{"id":9951,"date":"2009-12-19T00:00:37","date_gmt":"2009-12-19T05:00:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/setsail.com\/multihull-history-how-cruising-started-for-us\/"},"modified":"2009-12-19T18:13:11","modified_gmt":"2009-12-19T23:13:11","slug":"multihull-history-how-cruising-started-for-us","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/setsail.com\/multihull-history-how-cruising-started-for-us\/","title":{"rendered":"Multihull History – How Cruising Started For Us"},"content":{"rendered":"

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There has been a lot of dialog recently on SetSail about cruising multihulls. Since we were working on some old photos for the kids on this very subject we thought a blog on our early days of cruising might be in order. The photo above was taken 40 years ago. That’s Elyse in Steve’s arms. Two of us are standing on the 32′ D class cat Beowulf V<\/em>. This was our first “family cruiser” as evidenced by the guest aboard (Linda is considered crew).<\/p>\n

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\"Historic-catamarans-101\"<\/p>\n

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We’ll go into the antecedents of Beowulf V<\/em> in a later post. She was obviously a day sailor, but a good sea boat too as evidenced by this photo on the way to Ensenada during the roughest Ensenada Race in history (half the monohull dropped out and two ocean racing cats flipped). Beowulf V<\/em> made the trip without incident in 12 hours and 27 minutes, finishing a full eight hours ahead of the next boat. Sailmaker Ric Taylor is crewing. Nobody said a cruising boat has to be slow.<\/p>\n

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Beowulf V<\/em> was not really designed in the classic sense. She rather evolved from experience and a garage full of boat parts left over from years of C-class catamaran development and racing. The beams, daggerboards, and rudders were from a recently deceased C-cat called (surprise) Beowulf lV<\/em>.<\/p>\n

The sail was a cast off of Beowulf lll<\/em>, and the mast was the result of a trade with another C-cat owner.<\/p>\n

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The hulls were made in the tortured ply method used for Tornado cat hulls in those days. Skip Hawley, a Tornado builder, added 12 feet to his deck jig and we basically stretched the Tornado hull keeping the freeboard the same. She was 32′ LOA and 16 feet wide. The complete boat, including tools and ground tackle, weighed 732 pounds hanging from a single point scale.<\/p>\n

Note the wind sock on the committee boat upper left. True wind is about eight knots. We are broad reaching with a true wind angle of 150 degrees. The trim of main and reacher on this deep angle will tell you about boat speed, fifteen knots or just under twice wind speed. Apparent wind is so far forward the reacher is flown to leeward to open its slot with the main.<\/p>\n

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We always wanted the weather hull out of the water, so the crew, Norm Riise and Rick Taylor, are sitting inboard. Norm is braced with the main traveler control in hand. Steve is on the wire, steering with the best view of puffs and waves. Note the behind the back steering technique on the tiller extension.<\/p>\n

With the deeply V shaped bows Beowulf V<\/em> had excessive directional stability. Altering course up or down with puffs had to be done in advance of bow loading. Once she had accelerated any angle of attack changes on the rig had to be done with the sail adjustment rather than by altering course. The loads were so high that this was a slow process. If the skipper anticipated the required course change then speed would be maintained. But if you were late, and the traveler needed adjustment, speed would drop quickly. It took enormous concentration to keep her in the groove.<\/p>\n

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The photo above was taken during Pacific Multihull Association speed trials in 1971. That’s Jared Eaton on the wire with Steve. A new world speed record under sail was set during this run over a course of 815 meters, 31.7 MPH.The key was consistent wind strength and direction. No steering or sail adjustments were required.<\/p>\n

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Here is a close up of the bow during the record run. The deep immersion of the V’d shape locks the hull on course. This was not a good characteristic (and isn’t today either on mono or multihulls).<\/p>\n

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Speaking of records, in 1974 we upped the speed to 35.59 MPH. Norm Riise (middle) and Hobie Alter (forward) were along for the ride. This doesn’t sound so fast now when windsurfers do 50MPH or more with regularity. But it seemed pretty hot in 1974!<\/p>\n

\"Historic-catamarans-105\"<\/p>\n

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A growing family brought the need for more cruising space. Beowulf Vl<\/em> was the result. Note the rocker and freeboard in this launch hoist photo at Cabrillo Beach Yacht Club in San Pedro Harbor. Rather than have reserve buoyancy, Vl<\/em> was designed with all her required floatation at the waterline. She was optimized for sailing on the leeward hull, and driving that hull through rather than over the waves. A key design element was steering control at speed.<\/p>\n

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That’s Beowulf Vl<\/em> builder Rob Sjoestedt holding her off. Rob built the deck house and hulls in three months. The foam on the hull bottoms was faired by Mickey Munoz. Structural engineering was by Jerry Magarian, and Jack Jenkins helped with the metalwork.<\/p>\n

