No no no not a catamaran

by Arthur Dingle on 11 May 2006 As a regular old fashioned blue water sailor who sees no good reason for having more than one hull, I am not ready to be convinced - not at all…..

I mean, well, I like leaning over at 25 degrees – it’s exciting and fun. Of course, I can’t take people on the boat who DON’T like leaning over at 25 degrees, and I guess, comes to think of it, that counts out a lot of our friends. Then there’s the issue of the food and drink. I just HATE cleaning up after some bozo forgets for a moment to hold onto his drink, and then there’s that dipstick of a woman who put the peanuts down JUST when we were going to tack – SHE’s not coming again. As for overnights, I guess it would be good to stay level in your bunk for a change – never forget taking Uncle Harry for an overnight sail and he didn’t do up his lee cloth properly and ended up flying across the cabin – pity we had to cut that night short to get him to the hospital. It had been a great night that night too, except for Uncle Harry and my sprained ankle when I slipped on the deck trying to reef the bloody thing – those hospital wardens were pretty mean, smirking like that when we told our story.

I like a yacht that really GOES, so for a bit of speed, you just have to have her heeling. Well, I guess that catamarans do go pretty fast don’t they – well, so they should, after all they have two hulls, so it’s not a fair comparison is it?

As for how big the catamarans are inside – you feel like you’re in a bloody palace, not a boat at all. Me, I like the cosy feel of a small cabin – true, you get a bit claustrophobic after you’ve been on board for while, but isn’t that part of going to sea? I have some friends with a catamaran, a Seawind, and that’s how I know. I mean they use it like a weekender – they’re always going places, anchoring in some spot with all the kids and having barbecues, and they take the surfboards, and their teenaged kids take all their friends. It’s like bedlam I can tell you.

Of course,I can imagine if you had some girlfriend who wasn’t used to sailing and you wanted to take her out for the evening, you could probably do it very impressively on a cat – you know, watching the sunset, sipping the champers and sitting in the moonlight – that sort of thing. That’d be good on a cat.

There is, however, one thing I DO like about cats – that’s their draft – it drives me crazy when I can see a great anchorage, protected from the wind, birds flying around, nice sandy beach, and I can’t get in there because our boat’s draft is too deep. So we end up anchored out in the wind, with the boat bucking and jolting all night, when all those catamaran owners are sleeping so bloody soundly! Sometimes they take it too far, of course. One day when we were stuck on a sand bank in Moreton Bay, waiting for the tide to come in far enough so we could push her off, there was this cat, goes sailing through, waving and laughing – I would have biffed that guy if I could have caught him.

I mean, they’re not real sailboats are they – cats? A sailboat you have to have some skill to steer it. Now you don’t need any skill at all to steer a cat – she cheats by having twin propellers, so anyone can steer them – no skill at all! Any bozo can steer those things, even in a high wind where it would be very difficult to manoeuvre a proper sailboat.

That’s not the only way they cheat – with a sailing boat you have to be really careful with the sea cocks and the skin fittings, and any hole in the hull will almost certainly sink her. So you see there’s a level of care and skill, whereas the catamaran, made of all that lightweight stuff, well you can put a hole in her, and what happens? All that foam makes her so buoyant, that she’s dammed hard to sink – again – no skill, right?

I dunno – I’m going to think about it. I have to have the boat put up on the slips soon for a bit of a bottom cleaning. It costs the earth these days. Jim – that’s my friend with the cat – he just sails his up onto the beach and cleans it there. His cat is a Seawind – dammed pretty on the water she is, you’ve got to say that. Maybe I’ll go talk to those Seawind people.


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