tiny cruising catamaran

[upchurchmr]

Can you tell us what you don't like about Slidercat? Seemed to match exactly

???

[jakobo]

no cabin and the flat bottom hull
i could ofcourse make som sort of cabin in each hull, but what about the hulls? how can they be changed?

[jamez]

Why change the hull configuration? Dory hulls in small cats seem to work well (Slider, Woods Janus, Kohler etc.).

[Richard Woods]

Really small catamarans lack stability. And I don't get smaller when I go on a small boat.

I haven't met Tony Bigras in person, but have seen two of his other boats and exchanged emails

You might find this video of a Polish Janus with cuddy cabin of interest

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IDhyApU5OPw

Richard Woods of Woods Designs

www.sailingcatamarans.com

[rapscallion]

Originally Posted by jakobo

i absolutely love the miss cindy, but he hasnt made the drawing available for public.
my second choise looks to be the jarcat. it has the right size a good weight and a nice look how ever the zubian also looks interesting, it just needs to shrink a bit.

You should check out the DUO 480. It's Bertrand Kohler's version of Miss Cindy

[oldsailor7]

A dual parallel mast rig is a complication you just Don't need.

[rapscallion]

Originally Posted by oldsailor7

A dual parallel mast rig is a complication you just Don't need.

Never sailed on a boat with a parallel rig. I imagine if the advantages outweighed the disadvantages they might be more common than they are...

[upchurchmr]

Lets hear from someone who has sailed one.

[Corley]

Here's a review of the radical bay 800 it has a dual rig setup

http://www.sailmagazine.com/sailboat...adical-bay-800

[oldsailor7]

The key words in that review are:-

"The cool thing about sailing the boat was that I really had no idea what I was doing. Even the guy who built the boat, Ian Morse of Radical Catamarans, is still unraveling its mysteries.
The aerodynamic complexities of sailing with two separate main-and-headsail rigs side by side can indeed be mind-boggling. For example, during our sail the boat’s leeward mainsail jibed to windward as it got sucked into the draft of the windward sail while we were running off on a broad reach. I’ve sailed wing-and-wing before, but never with all spars turned inboard."

And:- "learning to sail the Radical Bay really well would probably take me a season or two. If this doesn’t sound like fun to you, you’ll probably just find the boat frustrating. For folks who prefer to stay inside the box, the Radical Bay can now also be ordered with one mast instead of two."

Didn't I say it only complicates things.

[lewisboats]

Originally Posted by jakobo

i absolutely love the miss cindy, but he hasnt made the drawing available for public.

There is enough info in the building logs to get a very close copy built if you pay attention and draw things out carefully before hand. The construction technique is plain stitch and glue and if you get a bunch of crappy ply to make templates before you cut your good ply you can't really go too wrong.

[rayaldridge]

I have to admit to some doubt about the biplane rig, mainly because racers are so concerned about sailing in clean air, and the biplane rig seems to have a dirty air problem on quite a few points of sail. Thomas Firth Jones, whose writings on the subject of small multis are my scriptures, built his last personal cat, Dandy, as a biplane. It was not successful until he converted it to a conventional sloop rig. However, he did say that he could put the fear of god into oncoming vessels, running wing and wing with a squaresail hung between the masts.

I think that dory hulls are not much of a impediment to performance if the hulls are reasonably fine. The flat bottoms do seem to have some pragmatic virtues. One reason I used them on Slider is that had I approximated semicircular hulls with chines, the displacement would have been too low for two people and a nice camping outfit. Had I made the hulls deeper in order to get enough displacement, they would have had a lot of wetted surface, making her slow in light air. As it was, I gave Slider more rocker than is fashionable, to get a little more displacement yet. Her empty weight is 500 lbs, and her designed displacement is 1100 lbs. so she has a lot of payload for her size.

As Richard implies, a small cat that's highway legal with fixed beams, like Slider, Miss Cindy, and Jarcat, will have limited stability. With Slider, I wanted a boat that wouldn't require much attention to sail, since I was thinking about a sort of magic carpet beachcruiser that wasn't about sailing so much as it was about the waters we sail. So she has only 140 sq. feet of sail, and I've never lifted a hull. From the viewpoint of real multihull sailors, she's painfully slow, even though she's a lot faster than most monohull beachcruisers in her general size range. (In fact, even with her low-tech rig, she seems to be faster than a Windrider 17 with its fully battened main and rotating mast, even though the sail area is nearly identical, and the Windrider weighs less.)

She was designed as an open boat, and that's the best configuration for a boat this small, in my opinion. However, one of my builders in Malta has experimented with cabins, first going with individual cabins over each cockpit, and later with a center deck cabin.



Recently I decided I might try to sail Slider in the Everglades Challenge. Since my wife has volunteered to sail along with me, I decided to see if I could up the comfort level a little for the off-watch. Because I didn't want to interfere with Slider's principle identity as an open beach cruiser, I built a little removable cabin for one hull. This fits down over the cockpit coamings like a giant Griffiths hatch, and is secured by two lines, one fore and one aft. It takes about 30 seconds to remove the cabin for daysailing or cruising two-up in situations where we can make a shore camp, or want to set up the deck tent. It gives sitting headroom under the hatch, and a berth that's 22 inches wide and 6.5 feet long.



It's pretty oogly, but needs must, I guess. We can still sail out in the air in the port cockpit-- there's room for both seats there, and be able to go below when we need warm dry rest.

[Manie B]

Not at all

It's pretty oogly,

I like the look
I think the idea is pretty cool/clever
quick on and off = nice

good one!!


my 2 cents

[fng]

I sailed a radical bay 8000 with the biplane rig for the day in Thailand. I have to say that I was quite impressed with it. It was very simple and had a good turn of speed for 8mtrs, with its interior volume. it really only had one point of sail where the leeward sail was blanketed, but simply pointing slightly higher or lower fixed it. Tacking was no problem at all you just keep the windward sail in tight and eased the leeward slightly and round you went. reefing and gereral sail handling was a breeze with the rotation and having the masts fractionally inboard.
It would be my choice for a cruiser

[jakobo]

the slider once again appeals to me, i was concerned about the flat bottomed huls, it seems i shouldnt be.
i am not looking for a speed machine, as much as a cruising boat.
but the jarcat 5 havnt left my mind completly, due to the larger cabin.