Why so few...

Fanie,
you ask the same question many people asked (and even discussed here and there from a different angle). 2 summers ago I was asking the same question, or, more specifically,
Where can I get a boat that is trailerable, fast and can accommodate a family with 2 kids for a short cruises? What I've got as an answer was, old Stilletos or Seawind 24, or, I could build one myself...
Why more folks are not pushing the demand so somebody will build it... Maybe, the potential profit opportunity does not looks good.
I was offered by David from Boatsmith in Florida to build the Woods' Wizzer design (if you ask me, pretty good version of the concept except the fishing, that I do not know about) for about 30K $US hulls only, close to 20 if I find somebody else (or order more that one myself). You probably could price out the rest (beams, mast, sails, tramps, finishing and interior etc.) This exercise is purely academical for me, since I've got an old Seawind 24 that I hope to fix/improve and sail hard this season (around here, today was the first day with epoxy curing temp, and the snow piles in my backyard are almost gone!) I can tell you what is my concern so far with the Seawind (and I am not that original).
1. What I've got is actually, transportable, not trailerable (setup time even on the purpose-build collapsible trailer is not that short) - boat ramps are not always an option
2. My clubs hoist does the job (off the trailer, to the water and back) just barely, with 5 inches to spare, some places would not be able to accomodate me.
It remains to be seen if wife and kids will enjoy the boat at all (because, as one guy from my club said, "for the next 15 years, if I want to sail, I have to figure out how to sail with kids".

 

Well Grumpy, the kids are the easy part. You nail each one foot to the deck so far apart that they cannot push each other, and they cannot fall off either. The other option is the remote control back pack with a battery and and a stun gun fitted inside, when ever one doesn't listen you stun them a bit and enjoy the quiet for a few minutes Then for small kids you fit some velcro patches on the structures and they wear the other patch ends on the back. This way you can stick them against the patches and they are out of the way. If they're too noisy you can always stow them below deck in a plastic bag. Of course any combination can be applied too.

And I like kids No really. I just think there are no place for undisciplined kids on a boat, then rather leave them elsewhere.

The wife you must keep busy otherwise they turn on you, give her a rope to hold or else the boat sink or something (involvement and responsibility) I hope you got her to do the linen and stuff, if it's just "your" stuff there is nothing for her there and no reason to be involved. They make or break the trip.

Something weird about wiemen though. They will easily bath a few times a day, but complain when a few raindrops get on them, or if water splash on them, especially the hair, the trip may be short lived. Someone must explain to me.

As for the other points, I cannot be of much help there, but cat to fold is more or less along the right idea, you launch the boat like any other off the trailer and deploy it. Their's is a 12m boat, how much easier should't smaller boats be... and I'm not suggesting the same folding technique, there are other ways also that can be done even quicker.

 

Tell you what,
give me some time (like, till September), so I figure out if I enjoy the small cat sailing.
Then we buy the hull design (Richard Woods, Eric Lerouge..., the potential list is not endless, but not that short), figure out the folding mechanics, we split the mould costs, I take the US marketing, you choose your market? You do the fishing circuit, I concentrate on the one design racing?!!!

 

Hello Grumpy,
I have already designed the hulls... and developed a process which is easy to do. They won't sell me the glass width I want so now I'm building my own weaver.
I also put my mast right in the stern and use one sail only on each hull, the setup no one wants to use because of the unknowns is apparently called the aft mast rig. I had it on a tri I put together in an afternoon and it performed and handled well. Had one sail and a very small sail area, but was still impressive.

Anyway, my country is illegally held by force in possession by foreigners and the economy gets plundered by them to the extent that everyone is going bankrupt by the day. There is hope though, the Creator has already started working for us.

 

"the economy gets plundered by them to the extent that everyone is going bankrupt by the day."
Are you talking about my country too?
Just do not know if they are foreigners and it seems everybody agrees they are doing it quite legally, but the results here are not that different.

 

Ahhh...Come on now guys. Here we were having a decent conversation about catamarans and you guys go and bring politics into the mix.
That's it...next Tuesday, I'm going back to my boat for another month! (Which was already the plan )!

 

It is hard to stay mute about politics when it is ravaging your own life, but I try.

 

Grumps, few understand what is really going on here. Just on the surface - with about a 3rd of our people in squatter camps with no hope of ever getting back into society to lead a normal life and the democrats and the ANC making laws that they may not be helped, there are almost daily "farm murders", a silent genocide being committed, these murders are not limited to farms, but goes on everywhere.

Manufacturing are being penalized, as in Africa there are few skills and capabilities left - it's just not worth making anything - so the economy is deliberately smothered to death. Our borders are open, there are between a 100 and 150 million foreigners from all over Africa here... and still allowed to stream in. There is nothing in Africa, it is dying.

They want this country to become unlivable for those that has a rightful claim to their land, and use foreigners to trample us by sheer numbers, so the democrats can plunder our resources. We, as well as other African countries are plundered in a way that will make your eyes water. It's the same bunch that wants the Americans in fema camps.

