving than a multihull...

(& @Zonker: how fast a monohull would have bought you the price of your 40' cat?)

 

[Zonker]

I kept track of every nut, bolt and piece of sandpaper. It added up to $135K Canadian - about $100K USD. But that is fully kitted out for offshore sailing

- lots of solar panels
- 4 autopilots
- 10' dinghy with 15 HP outboard
- SSB with Pactor 3 modem
- Spectra watermaker
- galerider type drogue
- 18' parachute sea anchor
etc etc

If I bought a typical mono it would have been around maybe $70K USD before outfitting for offshore sailing. I suspect that any mono I bought for that kind of money would be a 40-42' but not a performance monster; just a typical cruising boat. Not going to find a Santa Cruz 50 for that kind of money.

I don't think you really see that many cruising catamarans capsized by hard pushing / motivated crews. The ones that capsize seem to be big squalls that come out of nowhere and over they go. Capsizes are rare enough that you don't see even one every year among cruising cats. We will ignore the Australians who seem to capsize their cats in every coastal race possible!

If I was pushing my boat I was in the cockpit. When we were doing a typical passage I was on the comfy settee inside on watch. I was sailing my house so I seldom pushed the boat's envelope on passage.

Coastal day sailing was totally different. We screamed up the QLD coast behind the Great Barrier Reef. Flat water, trade winds, downwind with the chute every day. I think we were commonly doing 80-90 mile days and that wasn't exactly starting at the crack of dawn or stopping just by sunset. More like 9 am - 4 or 5 pm. Steady 10 knots were very comfortable in those conditions.

When we first got the boat we were sailing it virtually empty with 6 friends. Flat water, beam reach, just main and genoa. 25 knots of wind. The boat was holding very steady at 15.4-15.5. The windward hull was starting to rise out the water a bit. I had a person driving who had only been on a sailboat once before! It was that stable and happy.

So what I am coming back to is that MY boat had a wide performance envelope. It was happy to loaf along at 6-7 knots with me sitting on the settee on a passage. Very low key/low effort. Daysailing we were always going lots faster.

 

[socalrider]

I kept track of every nut, bolt and piece of sandpaper. It added up to $135K Canadian - about $100K USD. But that is fully kitted out for offshore sailing

- lots of solar panels
- 4 autopilots
- 10' dinghy with 15 HP outboard
- SSB with Pactor 3 modem
- Spectra watermaker
- galerider type drogue
- 18' parachute sea anchor
etc etc

If I bought a typical mono it would have been around maybe $70K USD before outfitting for offshore sailing. I suspect that any mono I bought for that kind of money would be a 40-42' but not a performance monster; just a typical cruising boat. Not going to find a Santa Cruz 50 for that kind of money.

I don't think you really see that many cruising catamarans capsized by hard pushing / motivated crews. The ones that capsize seem to be big squalls that come out of nowhere and over they go. Capsizes are rare enough that you don't see even one every year among cruising cats. We will ignore the Australians who seem to capsize their cats in every coastal race possible!

If I was pushing my boat I was in the cockpit. When we were doing a typical passage I was on the comfy settee inside on watch. I was sailing my house so I seldom pushed the boat's envelope on passage.

Coastal day sailing was totally different. We screamed up the QLD coast behind the Great Barrier Reef. Flat water, trade winds, downwind with the chute every day. I think we were commonly doing 80-90 mile days and that wasn't exactly starting at the crack of dawn or stopping just by sunset. More like 9 am - 4 or 5 pm. Steady 10 knots were very comfortable in those conditions.

When we first got the boat we were sailing it virtually empty with 6 friends. Flat water, beam reach, just main and genoa. 25 knots of wind. The boat was holding very steady at 15.4-15.5. The windward hull was starting to rise out the water a bit. I had a person driving who had only been on a sailboat once before! It was that stable and happy.

So what I am coming back to is that MY boat had a wide performance envelope. It was happy to loaf along at 6-7 knots with me sitting on the settee on a passage. Very low key/low effort. Daysailing we were always going lots faster.

I do think the market has shifted - I haven’t seen a cat on the market that meets your description for at least a couple of years on the west coast.  Relatively many 45-50’ monos for $100k or so but 40’ cats are almost all condos and asking $300k. The few exceptions I’ve seen have been older FP’s in very rough shape unsuitable for humans over 5’10” or so. 

 

[2flit]

Here is an F39 (folding) that's for sale, they also have a second one that's a stretched F36/39 that is demountable 

Asking $120,000

https://www.facebook.com/groups/534718171191533/?hoisted_section_header_type=recently_seen&multi_permalinks=645326250130724

https://l.facebook.com/l.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fanasazi-ltda.com%2F%3Ffbclid%3DIwAR3yng5v6UWKx7_hzGsPgjiASzwqSvMaLlKdi34EqLtEA19iGDRLYa29krs&h=AT2ErbGz-qrsRnYpBXBWqH9GDv2rqh0IEKTuM4kTwvL74t1BQqtXHimC8DxEk1MJCJz6UwmeQTxOwDKIn-bWbxcKn72Q394psmsip4bEhj36P2I6Jo5bK7mswF_BKpPW4Ny0CQ

 

[floater]

a poor set of photos, imo, but here is the correct link: https://anasazi-ltda.com/sereia-photos/f7blu0p9kt7jnfajvcxg408vvvn52y

 

[DDW]

Someone should buy it and finish the interior. 

