Short Wave Sportfishing wrote:
On Fri, 08 Dec 2006 07:04:43 -0500, Harry Krause
wrote:

The funny thing is that SeaSport makes some decent looking pilothouse
monohulls, but you don't see many of them around here. Actually, I don't
recall seeing any.

You don't see a lot of cats around here. Guys I fish with don't like
them because of beam sea instability. They are great running hell
bend for leather through a head sea, but the ones that I've run seem
to have excessive rolling in a beam sea and as for running with a
stern sea - forget it.

In my opinion, which isn't worth much I'll readily admit, they are
built for going forward - not much else.


My observations about cats in general after being underway in a half
dozen or so different makes:

Head seas: Cat designs handle steep, short period chop with ease; the
seas that slow most boats to a crawl and still beat the living snot out
of everybody aboard. This is the "best" running angle for a cat, but
not the only good one.

Beam seas: Less rocking than most monohulls. One heck of a lot less
than my trawler.

Following seas: Underway isn't a problem. The speed of a typical cat is
faster than the
motion of the waves, and there is no huge slab of a transom for the
waves to put pressure against. Drifting without power, the boat is
likely to turn its beam to the wind- but how is that different than
most monohulls?

There are some reasons I won't ever be replacing my personal boat with
a catamaran, but they have a lot to do with personal preference and
nothing at all to do with any aspect of a well built catamaran being
less seaworthy.