Quint wrote:
Yea, but the ARC course - transAtlantic - consistently show the cats
getting across faster than the monos. So there is something to the
hype.

I'm not sure why you would be skeptical. Certainly there is some
hyperbole to some cat claims, but if you listen to monohull sailors,
half of them claim to do 2 knots over hull speed all day long.

The bottom line is that cats do not devote 40% of their displacement
to a hunk of lead they drag through the water, and their length to
beam ratio (per hull) is about 10 to 1, so they do not create large
waves. These two factors mean that if there is wind, a cat should be
much faster than a monohull. It also means that under power they are
also fast and fuel efficient.

There are several situations that can slow them down: Upwind sailing
suffers on many, though if this is a concern, you can get a cat with
daggerboards. The large wetted surface means that some cats don't do
as well in light air. Again, if this is a concern, you probably don't
want a cat with a small, conservative rig.

And, of course, if you overload a cat it can slow down to the speed of
a monohull. As near as I can tell, even though we've added a lot of
crap to ours, we're still faster than cruising monohulls up about 45
feet. In a breeze we'll do 9+ knots all day, and even in 10 knots
we'll do 5 or 6.