On Sat, 16 Jun 2007 10:10:39 -0400, Jeff wrote:

* stormtactic wrote, On 6/16/2007 9:30 AM:
Hi

I have read a fair amount of hype about the sailing performance of the
Gemini 34Mc Catamaran.

Anybody around sails one, does it live to the expectation?

I don't know much about that particular cat; we bought a PDQ after
rejecting the Gemini on "mediocre construction" grounds. It really
isn't that bad, but we want to go a bit upscale on this boat.

I can say that cat performance is highly dependent on loading. Our
boat easily lived up to the "more than half the wind speed"
expectation, including easily doing 12 knots in a 20-22 knot breeze
when it was new. But now with 8 year of accumulated crap, its been a
while since we've been much over 10 knots.

One thing good about overloading a tri, I guess - you can't unless you
want to sleep in the cockpit!
I've given some thought to the space/overloading qualities of a cat,
and while really liking that space from the livability/openess view,
it does seem that many owners really slow them down when cruising.
I have thought that the cat storage capacity is best utilized for what
I see as cruising "essentials" - fuel, batteries, genset, watermaker,
just adequate food/beer reefer, etc, and keep sailing speed up within
those constraints. Of course all that is very easy for me to say,
having no cruising experience.
I sometimes see in cruising logs that some cruisers carry lots of
weighty canned food, book libraries and other seemingly unecessary
or lighter-weight-substitutable items which add quite a bit of weight.
I haven't seen a "cruising light" site that covers this type of
logistical planning for cruising cats. Not that it isn't out there
somewhere.
Given your cat experience, what are your views on this, and what
have you learned?
I know junk piles up - all I have to do is glance around my basement
or garage. I have dealt with this, and know the solution to fixing it
and preventing it.
But how is it different on a boat?
Thanks,

--Vic