There are legions of sailors (and, I’ll bet, launch owners) who haven’t the faintest interest in a boat with two hulls (and please, don’t call cat hulls pontoons). Traditionalists, wooden-boat aficionados, keeler cruiser/racers, folks with limited mooring space and tight boat-buying budgets – nope, not us. Happy where we are.
But it doesn’t cost anything to look and learn, does it? And never say never, right?
My wife, Harriet and I grew up as staunch mono-hullers. Our parents owned a gaggle of single-hulled boats, from racing dinghies to cruiser/racers. The hallowed names of legendary yacht designers and America’s Cup winners and solo circumnavigators are imprinted in our consciousness. Back in the day, man, those were real sailors. Those were real boats.
But times and needs and boats change, and in 2008 Harriet and I converted to a cat. Before that I had sailed, in the course of boat reviews for US sailing magazines, over two dozen cruising cats from 30 to 57 feet, production and custom, from racy, fast carbon cats, to oceangoing cats, to charter cats, to dockominiums. And now Harriet and I have owned and sailed our 46-foot performance-cruising Dolphin 460 OCEAN for 14 years and 55,000 miles. Does this make me an expert on cats? Nah. But it does give me an understanding of the range of catamarans and their capabilities.
As with the smorgasbord of single-hulled cruising boats, cruising cats come in a mind-boggling array of sizes, shapes, prices, and purposes – there really is something out there for everybody. If you are curious and have an open mind, here’s a look at the advantages and drawbacks of making the leap from one hull to two.
The safety question
The tiresome, long-running monohull vs. catamaran debate boils down to opposing bumper stickers: Monos can sink. Cats can flip. Sure, disaster can happen, but it usually doesn’t. I do admit that early on I was highly skeptical of the stability of catamarans. Monohulls have ballast keels, and cats have … buoyancy? Is that even a thing? The first time I sailed a big catamaran and a 20-knot gust hit, I braced myself, my hands going white-knuckled on the wheel: Oh! Here we go! Not much happened. The boat heeled two or three degrees… and went faster.
The tremendous stability of a cat must be experienced to be believed, understood, and appreciated. Working on deck is pretty darn safe; a cat barely heels – four degrees is all – and doesn’t bounce around overly much or suffer knockdowns. Through blasts of wind and steep seas that would have slapped down or broached a similar-sized monohull, our cat stayed firmly on two wheels. I’m now a believer in the cruising catamaran’s stability: buoyancy leveraged by lots of beam. That said, you need to exercise seamanship when heading offshore in a cat. Mostly that means shortening sail – taking your foot off the gas – as the wind builds.
Like most cruising cats, if OCEAN was holed we would swamp but not sink (OCEAN has three watertight ‘crash’ bulkheads in each hull, plus several sealed, watertight sections beneath the cabin sole). On a cat there’s also the built-in safety factor of two engines and two rudders; break one and you’ve still got a built-in backup. The more we cruised our cat, the riskier we viewed heading offshore in a monohull that can sink in a few minutes – and has only one engine and only one rudder.
The speed question
A cat’s speed potential is mostly dependent on displacement – the lighter the boat, the faster it can go. And of course, high-tech, carbon-fibre, weight-saving construction will cost you more money. In a typical foam-cored, fibreglass cruising catI believe you can make passages 20 to 30 percent faster than a similar-sized and well-equipped cruising monohull. On OCEAN we mostly averaged eight knots on ocean passages, without pushing the boat by carrying a lot of sail or pushing our mom-and-pop crew. Like most doublehanded cruisers, we’d often reef the sails, especially in boisterous seas, to ease the motion.
Still, our cat’s ability to knock off the miles without knocking out her crew was impressive. That said, we’ve met plenty of cat owners who are satisfied with five-knot passages. Speed is exciting, but secondary to a comfortable ride. They just enjoy going from A to B without heeling, rolling, or yawing.
But what about windward performance? Without daggerboards, a cruising cat’s performance to windward is poor; so-called ‘minikeels’ don’t do enough to reduce leeway. On a performance-cruising cat with deep daggerboards (on OCEAN, our boards-down draft is 7 feet, 6 inches/2.3m), windward ability is far better – but usually still a bit shy of a similar-pedigree cruising monohull, most often due to poor setup of the backstay-less rig or sails that are less than wonderful. Even a well-equipped cruising cat points lower than a well-designed cruising monohull, but a cat can make up its VMG deficit by sailing fast through the water.
