Esthetics and its influence on small multihull design

I'm scribbling away at a small catamaran design for beach camping, and it's become apparent to me that there's a substantial unexplored niche there.

One thing I've noticed about the range of designs available is that there are very few simple, wholesome open-hull small multihulls sailing. One good example would be the proa Flaquita, designed by Joe Henry.

There seems to be a small Renaissance in small monohull design, propelled by designers like Ian Oughtred and John Welsford and others, and to me these designs seems heavily influenced by traditional workboat esthetics (though the underbodies may be quite modern, the look and feel of the boats seem pretty obviously related to historic designs.)

But there seems to be no parallel development in multihulls. There are simple wholesome designs available, don't misunderstand me, but at the lower end of the size range we have beach cats and... not much else. Many reasons have been put forward for this-- including the idea that small cats and tris are basically toys (example: three meter tris) or that the necessary complications of multihulls become less and less cost-effective as the boat size declines, or that the lower payload capacity of multihulls rules them out as micro-cruisers. Still, beach cats exist. People actually do go beach-camping on these boats, despite their lack of payload.

On the rare occasions when an amateur attempts to design a micro-cruising cat or tri, it strikes me that all too often these designs have the visual appeal of a space-faring pregnant guppy. I don't want to be harsh, but these are esthetic abominations. In winning broad acceptance among home-builders, a pretty design has a marked advantage over an ugly design (Phil Bolger's success may contradict me in this, I know, but I actually think many of his designs are quite pleasing to the eye, once the underlying functional premise is accepted.)

Anyway, what I'm wondering here is: where are the simple small good-looking multihull designs? Why hasn't our esthetic heritage, in the form of the beautiful, simple shapes of traditional workboats, developed over the centuries and refined slowly into forms pleasing to the eye, had any appreciable influence on multihull design? You may say-- because these boats were not multihulls-- and you'd be right, but I'm not talking about technical matters here-- underwater shapes and foils and sails. I'm talking about the way the boats look. There are, of course, traditional multihulls-- the boats of the Pacific oceanic cultures, and boats designed within that esthetic idiom would be much preferable to space guppies. But most of us come from cultures in which multihulls are a recent development, and high carved stemposts leave us bewildered, unless we're from Venice.

Finally, I don't mean to suggest that there are no beautiful, simple, wholesome-looking multihulls-- there certainly are, and some are on the small end of the spectrum. But even Thomas Firth Jones' Weekender (a good example) has cabins, and is therefore heavier than an 18' cat needs to be. There are many successful monohull open boats in that size range, well adapted to beach cruising, and many are quite beautiful.

Where are the corresponding multihulls?

 

Small Multihulls

I agree with all of what you say and have been working to correct the situation in my own small way.
http://gary.dierking.net
One of the reasons that many small multis look pregnant is the non-Oceanic desire to have accomodations inside the hull or hulls. This is or was almost never done in Oceanic designs. The hulls were kept long, lean, and in many cases wave-piercing. Nothing improves a boat like length, but the modern constaints of marina berths and storage areas have severely discouraged good design.
Catamarans were traditionally the slower more awkward freighters used for migration or long range exploration. They were never used in the North Pacific. The single outrigger or proa was the machine of choice for getting places quickly and efficiently. They were constructed as late as the 1930's to a 100 ft length in Kiribati. Handling a small one (average size is about 25') puts you at the very base of a learning curve and no amount of previous sailing experience will help much, but the rewards are worth it.
Check out the Proa-File group and come over to the darkside.
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/proa_file/

Gary Dierking

 

Small multihulls correction

My last post should have read: Catamarans were not used in the North Pacific except by the Hawaiians. The much greater area of Micronesia was populated by single outriggers.

Gary

 

Gary, I'm going to have to add you to my list of designers that are doing the sort of work I admire. Your boats are beautiful, and I would guess that they sail very well. I wish I could afford to buy one. You're doing exactly the sort of thing I wish more designers were doing.

The cultural tradition on which I draw is the Northern European workboat, and that esthetic defines the boat I'm drawing, despite its two hulls. But it's clear to me that your approach is a productive one, judging by the fine results.

Are you aware of other designers who are trying to develop small open multihulls?

Ray

 

Would a handicapped incline seaworthy boat be consider ugly because of the many comprimise the designer have to put to make the boat friendly to a small group of people.

I think there are a lot of boat for different people and a hard earn self handbuilt boat would be as itself a beauty as it refflex the builder patient and skill to his own ability.

tin

 

Oh sure. Building a boat is a laudable achievement, even if everyone else thinks it's butt-ugly. When I was a kid I built a boat out of scraps of construction plywood, edge-nailed together, and used that out-of-square box to tend a trotline in the creek at the end of the road. I'm sure that in my eyes, that was a nicer boat than any boat that belonged to someone else, even if it was a Caledonia Yawl built with a cabinetmaker's skill.

But that's not what I'm talking about here. Surely we haven't gotten so politically correct that we can't say, even to ourselves, "That's a beautiful boat. Over there, that's an ugly boat. You know what? If I were building a boat, I'd want it to look more like the beautiful boat than the ugly boat, even if the ugly boat was Professor Hawkings' pride and joy."

Building a boat is a series of choices. Maybe beauty shouldn't be at the top of the list, but for most of us, it's in there somewhere.

Finally, consider this: beauty is an important element in the longevity of a useful object, like a painting, or a house, or even a boat. The beautiful thing is cared for by its owners as it passes down the generations-- and this is one reason some houses last for hundreds of years and others get bulldozed after a few decades. The ugly boat, all things being equal, will arrive at its appointment with the chainsaw long before the beautiful boat.

Ray

 

Mirconesia Design

http://homepages.paradise.net.nz/garyd/

Sorry,

I just couldnt help asking if the design of the Mirconesia is link by ancestor in anyway to Polynesia design. I just think they have similiar concept and may have exchange design or ideas through travelling of olden days???

Anyway , good modern construction and website..... Good Luck

Wellydeckhand

 

Yes, the designs are related, as well are they related (a little more distantly) to the outrigger canoes of the Philippines, Indonesia and Madagascar. Ethnically speaking, the inhabitants of the above countries along with those of Micronesia/Polynesia are part of the same ethnoliguistic group (Austronesian) and share an ancestry in Southeast Asia.