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DOUBLE OR TRIPLE THE FUN!
For those who are wondering what this page is about, multihulls are yachts with more than one body area in the water. A catamaran has two  hulls or pontoons, a trimaran has three, often having narrower outside pontoons with a fairly wide central hull, rather like Polynesian outriggers. If you saw the movie 'Waterworld', you were seeing a remarkable trimaran in action.

Are you a multihull sailor?  Do you own, or work aboard a multihull?  We'd love to hear from you!
If you're a mutihull enthusiast, we'd love to hear the reasons for your enthusiasm.  Your opinions, your experiences, your funny and tragic stories.
What would you say the advantages and disadvantages of multihull sailing are? Are you a cruising or performance multihull enthusiast? 
Write and tell us all about it. Don't worry about your abilities as a writer, we can always do a little editing.

THE HOBIE CAT 
The doodle in the sand made reality...

Hobart “ Hobie ” Alter, from Capristano Beach, Southern California, famous for his revolutionary surfboard design and production, created what was to become the first mass produced beach catamaran in the world using asymmetrical hulls, the Hobie Cat 14, after drawing the basic design in the sand one day, in 1968.

Hobie  started  a small series production in California, with the help of friends and, virtually overnight, the Hobie Cat caught on, capturing the imagination of much of the world's sailing fraternity.
As early as 1970, the big brother of the 14', the Hobie Cat 16, made its debut. Could Hobie have  imagined then, that he was creating a catamaran class which would, very soon, achieve world-wide importance?

Today, more than 200, 000 Hobie Cats have been produced for sailors all over the world. Since 1971, Hobie Cats have been produced in Toulon, in Southern France. 
The Toulon  facility is probably one of the most modern small boat factories in the world, using state of the art production procedures and incorporating strict quality control to ensure that every product leaving the factory is of the highest possible standard.
The One-Design production is closely controlled by the IHCA to maintain the very strict Class Rules. 

Features like ease of transportation, simplicity in handling, incredible sailing performance, as well as recognised stability and durability have all contributed to the success of the Hobie Cat.
The IHCA co-ordinates, and helps supervise, more than 200 official races each year, worldwide. 
The Hobie Class Association offers advice and information to racing  sailors and pleasure-boaters alike, helping to ensure that sailors get the most out of their Hobie Cats. An extensive dealer network handles sales and service of the Cats themselves and of genuine parts and accessories.

For more information, you can contact:

Hobie Cat Europe / Coast Catamaran France
Z.I. Toulon Est - BP 250 - 83078 Toulon cedex 9 - France
Tel. : +33 (0) 494 08 78 78
Fax : +33 (0) 494 08 13 99
E-mail : hobie.cat@wanadoo.fr 

We welcome Multihulls Editor: Fran Slingerland of the trimaran "Ninth Charm"

Hi there fellow-multihullers and future multihull sailors! 

I only very marginally helped to build the boat I now live on full-time and sail, a 38 foot Newick "Native" trimaran, with a beam of 26.5 feet, called 'Ninth Charm'. She is of Airex foam sandwich construction and was built with epoxy resin in a back yard in Canada, in summers, in the builder's spare time. 

Ninth Charm has a draft of 19 inches and a daggerboard which, when fully down, gives us a draft of 7 feet. The quasi-'kick-up' rudder gives us a draft (dagger up) of 3 feet 3 inches. When we go aground, not 'if', (let's be realistic), a wooden dowel, stuck in the rudder trunk, splinters, and the rudder comes up. OK, enough about draft! 

The rig is a 46-foot rotating Gougeon design wing-mast made of plywood, fibreglass and a thousand feet of 2 inch carbon fibre. I find this rig most disquieting, but there is no denying that it lets us go to windward! 

If you're interested in knowing more about 'Ninth Charm' you are welcome to visit our web site, www.ditton.net/ninthcharm and visit the page called "building the boat." I sail with shipmate, builder extraordinaire and official Capitano, John Scholberg.

After 'Ninth Charm' was launched, in 1996, we competed in local races and went from Montréal to Toronto and back. Satisfied that the boat was fit for the long haul, we left Montréal, in Canada, on the 21st of August 1998 and sailed down the St. Lawrence River to the Gulf, around the Gaspé peninsula, and then down the coast of New Brunswick, through the Northumberland Strait and the Strait of Canso, and around Nova Scotia. 

Next we sailed across to Maine, through the Cape Cod canal, up to the Delaware and Chesapeake Canal, and down Chesapeake Bay to Norfolk. From there we went through the Chesapeake and Albemarle Canal to Beaufort, North Carolina and then sailed directly to St. Thomas in the US Virgin Islands.

We messed around in the Virgin Islands for a while, before going to the Heineken Regatta in Sint Maarten in March 1999, where we didn't do all that well, placing 8th out of 11. There were reasons for that, over which I prefer to draw a veil... We are determined to do the Regatta again this year and place better. (Terry, where are you?! We want you back, at least for the regatta!) 

We visited St. Barts, St. Croix and then Antigua, where our daggerboard gave out, breaking in two. Next came Guadeloupe, where we took delivery of our new daggerboard, thanks to friends, Toby and Nick, back in Canada. We stopped off, briefly, at the islands of Dominica, Martinique and St. Lucia, St. Vincent, Bequia and the Grenadines, Tobago Cays, Union Island, Carriacou and Grenada, and then hauled and stayed on the hard in Trinidad for quite a while, re-painting everything, and doing a zillion major repairs. 

By next issue there should be tales of more sailing adventures to report... More information on our sailing adventures is also available on the Ninth Charm website (www.ditton.net/ninthcharm).

Your Multihull Page

Multihulls are one of the most controversial developments in sailboat design this century, and there are all kinds of opinions on them. 
I can promise that I won't encourage any hate mail on this site (and believe me, multihull hate exists out there!), but hope to give the multihull page as equivocal coverage as possible, allowing for extreme opinions as well.

Let me attempt to dispel the, still, common notion that multihulls are a recent development. It is true to say that they have relatively recently been introduced to the western yachting scene (Europe, N. America, Antipodes, S. Africa) but the existence of multihulls elsewhere, Polynesia for example, possibly pre-dates that of monohulls. 

This deliberately ambiguous statement may indicate to you how loathe I am to stir any arguments back to life. I won't attempt to provide a history as this has been provided, far more ably, by hugely more qualified writers, long before I came to the world of sailing. 

I am putting together a list of multihull designers, gurus and sailors, which should appear here in the very near future, for those who would like to explore the multihull world a little. We'd like to differentiate between performance multihulls and cruising multihulls, in separate sections which will only expand as material comes in. That puts the ball firmly in your court. Take the time to e-mail me some input for the page, if you will be so kind. Opinions, questions, ideas, stories, anything to help get the ball rolling! Don't worry about your skills as a writer, just express yourself in your own way, it makes life so much more interesting.

A directory of builders and designers, and links to other multihull sites will take shape in the coming months. Our Managing Editor will also be looking for an advertiser to help keep this page solvent each issue... 
First come, first served, so hurry to the advertisers page, as soon as you have finished reading this page! We are also working on the possibility of having a Multihulls Classified Section page where anyone involved in multihull designing, building, or sailing will be able to advertise at very reasonable rates, to help us keep this page self-supporting.

Well, that's all for now, I'm relying on you to take a moment to e-mail me ( the easiest way is just to click on the link at the end of the page, introduce yourself and say whatever you want to say ) so that I don't get lonely on this huge page...

Happy, speedy, sailing!

Fran

If you are interested in reading books on relevant topics, you may like to visit the General Marine Books page in our Library section.