In 15-18 knots of wind OCEAN sails at 7.5 to 8.5 knots and makes good a 100o tacking angle, as measured by the boat’s GPS course over ground (COG). Of course, most of the cat cruisers we’ve met own daggerboard-less cats, and they’re happily crossing oceans and exploring coastal areas – even though their boats don’t go to windward like a 12-metre. One final thought: with most of the world’s cruising routes downwind, how much windward ability do you need?
The motion of a cat can be summed up one word: different. A monohull’s rhythmic roll, heel, and yaw is familiar to all of us. A cruising cat serves up an alternative palette of motion: up, down, sideways, forward, aft. A cat’s moves are quick and unpredictable, but they are small in amplitude. This means that rowdy sea conditions which send coffee pots and bodies flying on a monohull probably won’t spill your cup of tea on a cat. Sailing upwind in windy, choppy stuff, a cat’s motion is a kind of quick thrusting, coupled with occasional sessions of hobby-horsing – not something you want to treat yourself to all day. But thanks to rounded hull sections, at least a cat doesn’t pound. As far as heel, you’ll get four degrees – in 12 knots, in 20 knots, in 30 knots. You’ll heel four degrees! This is something that’s very easy to get used to.
Downwind, cat life is good; a cat does not roll, and the two widely-separated, relatively narrow hulls minimise yawing – unlike the corkscrewing of single-hulled boats, cats exhibit good directional stability. Monohull sailors are inevitably disappointed with a cruising cat’s lack of ‘feel’ on the helm, but two hulls do make the autopilot’s job easier.
A cat is not a magic carpet ride, however. In breezy conditions and rough seas on the beam, the motion can turn hyper: a quick dip to leeward, bounce up and straddle the wave, a quick bit of heel to windward on the backside; lather, rinse, repeat. Harriet and I have both been seasick on OCEAN, and each time it’s because we’ve been driving too fast on a bumpy road. Reefing eases the ride.
When moving fast, cats are noisier belowdecks than monohulls, because water is rushing past two hulls instead of one. And many cats suffer, given rough and confused sea conditions, the thunderclap of chop smacking the wide, flat panels of the underside of the bridgedeck. At first the sound is alarming. With experience, it becomes an occasional annoyance. But it’s never a danger to a cat’s structure; the bridgedeck is a major structural component of a cruising cat and is very strongly built. A high bridgedeck avoids the ‘booms’, but how high is high enough? OCEAN’s is about 27 inches high, which I consider an acceptable minimum. Cats with bridgedecks nearly kissing the water at anchor – their crews are in for a very noisy ride offshore.
When the wind dies or stays stubbornly on the nose, cats make good powerboats. For best fuel economy, cats usually run only one engine at a time, using both engines only when punching into chop. OCEAN powers at seven knots with one engine at cruising speed (2,400rpm), eight knots with both engines, and nine knots with both engines at full throttle. Cats are stable platforms under power (it is not necessary to have the mainsail up to stop the boat from rolling). And two engines enable twin-screw handling when docking.
The liveaboard question
The ‘wow’ factor of catamaran interiors turns boat show tyre-kickers into instant converts. Look at this, honey! Everyone gets their own stateroom! We’ll lock the grandkids in the other hull! The galley is huge, and it doesn’t tilt! Look at the sunbeds! Indoor dining or al fresco? This thing is beyond liveaboard, it’s work-aboard! We could live on this thing!
It’s all true. And once that reality of space, space, wide-open space with a sun-drenched wraparound water view grabs you, it may be tough to go back to monohull life and its comparatively cramped cabins. If you’ve wondered, cruising cats have about 60 to 70 percent more usable living space than same-length monohulls – and with the trend to ever-rising freeboard, that percentage is going up. Cats encourage living instead of camping. Sleeping cabins can be repurposed to suit your lifestyle (on OCEAN we have his ’n’ hers offices). The wide, flat decks of cats can accommodate large solar arrays. The raised helm station gives a commanding view. The safe and secure between-the-sterns dinghy davits make hoisting the tender onto the foredeck one of yesteryear’s chores.
