Multi Hulls

[Owly055]

     In a recent discussion of multi hulls, I came to the realization that it was time for me to re-examine my prejudices.   The fact that they have often been flipped at sea, and are virtually impossible to right if that happens has kind of nixed them from my consideration.    A lot of progress has been made since the infamous Queen's Birthday storm, though there was a steady drumbeat of lost boats through the 60's.  Part of the problem was or is structural, but a lot of the problem is pure speed.   Multi hulls are capable of about double the speed of monohulls, and can be made to surf at exhilarating speeds.  Carrying a lot of sail on a tall mast, moving at high speeds, the typical accident is for one hull to dig in, causing the boat to pivot and flip.   A lot of this is in training people to operate them within their limits.  In one case an Aussie designer pushed his tri to the point that it went airborne, nose diving back into the ocean.......... It didn't flip or break up....... by the grace of God, but his brother and others were lost in the same boat a year later.   The "wings" are capable of producing significant lift, and in another case on absolutely calm intercoastal water, a multihull was skimming along, on a good wind, barely touching the water, and a gust caught it and flipped it over..... or such was the theory of observers.   
     That said, multi's are attractive for a number of reasons, the most obvious is the low degree of heel, and great stability.... Your cup of coffee can be left on the counter and will stay there! and of course the speed, which makes it possible to outrun weather you might otherwise get caught in.   Another is very shallow draft, and no real keel, making them beachable, as well as able to be anchored in extreme shallow areas where other boats can't go, and able to access areas where others can't go.   Another is the fact that due to the shallow draft, your living space is higher, and tends to be open, airy and bright with good visibility from within the cabin.   Another is that you can have twin engines both for redundancy, and manouverability.  With one in forward and another in reverse, you can pivot a boat without any headway.   
     The structure bothers me.   You have two or three hulls trying to wrench themselves apart.   The structure joining them must be immensely strong, or designed to tolerate some flex.    Catamarans have a stability issue when one hull comes up.  They become subject to capsize at a relatively low angle according to what I've read, Trimarans are far more tolerant and supposedly are stable up to as much as 60 degrees.
     I personally find the trimaran more to my taste for the above reason, as well as the fact that the cabin is lower, as it drops into the center hull, keeping the windage and weight distribution down.   The trimaran also offers a reasonable bury for a keel stepped mast.......... which as my interest is in junk rigging and an unstayed mast, makes the tri the only multihull suitable for me.

Below are some snips from an article titled Hey Ho and Up She Rises from the May 1968 issue of Sports Illustrated by  Hugh Whall.  It's not inspiring of confidence, but it's a good read, and one should take the date, and the fact that there has been a great deal of water under the bridge since then.  Also of course, he's describing the boats that people like us might be able to afford due to the age.......... which doesn't inspire confidence.    There have been a number of catamarans and trimarans that competed in the Jester Neuport Challenge, which is limited to boats under 30', and involves sailing the wrong way across the Atlantic, and dozens of multi hulls have sailed across the various oceans, as well as round the world, and have been used in round the world races.    I personally couldn't even come close to raising the funds for a 60' Warram or something in that league, but there are a number of trimarans scattered around the world that are well within my price/size range, and it's an intriguing option.   For example there is a 1989 37' Searunner in French Polynesia for $18K......... A nice boat in a nice location to begin a cruise...... although not a good location to begin a refit / conversion.   But NZ isn't all that far away.

                                                                             H.W.

http://www.si.com/vault/1968/05/06/610714/hey-ho-and-up-she-rises

Most experts agree that a catamaran, which is essentially two separate boats linked by a winglike structure, should never be allowed to heel more than 15? from the horizontal. On the other hand, trimarans?i.e., vessels with a large central hull and two smaller hulls set out on either side?have a positive stability up to 60?. The reason for the difference is clear. The instant one of her hulls becomes completely airborne, the two-hulled catamaran becomes intrinsically unstable, like a man balancing on one leg. As a trimaran lifts one of her outlying hulls off the water, however, she must correspondingly drive the other one below the surface where its buoyancy works to reestablish an even keel.

Designer Nicol had stripped all excess weight from his kitelike craft and set out in a gale to discover just how fast she could sail. He found out. Vagabond went so fast she soon became more airplane than boat. Airborne, the big trimaran climbed skyward for an instant, described a drunken barrel roll and plunged seaward in a dive that, by all accounts, should have mashed her beyond redemption. Unfortunately for those she later drowned, it didn't.

