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Combining A Need For Speed With Sheer Joy: Catamarans
They are an ancient craft. Perhaps even thousands of years old. The word originates way back in India, the Tamil words "kattu" for tie and the word "maram" for wood, which evolved in ancient polynesia to catu and maram. In essense, to lash to pieces of wood together. These craft were responsible for the vast reaches of ocean that the intrepid Polynesian adventurers crossed in their relentless search for new land and green pastures. Tahiti, Bora Bora, Fiji, Hawaii - all colonized and settled thanks to the catamaran. The English seafarers made note of the oddity of the craft. But it was little more than a novelty item to them. Centuries passed. A surf punk in Hawaii (ok, an OLDER surf punk) created a vessel called a Pacific Cat or P-Cat. The year? 1960's. I'm sure it wasn't the first, but it caught on in Hawaii, and developed a little following. That might have been the end of things but for a California surfer named Hobie Alter. He was so entranced by the P-Cat, he started to think up ways to improve upon it. Once he stumbled upon the idea of the asymmetrical hull design (eliminating the need for costly and maintenance-intensive daggerboards), the modern multihull production sailboat was born. The Hobie 14 wasn't the greatest of performers. It didn't "point" well, into the wind. It had trouble tacking, thanks to it's cat rig (single sail, no jib) design. Hobie fixed all that with the newer, longer Hobie 16. Including a jib. The sailing world has never been the same. There are now dozens upon dozens of advanced catamaran designs and literally hundreds of thousands of boats worldwide owing their design ancestry to these pioneering craft that settled the Pacific Ocean so long ago. The "Little Americas Cup" is a far lesser known race of the titans - gigantic catamarans (C Class) approx. 8 meters in length, that tear up Australian waters like the behemoth ocean racing cigarette hulls (ok, not quite as fast, but oh so sexy and quiet). Hobie went on to develop more (and even more bizarrely designed) watercraft, including the famous Hobie Trifoiler - which has set the sailing world speed record at or near some 50 knots! FIFTY!! Think on that for a moment. While they heyday of the Hobie 16 and it's many copycat cousins has come and gone (I got to experience it in all it's glory for many years on Mission Bay, San Diego - P-Cats and Hobie 18's), there remains a vast contingent of near-fanatical multihull aficionados worldwide, who regularly leave the boring, landlubber world behind to take their craft out "flying" - a term that means to lift the windward hull out of the water, preferably while precariously attached "on the wire" - aka in a "Trapeze" for moveable ballast. If anyone ever invites you aboard one of these classic weapons of pure fun, TAKE THEM UP ON IT! |
The Hobie Trifoiler
| The Beach Cats
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May, 2012
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