Cruisers spend 99% of their time at anchor, and this is when cats shine. They do not roll; when the dinner plates go flying on the monohull next door, the worst you’ll get is
a waddle. At anchor or on a mooring with a bridle led to the tip of each bow, cats barely ‘sail.’ On OCEAN we rode out a gale on a mooring to leeward of a 44-foot performance-cruising monohull. While they tacked continually through 140o, sailing back and forth, heeling to each gust, we tacked through only 30o and stayed flat.
And yes, a cat can carry a full cruising payload, but there is truth to the saying, “Overload a cat and it becomes a dog.”
A cat’s bonanza of interior space must be treated carefully. Too much weight sabotages a cat’s high-end speed potential; gain too much weight and you’ll still be sailing faster than most monohulls, though double-digit speeds will become elusive. So, you’ll need to restrain your worst junk-collecting, packrat, three-spares-of-everything tendencies. On 46-foot OCEAN, even as we’ve added heavy equipment to the boat (four anchors and lots of chain, a 1,400 amp-hour AGM battery bank, a washing machine, a watermaker, a hydronic heating system, and more) we are continually ‘house-cleaning’ to reduce weight and starve the clutter monster.
The cost question
A wise old yacht broker who, whenever a smitten boat buyer asked, “How much will it cost?” responded with, “How much do you have?” An anecdote to which I will add three caveats:
1. A catamaran will cost more than you might expect;
2. It’s easy to overbuy and ‘overcat’ yourself;
3. When shopping cats, do not use length to compare cats and monohulls – compare them by capability.
Comparing by capability means, to use a simple example, to get a 45-foot cat’s four double staterooms, each with head and shower, in a single-hulled package you’d need to be looking at a 60-foot monohull. Conclusions like this will lead you to
a fundamental cost question: What do I need in a boat? Do I need lots of cabins and showers and sunbeds for a stream of family and friends? Or do I just need a boat for the two of us, with occasional guests? Do I need scuba tanks, dedicated workshop or office space, a large, high-powered inflatable with wakeboard, a margarita fountain, a Jacuzzi, a helipad?
Keep in mind that if you overcat yourself you’ll be purchasing a lot of stuff of every description – water pumps, opening ports, gaskets, O-rings, circuit boards and switches, sensors, motors, hoses, wiring runs, passwords, varnished teak trim – which you likely won’t be using regularly but will be tasked with maintaining regularly. Going smaller and simpler is one way to trim costs. Most catamarans for offshore use are 40 feet and over. Smaller cats are a bit constrained by bridgedeck clearance; achieving standing headroom in the main cabin means raising the freeboard or lowering the bridgedeck, or both. A cat under 40 feet will certainly work, and many are successfully cruising, but the sweet spot for long-distance cruising is over 40 feet – if your budget can stretch.
Two hulls, second thoughts?
Harriet and I have yet to meet any cat sailors who want to go back to a monohull. The first time we went long-distance cruising, in the 1980s, we sailed a 15,000-mile, three-quarter-Pacific-circle on a heavy-displacement, full-keeled fibreglass cutter. Later, we jumped to a J/32, a modern coastal cruiser. About eight years after that we decided to go ocean cruising again, and we approached the question of which type of boat to get with an open mind. After a lot of research that included hands-on testing of available new and used cruising monohulls, we chose two hulls – and we are glad we did. But since then, we’ve found there’s an inevitable ignorance and prejudice that cat owners run up against. Ours occurred when we took a veteran cruiser for a day-sail on OCEAN – during which she referred to our hulls as ‘pontoons’ – and ended up announcing: “I could never get a cat. They just aren’t real boats.”
But most monohull sailors are curious, if cautious, about cats. They wonder, while trying to sift through anti-cat myths and pro-cat hyperbole, about these odd-looking craft. Cat sailors, meanwhile, have already discovered that there is another way to go cruising. They know that it is possible to sail flat and fast and safe and to cruise with most of the comforts of home. So, is it crazy to start thinking about two hulls instead of one? The journey starts with an open mind.
