Yeah I have to say that until last month I owned a 37ft cruising cat myself and it was always amazing. Masses of space and storage (almost too much storage), stable as buggery, handled the massive seas no problem at all. I sailed her to Lady Musgrave overnight from Kingfisher bay once in 40 knot winds (granted I was running with it) but she never looked in any trouble at all. Even running beam on to the swell I never spilled a drop of beer :) And as for capsizing, just the sheer amount of energy required to tip a cruising cat would mean that you are in ridiculous wind and sailing it pretty badly. It's really a non-issue for anyone not doing an ocean crossing. Mono sailors always tell me cats don't point to wind. Then how come mine DID? Just fine. Probably couldn't outpoint a racing mono (only by a few degrees) but could easily match a cruiser of similar size. I think it's because that became a kind of mantra when they first started getting popular thirty odd years ago, and at that time, with those designs, it was partially true, but things evolve, designs improve and in most cats now days it's barely a concern at all. The stability and shallow draw are massive plusses that are hard to overlook. I often remember thinking just that when I was tucked up close out of the wind in the shallows for the night while watching monos bob around like corks out deeper. I love all boats I just prefer cats. Don't wanna start a war, monos are good too :)
The cat I mentioned earlier in the thread that had to be towed is a racing/cruising cat, of one of the newer designs. It races around the cans with the yachts locally and wins easily. The problem comes when they have to go to windward in fresh conditions with reduced sail and there comes a time when the windage is just too great to make headway, even under power the windage was too much.
Select to expand quoteRamona said..
The cat I mentioned earlier in the thread that had to be towed is a racing/cruising cat, of one of the newer designs. It races around the cans with the yachts locally and wins easily. The problem comes when they have to go to windward in fresh conditions with reduced sail and there comes a time when the windage is just too great to make headway, even under power the windage was too much.
Are you sure there wasn't something else wrong, engine failure?
What make/model was it?
Select to expand quoteRamona said..
The cat I mentioned earlier in the thread that had to be towed is a racing/cruising cat, of one of the newer designs. It races around the cans with the yachts locally and wins easily. The problem comes when they have to go to windward in fresh conditions with reduced sail and there comes a time when the windage is just too great to make headway, even under power the windage was too much.
Windage can be a real bitch when anchoring a Cat and marina fees for them carry a premium too.
.html] 
[/URL]
Hiya,
Wow, thank you all for your posts, love reading them all.
We had the opportunity to get on board some Cats that are for sale on Saturday. I have never been on one and really needed a physical visual of space available. Saw a 38' Lagoon, 38' Seawind and a 41' Seawind. Had in my head I was only a galley up girl, now I'm a fan of the galley down. The 41' Seawind was just gorgeous and just LOVED how the door swings up and away to open the saloon area right up. I was so amazed at the room in the hulls !! You know, 2 weeks ago I didn't even know what a saloon was. Have now started our inquiries into sailing courses so just waiting back on some prices. Heading up to QLD in January for a 3 week fishing trip so planning to stop and see a few more Cats on the way hopefully, pull into a few Marinas and take a look.
My partner has a 35' Power Cat that he will be bringing up to QLD early in the year so it can be sold then we are free to start our serious looking. So if you know anyone interested in purchasing a Power Cat let me know and I can put you in contact with Ron :). So a question I have, in your opinion, where is the best place to try and sell a Power cat, in QLD?
Also still doing a lot of research into purchasing in Australia vs overseas. My partner and I definitely will not be hurtling along at any great speeds and if the weather is not right, we just won't leave where we are I wouldn't think.
Anyways, thanks again for all of your help and please feel free to keep giving advice.
Regards,
Laura
Bilge keels are a low cost compromise but they don't sail into the wind well either...
(My budget doesn't stretch to two hulls)
Seriously, sailing any cruising boat around the tropics is more motoring than sailing. Whatever you get make sure it has a good motor and decent tankage.
Feral
Select to expand quoteLauraS said..
So a question I have, in your opinion, where is the best place to try and sell a Power cat, in QLD?
Anyways, thanks again for all of your help and please feel free to keep giving advice.
Regards,
Laura
Hong Kong, Dubai 
Select to expand quoteLauraS said..
Hiya,
Wow, thank you all for your posts, love reading them all.
