Bryan wrote:
We generally beat the multi's with a mono although we were a slower
boat. Why, because the course required dead upwind and dead downwind
sailing, that is a weak point for multi's. When racing point to point
reaching races, the multi's won. No surprise.


Jeff wrote:
PHRF ratings are based on round the buoy racing. Assuming the ratings
for the Shock 35 (72?) and the F-27 (25-50) are fair,

Are the ratings ever fair?
One of the problems with issuing a single-number handicap
for a light fast boat like a multi or sport boat is that
their performance varies tremendously as conditions vary.
For example, in the 1988 sneak-attack/mismatch catamaran
America's Cup, the big monohull was demonstrably faster than
the cat in light air. This appeared to be the case on all
points of sail including reaches.

I've raced a small sport boat against beach cats, and have
some definite observations along the same lines. The funny
thing is, that while there are some advantages for monos and
some conditions wehre we couold dust them convincingly, a
number of multihull seem to deny reality and insist that
multis are faster just because they just are.


.... then the F-27 is a
faster boat in a round the buoy race. If you can consistently race at
25 to 50 points better than your boat's rating, you're a better sailor
than I. (You probably are anyways, if you race a Shock 35!)


The Antrim 27 rates about the same as the F-27 and they
often beat F-27s, I'm told.


The fact that cruising cats are even roughly the same as monohulls in
phrf ratings implies that the upwind advantage of mono's is not that great.


Agreed. Multihull design has progressed to where they can go
upwind pretty well. And the mono probably has to use a
spinnaker to keep up with or beat the cat (with no
spinnaker) downwind.


Since cruisers have been known to power when going upwind (yes, its
true) its not clear phrf is particularly relevant at all to a cruising
discussion.


I disagree. It's releveant, since it indicates the sailing
performance of the boats... under ideal conditions (remember
PHRF assumes the boat is not loaded for cruising and tuned
up for racing). However it's for sure not the be-all & end-all.

We have a number of friends who cruise to the Bahamas every
year from Beaufort, in a wide variety of boats. The
speedboats (including a 44' fast cat and a J-44) don't seem
to outperform the Island Packet by all that much. Usually
their passage times are all within 24 hours of each other,
often much less.

Fresh Breezes- Doug King