Soon after Vagabond went down, Nicol himself became a trimaran victim. Bent on sailing from Australia to the U.S., he left Brisbane in August 1966 aboard the 35-footer Privateer. With him were Gus Baldwin and E. van Rommell. Their first stop was meant to be Tahiti but, except for a radio message sent 500 miles out of Brisbane, they were never heard from again. Privateer simply disappeared.

Rudy Choy, who has never tipped over one of his own boats, blames most cat wrecks on a disease he calls "the capsize syndrome." The chief symptom of this ailment is the tendency of hot-rod sailors to let their speeding boats heel so far that they begin to fly clear of the water. There are other symptoms as well, all of which add up to a kind of seagoing euphoria that some have called "the rapture of speed," an intoxication as dangerous as that which traps skin divers who go too deep.

A veteran of many transatlantic trimaran crossings?one in a relatively tiny 30-footer?Piver had also crossed the Pacific and cruised the Caribbean. In all he sailed triple-hulled for roughly 35,000 miles, and he offered himself as living proof that trimarans don't kill. His record of safety was so good, in fact, that even he tended to distrust it in view of the law of averages. "It's too good. I just don't understand it," he said recently.

But if Piver's enthusiasm for his new kind of sailing was too great to be dampened by mere mathematical odds, it was also too frank to discount the sense of risk that gave it added zest. A former monohull man who learned to love the sea in his family's 85-foot schooner, Piver became a multihull convert aboard a 16-foot catamaran in San Francisco Bay and never looked back.

"It was like night and day," he said. "It was a revelation, you know. I'd always been enchanted by the grace and beauty of sailing and its occasional peacefulness, but for thrills and excitement I'd leaned toward skiing and surfing. But with big multihulls, you've got all that combined."

A helpless convert himself, Piver went to work with missionary zeal converting others. He established a trimaran company at Mill Valley, Calif. that offered a variety of kits for home construction as well as finished boats.

Not too far from Piver's own home, a trimaran named Blue Bird lies at Kappas' Yacht Harbor, the Haight-Ashbury of San Francisco's waterfront. She is waiting for what her three-man crew believes will be an idyllic trip to Mexico, then, perhaps, one around the world. Her crew of hirsute dissenters has one advantage over some converts. They are learning to sail in a tiny dinghy. "I'm looking forward to my first storm at sea but not looking forward to it, you know," says Martin Idler White, 22, who bought the trimaran with an inheritance. He describes his forthcoming voyage as a "totally groovy thing," adding that he's already a better man for conquering fear instilled when, as a little boy, a big wave frightened him.

Whether any such psychedelic reasoning was at the back of Arthur Piver's mind on March 17 when he took off alone from San Francisco bound for San Diego in another home-built trimaran may never be known. His stated purpose as he began the 500-mile passage was to run up some solo time at sea so that he could qualify for the forthcoming single-handed race from England to Newport, R.I. (only sailors with 500 miles of single-handing to their credit will be admitted), and he took only enough provisions along to last at most a fortnight.

When Piver was still unheard from two weeks after his departure, the Coast Guard instituted an official all-out search of the coastal waters. It was maintained for three days, but it produced no sign of the missing sailor. Even though the official search is over, there are still many, including Mrs. Arthur Piver, who believe he may yet turn up, dismasted perhaps and still afloat or cast ashore on some lonely beach, to confound that law of averages.

If he does not, there is certain to be a great deal more tongue-clicking and head-shaking among members of the yachting establishment. Arthur Piver would not be impressed.

"We don't argue with these people," he once said. "When you argue with them you find you're arguing with fear, and that's impossible." Piver's point was that the average sailor is just naturally afraid of sail, because he is conditioned by the limitations of conventional boats. "Moreover," he said, "anyone you confront with something he doesn't understand will be offended, because you affront his self-esteem. The easiest way to insult a sailor is to make his boat look bad and, you know, when these trimarans get going they make all ordinary boats look silly."

[CharlieJ]

Piver, and his boats, are ancient history. Designs have improved drastically since.

As far as Cats- James Wharram has designed cats for close to 50 years now, and as far as I know has never lost one in a capsize.

Jim Brown's (I happen to know him) Searunners have a very good record also.

In fact instances of CRUISING multihulls capsizing are extremely rare. Both cats and tris.