As I said it's a lot more complicated than that, and a lot of deceiving and the world has a very deformed view of what is going on here. The white Afrikaans speaking people are thought of by you as "Afrikaners", it even was written as such in our history books, same as the German history was re-written after the war, so was our's re-written by the Afrikaners, so that everyone would think the Boer has miraculously changed into an Afrikaner. A Boer can never be an Afrikaner ! Never.

It is the Afrikaner that is committing the genocide on the Boer for more than 110 years, and it is still ongoing, because they want to steal the Boer Republics after they sold it to the ANC prior to 1994 (yes, for money). Here's how deceptive it gets: the Afrikaner isn't even a nation, it is an organization that was started in the 1800's, our language isn't supposed to be called Afrikaans, but Boers. Those that call themselves Afrikaners cannot represent themselves as a volk or a nation and has no claim to any land in SA. Only the Boer Volk has a claim to the Boer Republics, something that is suppressed and enforced by the Afrikaner organizations and the democrats. The democrats and the ANC here are one and the same, both communism with their "democratic" fraud.

Anyway the problem is still that everything is on a steep downhill. Ask any of the other guys from SA, it's a sick lot and as corrupt as you can get.

Right, no more talk on this, e-mail me if you want to know more.

 

who said anything about politics? it is more like organized crime, but in this case the criminals have the laws written to make what they do legal. It is still theft. It happens in all countries in the name of "social justice", which is not justice at all, it is theft.

 

How much is a plane ticket to your boat ?

Take pictures and come show us. Our nearest sea is some 600km off in Mozambique, the people up North are pleasant and we may go there sometime in the future. Beautiful country. Here's a trip I did with someone... no boats though. http://fanie.cambs.net/Moz/Moz.htm

 

Correct. Crime is not a crime when committed by them.
Why do people still vote
It is the malicious British Westminster system that causes the division between people and allow governments unlimited power (and riches). It amazes me that so few can get away with creating so much trouble (organized crime).

 

I think it's because you are looking for catamarans. In that size range, a trimaran is a better choice, and there are a large number of trailerable trimarans.

For boats under roughly 30 - 35 ft, a trimaran has more interior space than a catamaran. The performance is at least as good as a catamaran because of the larger beam of the trimaran. With a catamaran you have some coffin-sized berths, but need to do most of your living under a boom tent. With a trimaran, you have the same interior room as a monohull of the same length. (But without the storage volume under the seats!)

And it's difficult to fold a catamaran for trailering. The Cat-2-Fold is one solution, and one of the few that can be folded on the water. The Viva 27 folds by having hinges in the middle of the beams, allowing the hulls to rotate to an A configuration:

But this is an awkward pose at best.

Here's another solution, but it's no better:


A Farrier design trimaran can fold while motoring into the marina and be completely ready for the trailer as soon as it hits the dock. It's the Farrier folding system that has really made the trailerable coastal cruising multihull a practical proposition.

 

A trimaran is not a better solution, just a different one, personally i prefer the divided accommodation of a cat, a cat sails a lot flatter and doesn't flop from ama to ama at anchor like a tri. With a good custom boom tent along with the accomodations in the hulls you have a lot more space than a smaller tri, especially at anchor in inclement weather when it gets pretty claustrophobic down below in a smaller tri. The tris win out big time in the trailability department for sure though, its just a better configuration regardless of the folding system employed, if someone could come up with a folding system as usable as the brilliant Farrier system cats would really take off in sales I think. I spent a summer years ago racing on a F27 when it was new, including a 360 mile offshore race so i have spent time on tris, it was very tight down below compared to a mono of the same length. A little bigger and i much prefer the accomodations of, say, a Turrissimo 9m or Raider30 cat to an F31. Just my opinion though. I used to own a Mac 36 cat and they were way smaller than the shorter Turrissimo but still 4 very comfortable berths and huge tramp areas that are very secure between the 2 cabins.

Steve

 

I designed a foldable cat with a hard deck, the deck hinges on the hulls and in the center. To keep the hulls upright you need a sliding beam that goes through both hulls, and a second through hull where a shorter holding beam gets placed once the cat is folded.

The deck then folds up with a small gin pole and a small winch while the hulls slide towards each other on the beams. You insert the short beam to keep the hulls together and upright, and remove the long beams.
To deploy you insert the long beams and take the short beam out, push the hulls apart on the long beams and the deck will lower onto the beams.

One of the engineers will probably insist you shape the folding deck like a foil... to make lift during the trailering LOL.


With a trampoline there is nothing to guide the hulls parallel when folding the same as above, you will have to use two small winches to bring the hulls together or pull them apart so that both sides are pulled evenly, else the movement may want to pinch and not slide.

Neither of these should take more than 10 minutes to do.

Here is one with storage in the deck. If the deck is just a deck then it is even easier.

 

Here's another with a deck only, if you recess the edge of the hull so the deck fit in it then the two hulls can fold against each other.