Book on designing and building a Catamaran

[DaveJ]

Thanks for the input everyone, its a great help to me.

[Steve W]

A lot of great boats ,both mono and multi have been designed by their builder/owner, in fact many designers started out this way,i believe Chris White built a searunner and went cruising, then designed and built a large tri for himself (i also believe his book to be one of the best on the subject) Roger Hatfield at Gold Coast Yachts started the same way afaik, Bob Orams in Aus, Wharram, the list is long many well known boatbuilders started the same way. How succesfull your boat will be depends on you.
Steve.

[Richard Woods]

That is sort of what I was trying to say.

Successful boats are designed by people who either have done a lot of sailing in similar boats, or who have studied the subject (usually at college) or both.

It seems unlikely to me that someone who has done neither will succeed, but then I'm biased of course.

Richard Woods of Woods Designs

www.sailingcatamarans.com

[rayaldridge]

Originally Posted by yipster

Chris White's book is a good one and on my list is Catamarans, Every Sailor's Guide by Gregor Tarjan

The Tarjan book is good. I reviewed it for Living Aboard Magazine. A copy of the review is here.

[jamez]

For some plain english insights on multihull design and development I'd suggest Multihull Voyaging by Thomas Firth Jones.

Also worth checking out is now retired mulihull designer Roger Simpsons book 'Simpson on Boatbuilding'. Its the only boatbuilding book I know where all the examples (Simpsons of course) are multi's. It has sections on all the popular non-exotic building techniques, building rudders, mini keels, bridgedeck structures, cross beams etc. etc. etc. so can give insight on how these components can be designed.