Review of the Multihull Fleet at the Annapolis 2007 Boatshow
by Chris White

One of the Sail Magazine editors asked if I would help look over the 2007 Multihull fleet for new and innovative ideas. It sounded like a good idea and I was planning to move Javelin south around that time anyway so I accepted the invite. Below are some of my notes and observations, complete with axe grinding where appropriate.

Catana 50 cat: A new design which improves on some poor features incorporated in prior Catanas but still leaves the major problems to future upgrades.

It's dark below. Years ago Catana nixed all the deck hatches in favor of large opening ports in the hulls. But now the large ports are gone, replaced by normal size opening ports. I never thought the large ports in the hulls, especially over the berths were a great idea. You can't safely leave them open underway, they are more inclined to leak, soaking your bed, and despite the size they don't act as air scoops the way deck hatches do. The end result is that the C50 is very challenged in ventilation and natural light below. It seems to me that it would be an extremely difficult boat in hot climates, unless of course you rely on running a diesel generator to continuously power air conditioning. When I asked the Catana rep on board about the ventilation his reply was, "Zee oonaiir vill run zee aiircondeeshining". Great, rather than opening the hatches for a nice tradewind breeze you're closed up and running the gen-set to live in a dentist's office climate!

The hull shape is new. The original Catanas were Crowther designs with the pronounced bulb bows, and outward canted hulls. Crowther canted the hulls outboard from vertical in order to get the center of buoyancy outboard a few more inches without actually making the boat wider over all. It's a noble concept but the drawback is that the widest part of the boat then is located very low, close to the water, which makes protecting the topsides nearly impossible when coming along a dock made of pilings. In any case the new hull has a less extreme bulb in the forefoot and less canting of the hull from vertical. Prior Catanas had various hull projections, in the form of ledges or chines that increased the interior volume. The problem here is that everything like this located close to the water will pound or slap. It's annoying at best and slows you down. The new hull still has these projections but fairs them into the hull with large champers.

Lightweight? Catana makes a big deal out of performance and their sophisticated construction. Frankly, they don't know what they are talking about. The salesmen say the boat weighs 16 tons. Salesmen tend to quote in tons when they don't know the weight, or don't want to say. In any case the construction details and outfitting of this boat all scream "who cares" when it comes to weight. The brochure says 36,000 lbs at light load. After looking at the boat close up I'd guess that to be pretty accurate.

In comparison my Atlantic 48 has a displacement of 21,000 lbs. light. The Atlantic 55 26,000 lbs. Adding 10,000 lbs to either of these designs will absolutely crush the sailing performance especially in light air. The C50 is not going to be a flyer, no matter hot much hot air is pushing it along.

Visibility. My central knock on the Catana has always been their trademark design concept, which is "drive the boat from the top of the transom". Perhaps I'm just dense and can't appreciate the fun of being one short mis-step from overboard while I watch my boat charge along at 14 knots. But to me this has always seemed like a bad idea. Die hard Catana fans will be happy to know that nothing has changed here. The visibility immediately forward from the wheel is fine, but as you look toward the center of the boat it is cut off completely by the large deckhouse. Judging as best I could something like 45 degrees of the compass is completely blocked off from view- unless of course you run over to the other helm to see what is happening on that side. To me this is very odd. The boat is marketed as a cruising boat which means, typically, the boat will be sailed short handed. The current European regulations on boat designs make illegal a primary steering station which is located behind tinted glass because it slightly reduces the visibility at night. And yet they approve a 40,000 lb, 28' wide sailboat where the helmsman has half of his forward view completely cut off? Well duh.

Fontain Pajot has a new crop of cats. Never known for their construction quality FP does impress me with their ability to mass produce. We were told they can roll a new 36'er

off the line every 4 days. Unfortunately, the boat looks it. While I like simple and uncomplicated interiors these are truly bare and stark. No cabinet doors, little or no trim, large plastic mouldings with big gaps between. To my boatbuilders eye some of it is clever, but it all screams "labor saving". They have done everything possible to reduce man hours and it shows in way really not so desirable. With the US$ in the tank against the Euro the reason for this is clear, they need to keep the cost down to be able to sell boats. The problem is that none of the cats are cheap. The 36'er at $250,000 or more is, I suppose, a good entry level cat. But I think for the money there are better cruising boats available, especially the monohulls.

The larger FP cats did at least have a helm position that you could see forward from as well as the sails. That's progress. If acres of white polyester gel coat turns you on then the FP's have lots to offer. I was surprised at the difference in hull form between their new 44 and 47. The newer hull was TRULY unattractive from a style perspective. The stem and forefoot was an odd combination of lines borrowed from various boats, the hull forebody was bulged and distended on the inboard side (more accommodation space) and looked really amateurish. Strange stuff for a very large boat company.

Their trademark "eyebrow" around the cabintop undoubtedly helps keep the sun out and the house cooler but it is a really chintzy piece of work. In cats light construction is good but things that bend so much when you stand on them that you fear it breaking isn't so good. And that's how I felt standing alongside the mast as I would be putting in a reef, bouncing up and down on the eyebrow as if it were a diving board. While I could stand to loose a few lbs. I'm not that big (175 lbs.) and could easily see how this piece of material wouldn't last long before cracks develop.

The Gunboat 48 was in the anchorage when we arrived. All $2 mill of it. Strangely despite its huge price tag it does not look any larger than any other 48' cat nor is it any prettier.

I'm sure it goes fast when not overloaded with the usual junk people insist on putting aboard. Unfortunately the GB didn't stick around for the demo days after the show. What I did witness was the act of securing it to the boatshow docks. With hardly a breath of wind it seemed to take a very long time and multiple tries to get lines fastened. Having eliminated all the deck cleats in their zeal to reduce weight might have had something to do with this comedy.