All hull sections were semi-circular for minimum wetted surface.<\/p>\n

We used Norm Riise’s VPP program, run during quiet periods on a mainframe computer at Jet Propulsion Labs, for parametric games on the various design trade offs (possibly the first instance of VPP use for yacht design). Another of Norm’s programs was used to shape the hulls. This was in 1974.<\/p>\n

\"Historic-catamarans-107\"<\/p>\n

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Inspection day. Aside from a nice family cruiser we desired to race with the big guys. ORCA controlled the offshore racing in Southern California, and we were anxious to try our hand at official distance race records.<\/p>\n

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This is the entire board or ORCA giving us an inspection to see if we were fit to race with them. We had life lines, auxiliary power, a full cruising interior, and required safety gear.<\/p>\n

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Vic Stern’s biggest concern was the size of the Portapotti seat. In spite of Vic’s concerns we were given conditional approval.<\/p>\n

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Beowulf Vl was 38 feet long, 18 feet wide, and weighed in at 2114 pounds in ocean racing\/cruising trim (just 1700 pounds in day sailing trim). The hulls weighed 375 pounds each, were solid foam to the load waterline, and segmented into eight watertight compartments.<\/p>\n

That is Norm Riise in the shades. We made the mistake of pushing off the dock and reaching down the channel while the ORCA board was still on hand. A new meeting was convened and we were put on probation for a year, theoretically eligible for elapsed time records, but not handicap results<\/p>\n

\"Historic-catamarans-112\"<\/p>\n

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Linda, Sarah (middle) and Elyse (right) ready to go cruising.<\/p>\n

Off the wind Beowulf Vl<\/em> would average twice wind speed until about 12\/13 knots TWS. She could be easily steering in the puffs making it possible to average 20+ knots in 12 knots of breeze. We would regularly run over to the Isthmus at Catalina for a hamburger in 45 minutes from Los Angeles harbor. The return averaged 39 minutes (19 nautical miles). The mainsail traveler control was always hand held.<\/p>\n

At the time we felt this was a big, relative safe cruising boat, in the right hands (ours). We’re not so sure we’d take our two babes to Catalina today in a boat that would capsize in seven knots of wind.<\/p>\n

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Elyse and Raggedy Ann show off our “great room”. We had two bunks, a stove and ice box, and the aforementioned Portapotti. What more could you ask?<\/p>\n

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The beginning of the end of one life and the start of another. Beowulf Vl<\/em> broad reaching after the start of the 1975 Ensenada Race.<\/p>\n

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Compare this photo of a pressed bow to the earlier photo of Beowulf V<\/em> during the 1971 speed trials. It is easy to see why Vl<\/em> was so easily steered. We think the Alinghi<\/em> designers have stolen our bow (just kidding).<\/p>\n

We are averaging 26 knots here, flying our jib top of 300 square feet (the main is just 500 square feet). We covered the course in ten hours and fifteen minutes, breaking Aikane’s 20 year old official record by four hours.<\/p>\n

A combination of racing politics and an interest in cruising kindled by this yacht gave us the impetus to sell our construction business, buy a leadmine (50 foot monohull) and go cruising. The rest, as they say, is history.<\/p>\n

Post Script:<\/p>\n

\"Beowulf-lV-100\"<\/p>\n

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Beowulf lV<\/em> is an interesting footnote in multihull design history. She was built on a Bob Riise designed C-cat hull and built by Bob Noble of six ounce boat cloth on either side of 1\/4″ end grain balsa. As a C-cat, she was 25 feet long, 14 feet wide, and carried 300 feet of sail, all rule maximums. Wing masts were coming into play and we were trying out a different approach. We used an eight inch diameter thin walled aluminum pipe as a spar, with two sails forming an asymmetric airfoil.<\/p>\n

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Daggerboards were asymmetric, NACA laminar series sections, canted to provide vertical lift to the hull leeward.<\/p>\n

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The clews of the two sails were attached to a bar which rotated, automatically flattening the windward sail and making the leeward sail more full.<\/p>\n

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The daggerboards did provide lift, but had two drawbacks. They should have been further forward to help keep the bow up. The bigger problem was tactical. With just two crew the boards were awkward to deal with during starting sequences and mark roundings (the weather board had to be raised).<\/p>\n

In a straight line the rig and boards on occasion provided astonishing performance. But we never learned to keep her consistently in the groove. Beowulf lV<\/em> met an untimely demise during a Yachting Magazine<\/em> One-Of-A-Kind regatta on Lake Michigan. She pitchpoled in a northeaster and was a total loss. Her remains provided the basis for Beowulf V<\/em>.<\/p>\n

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    There has been a lot of dialog recently on SetSail about cruising multihulls. Since we were working on …Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9951","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-dashew-blog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/setsail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9951"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/setsail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/setsail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/setsail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/setsail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9951"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/setsail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9951\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/setsail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9951"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/setsail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9951"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/setsail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9951"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}