Issue 14: Sept/Oct 2000
Good Old Boat magazine is about cruising sailboats 10 years old and older. When we started this magazine we decided to define a cruising sailboat as any boat with a head, galley, and bunks. In the short time we’ve been publishing, we’ve tried to keep this niche as broad as possible. We’ve covered fiberglass boats, steel boats, and wooden boats.
In this issue, we’re offering you some very good multihull content. How many hulls should a good old boat have? As many as you want. Author Charles Kanter didn’t seek us out. We had to find him and tell him what we wanted. We specifically said, “Please don’t waste any time on the safety issues.”
I’ll lay out our editorial philosophy on that topic right here, and I won’t waste much ink either. Multihulls are different from monohulls and have advantages and disadvantages. They are safe enough when they are used in the manner for which they are intended to be used. That’s all that may be said of monohulls as well. Anything more edifying needs the comparison of specific design characteristics among specific boats. The time is long past to put away the generalities associated with these design types — one versus the other.
We sail a monohull and love her. But I read Chris White’s The Cruising Multihull years ago, and many of the ideas in the book have stayed with me ever since. In my fantasies I sometimes see us in a boat very much like Chris White’s Atlantic 42 catamaran. Other times I see myself going to Ted Brewer or Dave Gerr for a fleet custom monohull. Karen has been smitten with the Ian Farrier F-27 for many years.
This hobby is woven almost completely of emotions supported by a framework of sound engineering, design, and manufacturing. If it’s possible to be reasonably rational in selecting a boat for yourself, perhaps you should start with what you want to do, where you want to go, and a target budget. Then look at any boat with a head, galley, and bunks. Choose the number of hulls last.
Thank you to Sailrite Enterprises, Inc., for providing free access to back issues of Good Old Boat through intellectual property rights. Sailrite.com
