Posted on 01/04/2002 6:51:07 AM PST by finnman69
Edited on 04/22/2004 12:32:01 AM PDT by Jim Robinson. [history]
There's a big debate within multihull circles--tris vs. cats. Tris have the advantage of being lower in the water and have the amas for stability. The drawback is that it's essentially a monohull with outriggers. For liveability, it's cramped. If there's any useable area in the space between the amas, it's just sleeping space. One would be lucky if there's enough room to sit up. Cats have the advantage of having two hulls and the bridgedeck with living area in the hulls and bridgedeck. The disadvantage is they're higher above the waterline and have more windage. Both can end up with huge design flaws--having a cat with the bridgedeck too low or a nacelle can lead to a lot of slamming. Hobbyhorsing is just a joy, too. Then there's sailing one of these babies--if someone's used to sailing a monohull and goes to a cat, they're surprised at how fast a cat (or tri) can react to wind/wave conditions. A monohull is much more forgiving. OTOH, cats/tris have a heel of around 5 degrees (give or take a few), so the ride is much more pleasant--and you have less of a risk of wearing your food. The nice thing about cats is that they can go like a bat out of hell.
We went to a talk that Chris White gave years ago. He's designer of multihulls and was a big tri aficianado. He said he loved his tri, but wanted to design and build a cat. Why? Because his son was getting older and when he'd say, "go to your room," the "room" was three feet away. I did see a Chris White designed cat at the Annapolis boat show a couple years ago. I don't know if he's built one for himself.
But unless one really knows multihulls, it's easy to make huge design flaws. About five years ago, we watched a quick & dirty boatbuilding contest in which the boatbuilders were to build a boat and paddle it around a course. One of them built a catamaran. When they launched it, the person next to me--someone who had admired our little cat--said, whadda think of the cat? I said, it's not going to make it. Why? Because they had put all their effort into building the hulls, then hammered a couple pieces of wood between them. Their failure was not understanding that the stresses in a cat-and in a tri--are in the crossbeams, because of the constant flexing of the hulls and the forces on the crossbeams from all directions from the flexing, the force of the water, the wind, you name it.
Our next lesson will be: mast compression and the catamaran. You will be tested on this material, so take good notes. :-))
If that means it just has ethnic restaurants, what makes it different from any other metropolis?
Also, couple of clues for investors:
Freedom Ship International CEO Norman Nixon said in a telephone interview from his Florida home.
"As soon as I build this joker, I'm going to retire and live on it," Nixon said.
CW comes very close to my perceptions of the right balance of factors in multis.
For ocean cruising, IMHO, very fit, light well built tris are best 30-40 feet. Cramped, but seaworthy and fast. Over 40 feet cats come into their own with sufficient above wave height but not too high profile. It's very hard to execute a cat like this under 40 feet.
Above 50', choose cat or tri, depending on your preferences.
(All the opinions of one with 25,000 ocean miles, mostly on our 48' steel cutter!)
Since so much of ocean sailing is in very light air, a slippery low drag tri would be very nice. Also easier to adapt storm tactics than a cat. And some distance from the main hull for collision damage, and easier to adapt to 180* living inverted!
That said, the room and trade wind speed of a 50'+ strong light low narrow hulled cat.....sigh.
And "condo cats" like PDGs and geminis don't count, they are inland coastal motor sailors IMHO.
Also, this scheme (floating city) looks like it's been on the drawing board since the late fifties (of the last century). What will they call the school on board? Water World Community College?
I'm no marine engineer, but this doesn't ring true. So, its displacement is about 5 times an oil tanker (and this doesn't seem so HUGE, after all the hype), and it would move "about one inch" from a "deadly 100-foot wave." I'm not buying it.
Socialists in Congress? Click on the zeppelin, Grasshopper.
I remember that article - but was it also posted pre-Y2k?
Um, would the 58' cat (with narrow hulls) & 29' beam we're building do it for ya? And stop sighing--get over here to do some glassing instead. The exterior is done, but we have the interior to do, plus the (wing) mast & the rigging, install the engines, sew the sails (Sailrite)....oh, geez, I don't even want to think about it.
We looked at Chris White, even talked to Chris White, and looked and talked to a ton of other designers. We liked a bit here, a bit there, but not one had exactly what we wanted or would design what we wanted, but wanted us to take one of their designs, take it or leave it. So my hubby designed our cat to our specs. It'll have two main berths--forward of the salon, and two heads, one in each hull (it's our home, not a charter boat--you know, the kind with four cabins and four heads and the galley on the bridgedeck because there's no space for it elsewhere). The galley's in the port hull, the engines in the starboard hull (hubby's using hydraulics)...two wind generators, solar panels, we're toying with a built-in solar water heater. Oh, and a small forward cockpit, plus an interior steering/nav station. I know it's pretty and all, but we're not having any brightwork. If I wanted to spend my life varnishing, I'd have taken it up as a career. As for docking, I hate being at a dock. What are anchors for anyway?
And also no drydock in the world would be able to lift it out of the water for repairs or cleaning off the barnacles. The general principle of a floating drydock is interesting. The air is pumped out to allow it to sink, and the ship comes along and parks over it. Then the water is pumped out and lifts the ship up out of the water. The ship rests on these wooden blocks, lined up on its keel.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.