Boating and Sailing.pdf - Moja ladja

Chapter 24: Types of Sailboats
Every ride starts with pulling the wet sail and mast up out of the water, and you’ll use
muscles you never knew you had as you try to keep the thing upright. You’ll fall—a lot—
while you’re learning. Maybe even more than sailing a conventional sloop, sailboarding is
best learned with an instructor.
Sport Cats
Also very fast are sport catamarans, twin-hulled
boats that can actually go as fast as some
powerboats.
The narrow hulls produce very little wave
resistance, so they can achieve white-wake
speeds without the need to plane in winds of as
little as 15 mph.
The Hobie Cat is the most famous of the breed,
but there are many other well-known builders,
including G-Cat, Prindle, and Nacra.
Sport catamarans have no cockpit, only a “trampoline” of mesh fabric or rope over the
water where one or two can sit. The wide spread between the hulls gives the boat great
stability and resistance to heeling, and makes it possible for the crew to use their weight to
leverage the boat flat against powerful winds.
Larger sails can be used on catamarans because of this, adding to their potential speed
without making it so likely that they will be knocked down as a monohull with the same
weight and sail area. And, because the hulls are very narrow, there’s very little drag.
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Boat Bytes
It’s a good idea to buy one
of the popular models of
sport cats, because most
who try catamaran sailing
sooner or later get interested
in racing, and those with
lots of boats nationwide offer
“class” races everywhere against
identical boats.
Sport catamarans are light
enough to be launched off the
beach and offer great performance,
although there are
minimal creature comforts
aboard the trampoline
between the hulls.
(Photo credit: Frank Sargeant)