A catamaran (from Tamil kattu "to tie" and maram "wood, tree") is a type of boat (or occasionally ship) consisting of two hulls joined by a frame. Catamarans can be sail- or engine- powered. The catamaran was the invention of the paravas, an aristocratic fishing community in the southern coast of Tamil Nadu, India. Catamarans were used by the ancient Tamil Chola dynasty as early as 5th century AD for moving their fleets to conquer such Southeast Asian regions as Burma, Indonesia and Malaysia. Catamarans are a relatively recent design of boat for both leisure and sport sailing, although they have been used for millennia in Oceania, where Polynesian catamarans allowed seafaring Polynesians to settle the world's most far-flung islands. Catamarans have been met by a degree of scepticism from some sailors accustomed to more "traditional" designs. |
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History
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The English adventurer and pirate William Dampier, travelling around the world in the 1690s in search of business opportunities, once found himself on the southeastern coast of India, in Tamil Nadu on the Bay of Bengal. He was the first to write in English about a kind of vessel he observed there. It was little more than a raft made of logs. "On the coast of Coromandel," he wrote in 1697, "they call them Catamarans. These are but one log, or two, sometimes of a sort of light wood … so small, that they carry but one man, whose legs and breech are always in the Water."
The name came from the Tamil language of India. But the catamaran as we know it came from a different part of the world, the South Pacific. English visitors applied the Tamil name catamaran to the swift, stable sail and paddle boats made out of two widely separated logs and used by Polynesian natives to get from one island to another.
It was too good an idea to leave to the Polynesians. In the 1870s an American, Nathanael Herreshoff, began to build catamarans to his own design. The speed and stability of these catamarans soon made them popular pleasure craft in America.
In the twentieth century, the catamaran inspired an even more popular sailboat. A Southern California maker of surfboards, Hobie Alter, came up with the idea for "a small catamaran that you could easily take out into the water and sail and take back in." In 1967 he produced the first 250-pound Hobie Cat 14, and two years later the larger and even more successful Hobie 16. That boat remains in production, with more than 100,000 made in the past three decades.
Presently the catamaran market is the fastest growing segment of the entire boating industry.
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Although the principles of sailing are the same for both catamarans and mono hulls, there are some "peculiarities" to sailing catamarans. For example:- Catamarans can be harder to tack (turn through the wind). Because they are lighter in proportion to their sail size, they have less momentum to carry them through the turn when they are head to wind. Correct use of the jib sail is often essential in successfully completing a tack without ending up stuck in irons (pointing dead into the wind and sailing backwards).
- They have a higher average speed.
- All boats sail faster when travelling in certain directions relative to the wind with the best speeds typically being achieved when heading away from the wind at about 135 degrees. This effect is much more noticeable with catamarans, even to the extent that it can be more efficient to jibe ('tack' downwind) in zig zags, rather than heading directly away from the wind as a mono hull would.
Catamarans are less likely to capsize in the classic 'beam-wise' manner but often have a tendency to 'pole-axe' (or 'pitchpole') instead - where the leeward (downwind) bow sinks into the water and the boat 'trips' over forward, leading to a capsize. Teaching for new sailors is usually carried out in mono hulls as they are thought easier to learn to sail, a mixture of all the differences mentioned probably contributes to this. Catamarans, and multihulls in general, are normally faster than single-hull boats for four reasons: - each hull of a catamaran is (typically) thinner in cross section than those of mono hulls;
- catamarans are lighter due to the fact there is no keel counterweight;
- catamarans have a wider beam (the distance from one side of the boat to the other), which makes them more stable and therefore able to carry more sail area per unit of length than an equivalent mono hull;
- the greater stability means that the sail is more likely to stay upright in a gust, drawing more power than a monohull's sail which is more likely to lean over.
Catamarans are especially favourable in coastal waters, where the open spaces permit the boat to reach and maintain its maximum speed. Catamarans make good cruising and long distance boats: The Race (around the world, in 2001) was won by the giant catamaran Club Med skippered by Grant Dalton. It went round the earth in 62 days at an average speed of eighteen knots.
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Catamaran designs
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Popular small racing catamaran sailboats include:
- The Hobie cats (especially the 16-foot long Hobie 16, as well as many other designs including 14, 17, 18, and 20 ft models);
- Nacras;
- Prindles;
- International A-Class (open design; length 5.49 m (18 ft), beam 2.3 m (7 ft 6.5 in), weight 75 kg, sail 13.94 m? (150 ft?));
- Formula classes (F16, F18, F20);
- Dart 15 and Dart 18;
- Tornado, Olympic class racing catamaran.
Small sailing catamarans that are mass-produced, trailerable, and can be beached on sandy shores are commonly called "beach cats".
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A recent development in catamaran design has been the introduction of the power catamaran. The 'power' version incorporates the best features of a motor yacht and combines it with the traditional sailing characteristics of a multihull. Usually, the power catamaran is devoid of any sailing apparatus as demonstrated by one of the top-selling models in the United States, the Lagoon Power 43. This boat has now been introduced to a number of charter fleets in the Caribbean and the Mediterranean and is becoming an increasingly common sight.
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Mega catamarans
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One of the biggest developments over the last decade in the yachting arena has been the rise of the super catamaran - a multihull over 60 feet in length which come in semi-custom and custom designs.
Various international boat manufacturers are leading the way in this area including Yapluka, Sunreef, Lagoon and Privilege. A catamaran over 145 feet in length is reportedly under construction on the Eastern Seaboard of the United States.
The emergence of the super or mega catamaran is a relatively new event which is akin to the rise of the mega or super yacht which was used to describe the huge growth in luxury, large motor boats in the French Riviera and Floridian Coast.
One of the reasons for increased mega catamaran construction was The Race, a circumnavigation challenge which departed from Barcelona, Spain, on New Year's Eve, 2000. Due to the prize money and prestige associated with this event, four new catamarans (and two highly modified ones) over 100' in length were built to compete. The largest, PlayStation, owned by Steve Fossett, was 125' long and had a mast which was 147' above the water. Virtually all of the new mega catamaranss were built of pre-preg carbon fiber for strength and the lowest possible weight.
It takes up to one year to complete construction of one of these super catamarans and represent state-of-the-art design breakthroughs in the catamaran sector.
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