Would you or wouldn’t you? Buy a catamaran, that is. Most people fall into one camp or the other – there rarely seems to be any middle ground. I’ve never really understood why. Granted, catamarans do have a fairly distinctive look about them but that aside they offer a simple set of pros and cons that any potential boat buyer would do well to consider. On the plus side they nearly always use less fuel than a monohull, they are more stable, they rarely slam, they cruise comfortably at any speed from 5-20 knots and they offer bigger deck space, more cabins and better privacy. On the downside, finding a marina berth can be awkward, the cabins are often rather narrow (on smaller models) and they are more expensive to build and therefore buy. Powercat builders usually counter this by arguing that their 40/50/60ft models have the same space as 50/65/80ft monohulls, but a lot of that space isn’t that useful, so I’d put the true gain at around 10-15%. Even factoring this into account, they still make a lot of sense in an increasingly fuel-conscious world, which is why we have tested three of the most interesting new powercats on the market in this issue, from a 40ft family flybridge to a high-tech solar supercat via a revolutionary ‘monocat’ that claims to offer all the benefits of a multi-hull without any of the downsides. Turn to p79 to find out what it is and how well it works, you might just find yourself switching camp after all.
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