Chris Newport wrote:
On Friday 22 October 2004 1:58 am in uk.rec.sailing jspeer wrote:


Of course you could go with a catamaran, but I've never been
comfortable offshore in a boat that is as stable upside-down as
right-side up:-)


Oh dear - that old chestnut again.

Cruising cats do not get blown down.
Racing multihulls use the inherent stability of multihulls
to crowd on more sail, so they can have problems, but
cruising cats are more sensibly designed.

Several Prouts and several Wharrams have circumnavigated.

James Wharram has written an excellent paper on this, you
need to keep the centre of effort low and use sensible
amounts of sail. He also advocates sails with calibrated
strenth which will shred before tipping the boat in the
case of the sudden storm that tends to blow up out of
nowhere in the southern ocean while people are asleep B-).

Taking something like a Hobie offshore is, of course, a
rather bad idea - but you knew that already.

While a catamaran has a better chance than a monohull of out-running extreme
weather, it's not the wind you have to worry about - it's the waves!

http://www.esa.int/esaCP/SEMOKQL26WD_index_0.html
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/n...gue_waves.html

It looks like rogue waves are a lot more common than most of us have
believed.

While I'd be happy to sail a cat on coastal routes, I'd prefer a monohull
for ocean passages. Rolling a monohull is not uncommon (I know someone who's
done it). Successfully rolling a catamaran would, I imagine, be far less
common!

Pleasant dreams.