I agree with Jeff here. One thing to keep in mind is that cats tend to
be much more on the cruising side of the racer/cruiser spectrum than
monos because there is no real club racing market for them. Most cats
that are actually out here cruising are derived from charter boats that
are slow to begin with and are made slower by adding live aboard stores
and systems. By contrast, much of the monohull fleet is derived from
club racers or at least heavily influenced by them. This suggests that
there is more room for improvement in the multi fleet than in the mono
fleet. In the 60 foot classes where multi's race against mono's with
canting keels and rigs and movable ballast, the multi's tend to average
about 30% faster over the same courses. I think if the cruising multi
fleet were as influenced by racing as the cruising mono fleet is we'd
see pretty much the same 30% advantage.

I'm not sure how important fast is though. The only times I've ever
felt an adavantage to going fast was when racing to get from one
anchorage to another in daylight. Offshore no cruising boats that I
know of are fast enough to avoid bad weather. There is a lot of
marketing hype, particularly from those selling motorsailers to
multi-millionairs, about how being able to maintian very high average
speeds makes passages safer... Maybe, but I think most of it is BS,
and if you hate passages, why the heck are you out voyaging?

-- Tom.