 

[slap]

The cockpit is so small so it looks like they added additional seating over the top of the aft cabin - the blue fabric in the photo is the seat backrest.

 

[DDW]

I'd want the aft cockpit version which unfortunately leaves only a very small double V berth. But the cockpit is bigger. In those interior shots you can see how narrow the interior is, and split by the CB case. I'd also leave the tuna tower and stadium seating off of the back.....

 

[Trovão]

I don't considere I misquoted Bob. It's more like the quote was taken out of context - he (and me too) was talking about grand prix racing boats, not cruising...

 

[kiwin]

I am always mystified by discussions of cruising boats that involve length. The only relevant metric for cruising is $. How much boat can you get for the $? The conventional meme is that cats are faster and have more room than a mono, but that is normally length for length which is dumb. For the same $ a much longer mono can be bought, docked and hauled out. I am guessing that for the same cash as a 40-45ft cat a 60ft mono could be procured. Which then could be cruised faster? Would the 60ft mono have more room? I have met very few cat owners on a trade wind trip who did more than 200 miles per day EVER. when questioned they just didn't feel confident in pushing the boat hard. Most cruising cats are continually underpowered from necessity. Most 60ft monos of moderate displacement fin and spade type would achieve 200 mile days semi regularly  on those trips. I delivered a Hanse 430 st Martin to NZ and on the Pacific legs we went over 200 miles I think on 10 days. The only cats that I spoke to on that crossing that went over 200 a day were two morrelli & Melvin all carbon 60ft multi-million dollar monsters and a lagoon 55. None of the Schionnings, StFrancis, or any of the other condomarans were averaging much over 160-170 mpd.  Waterline length is still king. On the Hanse we averaged 171 mpd for close to 10,000 miles.

What a cat gets you -for the same money - is shoal draught and no heeling. What it probably doesn't is speed.

 

[MauiPunter]

If multihulls were a race, I'd be considered racist.

 

[Foiling Optimist]

We had an Australian carrier built for jump jets in town for joint exercises a couple of years back and people practically came to blows over whether or not it was an aircraft carrier.

When you are strongly connected to academia, you just love to see serious pedantry out in the general population. Although it must also be said that this human impulse for worrying about the precise definition of words, is the source of a lot of lawyers. 

 

[floater]

If multihulls were a race, I'd be considered racist.

you can have one, one and one half (proa), two (cat), or one and two half's (tri). with so much to choose from, why pick just one?

 

[DDW]

I am always mystified by discussions of cruising boats that involve length. The only relevant metric for cruising is $. How much boat can you get for the $?

Length is a proxy for cost of ownership though. But a cat costs more to keep in most places (especially in a slip), so maybe 40' cat vs 60' mono is about right again. 

Another thing you alluded to is something I've been trying to convince this crowd of (unsuccessfully) for years. And that is that in cruising, speed is what you actually achieve, not what the boat is capable of on paper or with a gung-ho racing crew. That is very different from racing, where speed is the only goal and seconds count. This reduction might be due to not wanting the work of colored sails, fear of capsize, reduction of motion, loaded up with cruising gear, or a variety of other things. And I claim data from venues like the ARC represent this speed actually achieved because all of those things are in the mix. An example Veeger brought up back a ways was a catamaran not performing to its potential because the crew didn't want to chafe the mainsail to bits on the rigging. Exactly - the practical speed was less than theoretical, for good reason. 

This is why my boat is what it is. I can get 95% of the potential speed nearly 100% of the time, without having to put my beer down very often. It could be that in a full on race it might be slower than some other configuration - don't know think so, hasn't been well tested - but experience over a decade proves that it is faster the way cruising boats are actually sailed. 

There is an argument that speed potential is useful in certain cases when you are trying to beat a storm, or reach harbor before sunset etc., and are willing to push the boat for a few hours or a day. Or daysailing along a coast when you might push harder. I get that, but it doesn't seem to result in faster average times longer distance, because few crews push that way for very long. It only changes average speed if you are the kind of crew that is willing to put in the work and/or take the risk to accesses it over the long haul. Most don't.

 

[kiwin]

Certainly when I sail a cat, I am more circumspect than when sailing a mono. I am by no means an expert cat sailor -at all- but I have probably logged around 15,000 miles of deliveries over the years in catamarans.  I tend to canvas a cat to suit the gusts, and a mono to suit the lulls. The correlation of LWL to speed holds very true for cats. So for me a lagoon 55 has worked out much faster than a say a Catana 42. So if you want to go faster buy a longer cat, not a higher performance model of the same length.