Catamarans are not for everyone

6º 08.022n 122º 17.902w

Sat Apr 27 2019

Isabel grew up in London. As she puts it, “as a family, we always had a boat, even if we didn’t have a car”. Whichever boat they owned, that was the weekend destination most all year round and for a month each summer, sailing the Brittany coast of France. Those monohulls are now known as “classic plastic” amongst her English tribe. Her dad allowed her to borrow the family boat during university breaks, and she along with her college besties would blast off to France or Ireland, often enduring miserable weather. Conditions below were cold, damp, cramped, and they still had an absolute blast. Even now, what with wives and kids and jobs, they make a huge effort to gather occasionally and regale one another with tales of the days of old when they were bold. When I met her she was backpacking around the world, having just spent a couple of seasons sailing the South Pacific in a Crealock 37, a beautiful, tough canoe stern monohull. She’s got salt water in her veins, and deep down inside she’s a monohull sailor to the core.

I grew up in the North Carolina Smokey Mountains. My family hiked and camped and swam in the river. As a small child I got the chance to sit in dad’s lap and go flying in a Cessna 120 piloted by Uncle Ray. The little grass airfield also had an early days parachute club, and we used to take a picnic out there and watch those crazy folks fall out of airplanes. It must have made an impression on me.

My university days were filled with skydiving, SCUBA diving, and learning to fly. Those activities made my world more three dimensional and stimulated my senses. Skydiving and flying sailplanes especially do that, as you fly your body, parachute, or high performance glider. Tiny control inputs or subtle changes in posture produce immediate results. It’s a bit like sailing a dinghy.

Isabel eventually became a landscape designer, a really good one, and we bought a falling down house AND a sawzall, to this day my favorite implement of destruction. Second is the electric jackhammer. With the help of Jason Ali Wood, a brilliant young student at the Arizona State University school of architecture, we turned that old dump into a beautiful example of indoor/outdoor living. The kitchen and living area evolved into one large room with glass all along the back wall, mostly floor to ceiling, looking into the botanical garden that Isabel had created. We were always connected with our outdoor environment. As Isabel is fond of saying, “it’s important to be aware of your natural surroundings”.

We’ve been looking at boats together even before we were married over 21 years ago. That’s lots of boats, and in the beginning it was old heavy monohulls because that was what was selling. Then we went to the 2005 Annapolis Sailboat Show. Seawind was introducing their spankin’ new Seawind 1160, and on the day we went it was cold, raining sideways, and those temporary docks were swaying madly. We spotted that boat and climbed aboard to seek shelter. That’s when we met broker Kurt Jerman and Seawind company general manager Richard Ward. We saw how the saloon doors opened up to create the same indoor/outdoor lifestyle that we had created at home. We learned that in foul or cold weather the only reason to leave the saloon for the extremely well protected cockpit was to trim sails or adjust throttles. When completely shut up in the saloon we can see the world all way round.

I was sold! We didn’t have any money and knew it would be years before we might be able to afford a used example, but the layout, the performance numbers, and the lack of rolling in an anchorage got my motor running. The design did meet some of Isabel’s criteria; great galley, master head with separate shower stall, and a master cabin with a queen bed one can ingress or egress without climbing over your partner. However, she was still a hard core monohull sailor, and it took years for her to come around.

Kurt took us on test sails, then Joe and Kathy Siudzinski took us for a day sail on their Seawind 1000, Katie Kat. Like me, Joe is an engineer, but unlike me Joe had been racing catamarans for decades, and he extolled their virtues while making Katie Kat go like stink around a wild and wooly San Francisco bay. Joe is big on safety and functionality, and proved that one can stand watch in rough conditions while remaining warm, dry and secure. I think Isabel finally began coming over to the dark side.

When we’re below decks we can look out of large port lights and still feel connected to the outdoor environment. Right now I’m sitting in the saloon, watching seabirds 1000 miles from land, swooping and diving for sardines. They sure look like they’re having a good time. Standing in the shower and looking up at big seas is weirdly fun. In an anchorage if we’re not out on deck we’re still always fully aware of the world around us. Sometimes the world looks in, so it takes curtains to have much privacy in a crowded anchorage.

Most monohulls remind me of our old neighborhood. Folks would drive into their garages and disappear into their houses, never to be seen again unless they walked the dog. To me, monohulls offer a cocoon kind of experience once you go below, except perhaps for deck saloon models. They feel more protected, private and intimate, but also feel a bit isolated from the outside world. Some feel like caves, some have great ventilation and enough port lights that they aren’t so dark inside. All of them tend to roll going deep downwind and in rough anchorages.

There’s a boat out there for everyone.