We had the opportunity to get on board some Cats that are for sale on Saturday. I have never been on one and really needed a physical visual of space available. Saw a 38' Lagoon, 38' Seawind and a 41' Seawind. Had in my head I was only a galley up girl, now I'm a fan of the galley down. The 41' Seawind was just gorgeous and just LOVED how the door swings up and away to open the saloon area right up. I was so amazed at the room in the hulls !! You know, 2 weeks ago I didn't even know what a saloon was. Have now started our inquiries into sailing courses so just waiting back on some prices. Heading up to QLD in January for a 3 week fishing trip so planning to stop and see a few more Cats on the way hopefully, pull into a few Marinas and take a look.
My partner has a 35' Power Cat that he will be bringing up to QLD early in the year so it can be sold then we are free to start our serious looking. So if you know anyone interested in purchasing a Power Cat let me know and I can put you in contact with Ron :). So a question I have, in your opinion, where is the best place to try and sell a Power cat, in QLD?
Also still doing a lot of research into purchasing in Australia vs overseas. My partner and I definitely will not be hurtling along at any great speeds and if the weather is not right, we just won't leave where we are I wouldn't think.
Anyways, thanks again for all of your help and please feel free to keep giving advice.
Regards,
Laura
Laura,
The Lagoon and Seawind are both comfortable and proven cruising cats. Certainly not a bad choice for living on it for a few years.
They are not high performing cats so you will be using the engine a bit more so keep that in mind when deciding between different options - but not more than on a mono of similar size.
The Lagoon and Seawind both have built-in diesels, I'd stay away from outboard engines for cruising cats. Outboard can be ok for racing but you may end up in a situation like Romana described previously.
Good luck with it, it sounds like a great adventure your planning.
Very lucky he got ahead of that wave and regained steerage. Would hate to think the outcome had he stayed atop for another couple of seconds. Would not attempt that bar in any sort of sailing vessel in conditions like that. Brissie bar is the better option.
Select to expand quotecisco said..jev7337 said..
But if cruising further south, rounding Cap Horn I would go for a proven steel mono - but their slow compared to a cat.
This one is not steel but it is a mono and looks to be doing 20 knots or so. I don't think any cat would handle the pounding let alone do the speed.
?rel=0
These ones were steel and would round Cape Horn at 16 knots. Alan Villiers was an Australian Sailing Legend, wrote a bunch of books about it and eventually became a director of The National Maritime Museum in Greenwich.
By Way of Cape Horn, The Set of The Sails and The Cruise Of The Conrad are fantastic reads and teach a lot about character.
?rel=0
Cisco, the videos are enjoyable to watch. But if this is how you go cruising with your Mrs. then you got balls of steel. I would not want to be on this Carbon/Kevlar hi tech F1-equivalent racing machine just with my wife and kid.
Let's get back to reality.
Here is Lagoon 380 in, allegedly, 50 knots. This is a more realistic view of how sailing a Multi in rough conditions can look like.
... notice, there is no walking on the walls and you can still make a cup of coffee
The 50 knots I remember was too windy to walk around on deck and top of the waves is being blown off horizontal pretty much all the time. The video images looked well below that. The swells were starting to get impressive though.
Not sure that I would be sleeping comfortably with a cat going downhill in 50 knts under autopilot, or any yacht under autopilot in 50knts come to that. Autopilots dont have fear and know when to break off from a pitchpole or Chinese Gybe as the apparent wind changes surfing down the face.
Select to expand quotejev7337 said..
Cisco, the videos are enjoyable to watch. But if this is how you go cruising with your Mrs. then you got balls of steel. I would not want to be on this Carbon/Kevlar hi tech F1-equivalent racing machine just with my wife and kid.
Let's get back to reality.
Absolutely. There is no doubt that cats make excellent and fast coastal cruisers and the right design of cat can be a very capable blue water ocean cruiser handled correctly. The same can be said of mono hulls but by nature will not be as fast.
In 1979 during a passage from Fiji to Sydney with three of us aboard a Philip 43 (IOR type cruiser/racer), we experienced a 50 knot gale where the sea mounts are between Elizabeth Rock and Lord Howe Island.
In the middle of the night beating to windward under storm jib and Aries self steer we suffered a 180 knock down which tore the VHF ariel and lights from the top of the mast. The life raft was lost and it was chaos below.
We dropped the jib, lashed the helm and lay ahull for a day and a half while the gale passed. The sea motion was relatively comfortable enabling us to clean up, cook, eat and sleep.