I made Kate tag along with me for the Sail Magazine errand. She's been into boats as long as I have and tends to look at things that I don't so I thought it would be helpful. As the day wore on and the plastic fantastic cats merged into a styrene laced fog of ever larger teak cockpit tables, more refrigerators, and charterbarge ambience I could tell that her patience with the boat show was wearing thin.

Then we made our way out to the only cruising trimaran the Dragonfly 1200 (39'). Built in Denmark by Jens Quorning this at last was a sailboat. No attempt to be something it couldn't be. It was just a well thought out and executed design brought into existence by careful construction. This boat has its floats mounted on crossbeams that fold aft in order to reduce the beam enough to fit a standard width marina slip. Making folding beams is never easy or cheap and it one thing I tend to stay away from when I can. The Dragonfly does this quite cleverly and from what I can see of the structural elements, quite well. There were several other features that immediately caught the eye. Certainly the kayak stowage thru a door in the float transom was an attention grabber. But what a great place to put one! Just open the transom door, shove the kayak in and close the door- perfect.

Little things like the moulded cockpit backrest and roll top locker doors showed the care the builders take to optimize the boat (they actually believe they are building a boat- imagine that!)

Day One nearing an end we escaped to the rum bar to cool off and lick our wounds. After half a drink (she's always been a cheap date) Kate starts stammering for words and gradually a sentence bursts out. "They're not sailboats! I mean we go aboard these catamarans and I can't tell if I'm in a cheap hotel, a casino, a powerboat or what. Nothing looks or feels like a boat to me?" And the people looking at them weren't sailors looking for sailboats either. Not a single person I overheard was asking any questions about the sailing aspects of the boat, it was all about more space, more air conditioning, charter lease programs."

That, I think, is a pretty common reaction these days.

Doing a boatshow from the anchorage is great way to see it. With a press pass we could come and go over the course of the 5 days. Spend a few hours touring the show, get burned out, go "home" for a while and come back later refreshed. I was able to see lots of gear that normally I miss for lack of time. However, what kept us there was the scheduled "demo days" on the Tuesday after the show. This allows perspective customers a chance to sail the various cats. It is a great idea and over time should produce better boats because it will refocus some attention toward the boating aspect. Unfortunately this all happens in Annapolis which for the benefit of far away readers, is 200 miles up a river and is the no wind capitol of the east coast.

True to form, Tuesday morning comes, and just as forecast the wind is 5 kts. All sailors are optimists and I waited around thinking that the wind might fill in as the day progressed. It didn't. But it was time to get underway and see what some of these cats could do untied from the dock.

To be fair, Javelin is longer than all of the cats exhibited, and other than the Gunboat I did not expect anything to rival her performance. But from time to time I need to find out exactly what these other boats can and can't do. Catana beats the performance drum so loudly and so often that maybe there was at least some truth to it. So with about 10 other cats we sailed back and forth a few times in the outer reaches of Annapolis harbor waiting for the new Catana 50 to come out to play. Until then we amused ourselves by gliding along in 5 to 7 knots of wind under full main and genoa making a little more than wind speed on a close reach.

These days even the Lagoon salesmen have given up the performance mantra. Everyone knows they are slow. No sense in beating that dead horse. Even so, it is remarkable HOW SLOW they really are. To sail past one is more like sailing past a piling than a moving object. And as the wind builds in velocity I suspect this phenomenon only gets worse. 'Nuff said.

We were headed toward the harbor when the Catana 50 past us under mainsail and motor going out. We continued sailing away from them until they had their big jib (on the bowsprit) flying and sheeted in. Then we gybed around to give chase on a beam reach. The two boats were probably a tenth of a mile apart. Enough of a lead that were it a fast boat that separation would not have been easy to reclaim. I snapped a photo when we gybed and were moving in the right direction in order to record the time. A very short time later I snapped another photo as we passed abeam of the Catana. The difference in time between the two pics was 4 minutes. Both boats continued toward the middle of Chesapeake Bay and the wind gradually got lighter and lighter. After another 20 minutes I measured the Catana by radar at 0.53 nm behind. Javelin at this point was sailing between 3 and 5 knots with about an equal amount of wind. Working out the calculation shows the Atlantic 55 to be about 37% faster than the Catana 50 in light winds.

Start chase (about 1/10 mile behind)

Finish 4 minutes later, passing abeam.

I had hoped to engage with some of these cats in an upwind leg in a little more breeze but that wasn't about to happen this day. So after awhile we altered course for Gibson's Is. where we had made arrangements to leave Javelin for a few weeks while we went home to tend to business.

Despite the fleet of multihulls at Annapolis there wasn't much of interest or much new and noteworthy to write about. So long as the multihull scene is so dominated by catering to the needs of the charter barge industry I don't see much of an improvement likely.

People are always asking why I don't bring the Atlantic Cats to the major boatshows. The short answer is that the people who are really out there looking to buy a good quality cruising cat pretty much all do their homework and know about them already. They can easily get considerable information, arrange a viewing or demo sail by calling my office. Building the Atlantic cats is a laborious affair, completely unlike the cookie cutter process used by the major boat manufacturers. When you roll a boat out a factory every week selling them IS a problem. We build many fewer boats of much higher quality. Selling them IS NOT a problem. The builders I use are typically backlogged with work- sometimes for years. And the end user benefits by not needing to spend an extra $100,000 or more to cover marketing expenses. Maybe one day we'll visit some boat shows again. But for now I'd rather be sailing.