Hi Mark,

I'll admit, I know little about large cruising cats, and my own experience sailing one is limited to some pretty sporty sailing during a 10-day charter on a Lagoon 47 in Croatia. One of the reasons I've held back a bit in my criticism of the tactics employed by the crew before abandoning this boat, is my lack of familiarity with sailing multihulls offshore. As I've said, this is a trip I would have had to decline based largely on that fact, unless I could have talked the owner into considering heading down the coast to Florida and the Bahamas, instead...

And, I certainly agree with your point that many, many supposed 'Bluewater' monohulls can have pretty abysmal windward performance, particularly when laden with all the additional gear many cruisers carry... That's one reason I prefer to sail the sort of boat I do, with more of a racing pedigree with decent close-winded performance, and try to minimize the amount of crap carried on deck. Not that I particularly enjoy sailing to weather when the breeze and seas pipe up, but even for cruising, decent weatherly performance sure comes in handy sometimes...

But the fact is, I rarely see many cruisers sailing to weather in my own travels, and that certainly applies to those sailing catamarans, as well... And, whenever I do, their windward performance doesn't seem all that great, to my eye... Here are a couple of anecdotes that illustrate my point...

Back in November, I left Coinjock early one morning, and passed by the anchorage in Broad Creek just as a couple of other cruisers were just getting under way... One of them was a large catamaran, pretty racy-looking... Not sure what it was, but it was a good-sized boat, with a mast height that was obviously pushing the max for the ICW, and they fell into line about a mile behind us headed down towards the entrance to Albemarle Sound...

The breeze was out of the W, @ 20-25... That's gonna be a pretty tough 15 mile slog across the sound for most boats, hard on the wind, and fighting to sail high enough through square waves to lay the entrance to the Alligator River. The boat I was on was a Cabo Rico 42, one of the 'brands' you mention as not being particularly close-winded, though I think most anyone who would have been aboard that day might have come away favorably impressed. She handled those conditions very nicely, and we were the only boat out of the cluster of 4 that actually sailed across the Sound that morning. One large Beneteau motorsailed with a deeply reefed main, another boat motored with no sail whatsoever, looked like they were having a miserable ride... And the catamaran tried sailing, but seemed unable to maintain a course even remotely close to what was required to fetch the Alligator River. After about 3-4 miles, falling further and further behind our full-keeled monohull, they fell off about 70 degrees to port, and opted to head off to the SE, and the route down Pamlico Sound, instead...

2 winters ago, after waiting for weeks to cross over to the Bahamas during a prolonged period of a very strong easterly flow, I finally left Miami for Nassau... As I passed Chub Cay the following morning for the final leg towards Nassau, 3 other cruisers left Chub headed the same way... Breeze was NE, building to 20 and beyond in what promised to be a squally day, and another tough slog once we got beyond the bit of protection afforded in the lee of the Berrys... One of the boats was an Island Packet 485, buddy-boating with a catamaran of similar size. The 3rd boat turned back to Chub as soon as they got a taste of what was to come...

It was a fight all day long to sail high enough to lay Nassau, and I fell just a bit short, having to roll up the jib and fire up the engine for about the last 2 miles to make the harbor entrance... (After a pretty tough slog straight thru from Miami, I wasn't in any mood to tack, and was rushing to try to clear customs that night) I was listening to the chatter between the IP and his friend thru the day. The IP had to motorsail all the way across to Nassau under a deeply reefed main, basically motoring with a bit of steadying sail... And once again, the cat couldn't come close to making Nassau, and had to head for the anchorage behind Lyford Cay, at the extreme western tip of New Providence... Where, given the weather that developed over the next few days, they probably remained stuck for awhile...

Sure, merely anecdotal observations, to be sure... I'm sure you're right, and there are some more performance multihulls out there with windward performance that rivals a design like mine... But, I'm sure not seeing many, in the course of my travels... (grin)

best regards,

Jon