Cats Planing

Hi Greg, just watched the "Itzacat" video, and I was quite impressed with the performance with much less than a decent rig. 25 years on and the hull platform could also be dramatically improved and lightened. It seems that planing cats can work even though this has never been the fashion for multihulls then or now.
I am more than half way thru a construction of my own design where I am using a 2.3 metre x 59 cm. wide sailboard shape with more thickness than usual (built hollow in foam sandwich). By using them as the outer hulls in a tri I plan to have control over the amount of weight transferred to the floats depending on the wind strength and speed of the craft.
If it goes quick enough I expect to have reduced the load on the 5.6 metre narrow main hull to less than half of the overall sailing weight, while maintaining the lee float on the plane.
I will have to wait until Summer to find if the reality matches my theory, but the video has increased my confidence quite a lot that it will work.

 

Power requirement

Your professor might be saying that if there is no restriction of Power all hulls can plane if they cross the speed limit to get a sufficient lift. But apart from planing hull and foil borne boats all others hulls have so high power requirement to plane that they never plane. A wave may lift it up but that is heaving but it never planes - for they are not designed to plane.

 

http://www.cruisersforum.com/forums/showthread.php?t=4642
Follow the link to a post on another forum regarding the Roake 21 / Hurricane 6.5

Supposedly this small beach-cat has very nearly gone 40 knots!