Craig Cat

Anybody with experience handling one of these little power cats? How does it handle waves/chop?

[Nojjan]

There are videos on the web-site. In one of them you can see some chop and the cat going through, they cut the film at the point it gets interesting, I wonder why?

[the Bulldog]

craig cats are awesome!

[the Bulldog]

i built a new deck for mine and am really loving it

[philSweet]

They are crazy fun with a well tuned Merc 25 two stroke. They go WIG at about 23 knots and then keep accelerating (with a pair of 180#ers aboard). Replace the nylon hull to deck bolts if you run offshore or in big chop. Strongly recommend rigging a steering system. Tiller steering is very awkward and tiring in big chop. A 0.5" lift and a 1 in 12 wedge set our motor up pretty good. I never flipped it but stood it on its nose long enough to have a conversation with my copilot. You need to deflect the water from the ob leg with a little wedge of 2x10 or something similar to prevent the motor from drowning itself.

launch in to wind, get airborn, turn down wind, and pretent you're a pelican skimming the waves. In big chop in the Keys we would see who could set it up to skip off the top of the most waves before wiping out. We'd be running about 20 knots into a thirty knot breeze and three foot chop. Kind of bouncy, but a lot of fun. Do replace those bolts.

[mydauphin]

Doesn't sound too safe.

[philSweet]

One other thing. I hung the bimini upside down and epoxied it to stiffen it a bit. The boat's owner wasn't thrilled by this, I guess I should have asked first. It inflated nicely at anything over idle and we could adjust the thing on the fly. Mostly for minimal drag, but I guess it provided some lift as well.

[philSweet]

They are very safe. There aren't many things I've run into that I couldn't break, but the Craig Cat is one of them. We went looking for trouble in that thing, and trouble isn't hard to find in the Keys. If you put a 15 on it and some dive tank holders they make a grand dive boat. The earliest versions were just two longboard surfboards with crossbeams and a motor. I wanted to do some more tinkering but the Merc got stolen and my buddy decided to sell the boat.