Now if we talk about the charter cats, or as many multi hull sailors call them "Roomarans" I agree- I'd not be happy offshore in one myself


Lived aboard my Cross 35 Ketch rigged tri for three years, ,and cruised the easst coast, plus across the gulf. Never had the least worry about capsizing

As an aside. a woman named Rosie Swales, and her husband, with her daughter aboard, sailed a 30 foot cat around the world, including doubling Cape Horn in 1971. First rounding of the horn in a multihull.  Her book "Children of Cape Horn" was heavily panned because she dared to include some nude pictures of herself in the book :(


Picture of my tri sailing in the open  Atlantic. I'd love to have her back except that at my age, I'd not want to maintain that much boat, so now I'll stay with my Meridian 25. She'll handle anything I want tom be out in :)

[Owly055]

     There're a lot of advantages to a multi hull......... as I pointed out.   The ride alone is a big plus, not to mention having a lot of space, and a higher cruise speed, etc.   Availability in a price range I can deal with and still have cruising funds is another matter.   But as my intention is to sail to far places, I frankly don't care where in the world a boat is if it's what I want.  That's what airplanes are for.   
     One of the primary reasons I want to junk rig whatever boat I get at this point, is the low upkeep....... no standing rigging, which is a  huge maintenance issue.   Also the ability to reef virtually instantly like a Venetian blind, with the sail and battens dropping neatly into the lazy jacks, and no need to tie reefs, makes a very large main sail reasonable.  Of course, not being triangular like a Bermuda rig, it's normal to incorporate the area of the main and foresails all into the one sail.  There is not much more than a sheet and a halyard to deal with, and the sail is under very low stresses.   No reason to leave the cockpit, or to reef early.   
     A trimaran looks pretty ideal as a cruising sailboat.   Closer to home there is a 30' Hedley Nicole listed in California, '69 vintage, a bit closer to the size that would suit me, but what's 7' between friends? ;-)   $3000 more, 78' longer, 20 years newer, and located in Tahiti, the Sea Runner 37 is pretty attractive when you put it all together.   A single mast Bermuda rig...... can you call a trimaran a "sloop"?  They list the beam as 15'.........  a bit absurd.   You can see it's closer to 20+.   It would be fun just to fly out and look at it.   

                                        H.W.

Piver, and his boats, are ancient history. Designs have improved drastically since.

As far as Cats- James Wharram has designed cats for close to 50 years now, and as far as I know has never lost one in a capsize.

Jim Brown's (I happen to know him) Searunners have a very good record also.

In fact instances of CRUISING multihulls capsizing are extremely rare. Both cats and tris.

Now if we talk about the charter cats, or as many multi hull sailors call them "Roomarans" I agree- I'd not be happy offshore in one myself


Lived aboard my Cross 35 Ketch rigged tri for three years, ,and cruised the easst coast, plus across the gulf. Never had the least worry about capsizing

As an aside. a woman named Rosie Swales, and her husband, with her daughter aboard, sailed a 30 foot cat around the world, including doubling Cape Horn in 1971. First rounding of the horn in a multihull.  Her book "Children of Cape Horn" was heavily panned because she dared to include some nude pictures of herself in the book :(


Picture of my tri sailing in the open  Atlantic. I'd love to have her back except that at my age, I'd not want to maintain that much boat, so now I'll stay with my Meridian 25. She'll handle anything I want tom be out in :)

[Owly055]

There does not seem to be much of an interest in trimarans in the cruising community....... but there really are very few out there to choose from, and less in a price range that most of us can afford.    For under 20K, I can buy a LOT of boat in a monohull blue water cruiser, but not much of a trimaran, and nothing in a catamaran.  And to find a decent sized cruising tri at anything close to an affordable price, I have to go a LONG way.   The cramped interior space due to the narrow hull is not very appealing either, but probably necessary to be able to achieve the speeds they do.  This is mitigated somewhat by the storage in the amas (out riggers), and the space in the "wing area" or whatever it is rightfully called, where above the waterline the hull widens out radically, and of course the large deck area if they have a solid deck instead of netting between hulls.  deck area on a monohull is kind of limited.  On a tradewind passage, in mild seas, this could be a nice area to lounge..... assuming safety netting.  A bit of lawn furniture fastened down, and the shadow of a sail in the morning or afternoon.............

                                              H.W.