Historical multihulls

a "drama Queen" wouldn't rate high in my priorities as a live-aboard cruiser...

 

...absolutely LOVE this thread!!!
I just keep thinking: if we'd have had available only a tiny fraction of the vast amount of knowledge & experience accumulated in this thread in the 70ies when we were building our cats here in Austria...how differently things would have developed...
@Skip JayR: coming from a not-all-that-different-sort-of-cultural-background (Austria) I venture a few more comments:
1. "old boats": nothing wrong with the emotional decision for an "outdated" design (as long as one knows it's an emotional, not a rational decision!)! People are still building carvelplanked traditional wooden boats simply because they are in love with the looks & the type of work involved. Only: Dorade beating everything in the year I-don't-know-when is now going to have severe drawbacks, (if only maintenancewise!) as a live-aboard -bluewatercruiser. the same would apply to say an early S & S - Swan. NA's learning-curve in the last say 35 years is much steeper with multi- than monohulls which irrefutably results in the old multis faring much worse against contemporary ones as is the case of old monos against present day monos.
2. A multihull, imho particularly a tri, is always going to be either a comparatively small or comparatively expensive boat (depending if budget or loadcarrying is the determining) parameter) as opposed to a monohull. Coming from a bluewaterbackground myself (3 circumnavigations, one on a cat, two on a mono) I challenge anybody: for the same money with the same payload of round-the-world-junk & of the same age: beat a monohull across the ocean of your choice with either a cat or a tri.
This is NOT to say that a cat cannot be THE ideal bluewatercruiser, only that it will be much more expensive than a comparable mono (& I'm not yet talking about marinafees!) and for a secondhand buyer the market will be minimal compared with the secondhand monohull-market.
my advice: don't make irreversible decisions too early with too little experience & don't always believe people telling you that their boat is the ideal one...

 

...you left out one of my all time favorites,...the Mercedes 300 Gullwing,....a 1954 design that still stands up these days :!:

...more images

excuse my digression

 

Speaking of vintage designs, Ppalu and Indigo,...both beautiful cats

 

good analogy again: from any other aspect than aesthetics a dead, dead loss & a deathtrap, "unsafe @ any speed" compared to a contemporary!
but hey: who said we gotta be rational!!! (there may only quite a penalty involved with this approach to a liveaboard-bluewatercruiser...)
btw: the contemporary SLK or whatever they are colled don't look bad either, do they:
http://img.automobile.de/modellbild...37077_wochenthema_gebrauchte_15_cabrios_1.jpg

 

Interesting. Back around the mid 70s, when I acquired and restored my Prout Cougar, the Stiletto became the new boat of choice for the Chesapeake racers and everyone moved up from the Cougar....the Cougar fleet thus withering away in to oblivion. I enjoyed the heck out of mine for a number of years afterward though. And always wanted a Stiletto..

 

I've been asking around and all that we can come up with is she is in the water in Cairns and has been fitted with her rig. Also a couple of photos from Darren Drew.

 

theres a picture of it on this blog, (south to cairns)

I can't figure out how to copy it

http://seawindnextphase.blogspot.com.au/2013_10_01_archive.html


Doesn't have the grace of the original styling. in fact almost unrecognisable.

 

From Barra link

 

Cheap Crowther Kraken

Spotted this on gumtree - presume the spelling is incorrect and it's meant to be a Kraken.

http://www.gumtree.com.au/s-ad/marks-point/sail-boats/crowther-karkan-racing-trimaran/1116128963

 

There was another very early (like 1970s) Kraken 33 in Auckland named Manu Puru. I think it originally came from Tauranga - and in those days I wanted it, but was broke. I saw it somewhere recently on the hard (Little Shoal Bay?) but it has the usual hideous large cabin and other crap added to it. Sacrilegious?
There was another K33 here in the 1980s named Skipjack - but it hit rocks off Kawau in a night race, was thoroughly jammed and was lost. Mast, winches, sails and gear was saved though. I've got a photograph the owner took of the salvage; will look for it.
Found: Butchered Manu Puru in second photograph.

 

John Westell is perhaps not well known as other multihull designers but was responsible for the Ocean Bird trimarans and later placed very credibly in the Round Britain and Ireland race onboard the trimaran Johnwillie. This great article by John Henshall on Yachts and Yachting traces his contributions in the development of sailing dinghies as well.

http://www.yachtsandyachting.com/news/191116/The-Fourth-Wise-Man

 

Thanks for that, Corley-great man, great story! I've loved the 5O5 since I started racing but, sadly, never got to sail one.

 

Great article Owen, although I can't really see how the man who designed the beautiful 505 could design the butt ugly Ocean Bird tris. In one of my favourite movies, High Fidelity, Jack Black's character wonders how Stevie Wonder could write classics such as I wish and Superstition and yet also record such dross as I just called to say I love you. Its the same with John Westell for me - a bit of an enigma - maybe he should have got Farrar to help him with the lines of the multis a bit.

 

An article by James Wharram and Tom Cunliffe on James first crossing of the Atlantic with his crew Ruth and Jutta and Pepe the dog:

http://www.sailmagazine.com/multihulls/james-wharram-sailed-across-atlantic-home-built-catamaran/