You forgot to mention "Copyright 1978."  There have been a few advances in the last 25
years.  But you wouldn't know about that.  And Street is hardly the person to use as an
authority on modern boats.

As for insurance, Rod Gibbons wrote 10 years later that production cats with positive
flotation and a good safety record (including Prouts, Catalacs, Catfishers, etc) receive
the most favorable rates from Lloyds, because they have been found to be the lowest risk
boats.  My insurance rate, relative to replacement value, went down considerably when I
got a cat.

BTW, Piver and Nichols both died in small homemade plywood trimarans, not modern glass
cruising cats.  I'm not sure of the details of Nichols' death, but Piver was using a
borrowed boat, and his friends were at the dock begging not to go in such a poorly built
boat.  But it was his design, so as a matter of pride he sailed and was never seen again.

Remember, this thread started when you claimed tris were greatly superior to cats - you
just seemed to disprove it.

-jeff


"Simple Simon" <Pieman@Mincemeat.com> wrote in message
news:OTydnTDT7eXLZ5OiRTvUqg@terranova.net...
> Here is irrefutable proof of the unsuitability of multihulls
> for world cruising.  This is proof even lubbers understand
> because it involves insurance which is something all lubbers
> know and apparently love.
>
>                      **********************
>
> ". . . one can easily see why most experienced yachtsmen
> have a rather low opinion of multi-hulls generally, and why
> many members of Lloyd's Underwriters in particular have
> a very dim view of insuring multi-hulls for offshore voyages.
> It is worthy of note that as of this writing, we find Tom Follett,
> certainly one of the more experienced multi-hull sailors still
> with us, sitting up in Nova Scotia having a "lead mine"
> (a mono-hull with an extremely heavy lead keel) built for
> cruising.
>
> ". . . Many experienced multi-hull sailors today have a trapdoor
> in the wing section underneath the liferaft so that they can launch
> it even if the boat is completely upside down - not a bad idea,
> but it says little of their confidence in their own craft.
>
> " . . . Finally, for the last five years I have continually asked
> offshore multi-hull enthusiasts to name five experienced offshore
> cruisers with a fair amount of offfshore racing under their belts
> who have switched permanently from mono-hulls to multi-hulls.
> At this point I have yet to locate a single person with those qualifications,
> much less five.
>
> "It cannot be denied that the loss of life at sea on multi-hulls has
> been horrendous. Two of the leading designers, Arthur Piver and
> Hedley Nichols, went down with their own boats, and in one period
> of eighteen months, seventeen people were killed in the waters
> between Australia and New Zealand. No one really knows the total
> number lost in multi-hulls over the years.
>
> " . . . no one has ever heard of a single multi-hull that has capsized
> 180 degrees and come back up unaided. They have ultimate
> stability when they are upside down.
>
> "The (stability) curves of the catamaran and trimaran are wonderful
> at low angles of heel, but drop off sharply as the critical point is
> approached. Literally hundreds of mono-hulls have been knocked
> flat to 90 degrees or slightly beyond and have come back up with
> relatively little damage. Thousands of mono-hulls have taken 70
> degree knockdowns and come back up with nothing worse than
> a bad scare to the crew. But a catamaran or trimaran has little or
> no chance of recovering from even a fifty degree knockdown."
>
>
> --Donald M. Street
>
> reproduced without permission of author from
> "The Ocean Sailing Yacht II"
>
>
>