Is this a Catamaran or a Quasi-Catamaran?

Hello,

I came across this boat, the “Catfish”, which is described as a catamaran.
My intuition is that the design will have good initial stability, but is really more of a monohull.
Is this a good design, or neither fish nor fowl?

 

.....a monohull barge. A catamaran has a tunnel with an open water surface between its two hulls, and that makes a difference in behaviour.

 

Thank you.

What are the tradeoffs of this sort of hull versus a Jon boat with the same dimensions?

 

Fixed it for ya. Text options lack strikethrough.

My impression is that some tinsmith was trying to emulate a RIB hull and quit before he finished the ends. And what's with the stitch-welds? I assume those are supposed to be reinforcement plates, but I think they're an invitation to disaster; any stress between the two pieces is going to focus on the ends of those stitches and try to unstitch them.

 

Thank you for the delightful correction!

I agree - the design seems to reflect intuition rather than careful analysis. When someone thinks they have solved a hull problem with a simple-to-produce, ‘proprietary’ solution, they probably haven’t.

 

If pushed fast enough, it will function as a catamaran, but only practical in really smooth water.
It’s basically an overcomplicated Jonboat.

 

There is a simple solution to your question. The definition of a monohull is simply, sitting at rest in the water with a normal load (people,gear, engines, etc), it makes only one footprint . If you draw a waterline around the boat, and it's just one continuous water line, it's monohull. If you have two separate footprints it's a multihull.

I doubt very much this boat would make two footrpints even on a plane.