Had the time come to change from a monohull to a catamaran ? Read our story.
We'd always had monohulls - after dinghies we went to a 17ft cruiser, then 26ft, 29ft and then finally 41ft. We loved
the way they sailed and the looks and sailing capabilities outweighed the space considerations. The last 2 had been slim beauties and the lack of beam and internal space was overcome by adding 12ft to the length.
But much though we loved our beautiful Rival 41 we found we sailed her less and less - so we tackled the reasons why.
Weight of the gear
Firstly, the weight of the gear - especially the sails. The previous owners had fitted behind-mast furling in attempt to overcome the same problem - and we were at about the same age as they were then. Sadly there was so much friction in the setup that we decided to remove it - and the bow came up 2 inches when we did. But, despite a self-tailing winch raising the main was hard work - despite the cutter rig the sails were hard to sheet - and manoeuvring on and off a trot mooring became more and more difficult. Then add the deep steep companionways and the degree of heel to windward and we began to realise with immense sadness that the time had come for a new direction.
Giving up boating or even moving to the dark side - motor-boating - had no appeal for either of us. So we looked at many options from more modern sailing monohulls with lighter gear to down-sizing to a smaller sailing boat. Its very difficult when you've had a 41 footer to consider what we regarded as a lesser boat - a reverse step - and even those boats we fancied such as Sadlers and Starlights still had the heeling issues and, in the main, fairly difficult companionways.
My brother has had trimarans and catamarans and often told us of their virtues which led to us looking around. My husband was brought up in Southend-on-Sea not too far from the Prout catamaran factory and had often thought he might like one some day. So our research into cats began. We began our sailing on the East Coast of the UK around the Thames Estuary and rather hankered after some creek-crawling and drying out - particularly as the West Country becomes very crowded and a deep keel restricts where you can anchor - and almost all West Country anchorages demand payment. Call us cheap skate but a friend of ours with a Prout Event 34 used to take the ground in peaceful places and pay not a penny. Quite attractive !
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The criteria for a new boat were :
- sails and gear which were easier to handle
- a comfortable boat - and, in an ideal world, a deck saloon had always appealed
- a boat which took less strength to manhandle and was easy to manoeuvre under engine
- a boat which was enjoyable to sail and or motor
- as many creature comforts as were affordable and achievable
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Deck saloon
Most of these made us think that a catamaran might offer at least the first 3 from that list. Monohulls with deck saloons tend to be very pricey and often come with heavy boats - such as the Vancouver Pilothouse or the Seastream. We also addressed the question of what we wanted to do with a boat and came up with the answer that we didn't think we wanted to live aboard 12 months of the year - at least not in the UK climate but we did want to spend even more time aboard and cruising than we had to date. We were semi-retired and the wonders of 4G meant that we could work from the boat - given sufficient space and an electrical system to support laptops.
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