Maximize Your Performance on a Cruising Catamaran _ Sail Magazine

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Maximize Your Performance on a Cruising Catamaran | Sail Magazine http://www.sailmagazine.com/boat-handling/maximize-your-performance-...

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Maximize Your Performanceon a Cruising CatamaranBy Andrew Burton • Posted: May 1, 2012

Perhaps you’re looking at a cat as an option for an extended cruise, or you’ve chartered acatamaran for a week in the British Virgin Islands. You’re expecting some thrilling multihull speed,but once on the water you find you are disappointed.

It doesn’t have to be that way. True, charter cats and many cruising cats are under poweredcompared to their high-performance brethren, but you can still get decent performance out of eventhe most basic charter cat by applying some simple sail-trim techniques. Some of these are uniqueto cats and some carry over from monohulls. As always, when trying to get the most out of anyboat, some racing experience is helpful.

Let’s take a sail counter-clockwise around one of my favorite islands, Tortola, in the BVI, and lookat how we can sail our cruising cat to maximize speed and fun.

1. Crack off to optimize your cat's performance to weather; 2. Tack downwind on a series of fast broad reaches; &

3. Scrub power to save reefing in an acceleration zone

A NICE BEAT

Leaving Road Harbour, you’ll first harden up to sail to weather. The genoa most likely is sheeted toa track on the cabintop, which gives you a narrow sheeting angle that should allow you to point ashigh as on a monohull. You sheet the main in tight so it’s not getting too much backwind and headup to get the telltales on the jib flowing nicely. Looking around, however, you see other boats are

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Maximize Your Performance on a Cruising Catamaran _ Sail Magazine