On an equivalent sized cat I don't believe we would have fared nearly so well. If it was capsized, that would have been that. No EPIRBs back then. If we had run before the gale with or without a drogue there would have been a huge danger of being pitch poled and that would have been that.
The only other option would have been to lay into it with a drogue off the bow. The decision to do that would have to have been made early though, long before the rogue wave that knocked us down had hit. I am sure there would have been a lot of pounding and I do not believe conditions in the cabin would have been any better than what they were in the cocoon of the mono hull.
In the end it comes down to a personal preference and choice. I thank God my choice was to be aboard a self righting IOR type mono hulled yacht.
For all thems that wants to go catamaran sailing and enjoy it. Check it out, especially you Laura, you may get inspired 
:) some great videos and some scary ones...such an exciting adventure...thanks for your posts.
Our plan is still to sell the current Cat (power) then off to purchase our new one. So if you know anyone wanting to buy a 35' Power cat, sing out :). Have had some great times in her but time has come to make friends with the wind....or open our wallets and be prepared to spend a lot in fuel, which we aren't in that position unfortunately.
Select to expand quoteLauraS said..
:) some great videos and some scary ones...such an exciting adventure...thanks for your posts.
Our plan is still to sell the current Cat (power) then off to purchase our new one. So if you know anyone wanting to buy a 35' Power cat, sing out :). Have had some great times in her but time has come to make friends with the wind....or open our wallets and be prepared to spend a lot in fuel, which we aren't in that position unfortunately.
Some of the charter catamarans are configured to be motor yachts or sailing yachts. Same boat, both have motors, one has sailing rig, the other has not.
Have you considered whether your existing "yacht" can be rigged for sail propulsion???
My wife and I just took delivery of our new Fountaine Lipari. We ended up purchasing new but had looked for 12 months for a suitable second hand from anywhere.
I have sailed monos and cats, my wife had not sailed at all. She loved the cats but wouldn't have considered on a mono (didn't like sailing leaning over). We have friends who are mono owners and although the die hard old salts look down on the cats, the looks from their wives when they see all the space and storage shows which way they would like to go, particularly when you have 8 sitting around the back deck for sundowners.
We wanted a boat to cruise and live aboard. Small enough to sail just 2 of us but big enough to entertain friends and family without being in each others pockets. For us the 10 to 14 mtr range was the sweet spot. The clincher for us was when we went looking at marina berths. Lots of 12mts a few 13tmrs and almost none 15 or above. As we have to work from on-board for a while yet we need to be able to park and commute so marinas for us. You do pay a premium for multi berths but try and get one for a tri. The Lipari is 11.95 mtr by 6.7 mtr so fits perfectly in a 12 mtr multi berth.
Buying from overseas was just getting too difficult. By the time you found a good one they where usually under offer there. It is also very difficult and expensive to organise inspections, surveys etc. Then there is the cost to get it here, taxes and import duty, Gas compliance etc. Yes you can get a bargain but there are few and far between. You also face issues with warrantee and servicing here, if from the US then 110 volt to 240 very expensive.
We purchased ours through Multihull Solutions in Queensland and had we not purchased a new boat we still would have contracted them as a "Buyers Agent" as they deal with all these issues a lot more than we will ever do, so they know the traps and who to contact, plus importing and taxes etc.
They have lots of good info on their website on buying overseas. Worth a read, plus they do have a very good range of brokerage boats available.
We had looked at lots of boats before choosing the Lipari, and for us, we made the right choice. We love our boat, and have been very happy with the service and support from MHS.
Cats for me!!
LauraS, We were looking to buy a power cat and go cruising but were steered to sail cats by a friend who owned one. We still thank him. Our sailing experience, although not vast, was enough to make the plunge. Sourcing what we thought to be reasonable was a challenge. We were looking for up to 40 feet and under 200K. "you're insane" or words to that effect were heard often. We found it, we fixed it and we love it. Ours does have a laundry. Companion make a small almost all plastic (no rusties here!) unit which we installed in a de-commissioned head. Wouldn't want to attempt the bed sheets, but for smalls and the like, terrific. There's lots of points of difference with the various makes, so you need to define your wish list. As we are in the southern part of the country, being able to "button-up" (keep the weather out)and keep sailing was important, as was the ability to manage it single handed in the event of a mishap. As for the navigation aspect, there ar ecourse run by various organisations. A coxwain course is a good basic grounding. Good luck in your search. Walk onto as many as you can - you'll know when the right one is underfoot.
