If you’re after a 30-footer that combines offshore ability with shallow draught, good performance and roomy accommodation, a Sagitta’s two hulls might fit the bill. David Harding explains why
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For some monohull sailors, multihulls are still from a different planet, or perhaps even a different galaxy.
Despite the increasing popularity and acceptance of catamarans as charter boats, many of the old preconceptions persist: multihulls don’t go to windward, they pitch and slam uncomfortably and, if you load them up for offshore sailing, they lose any speed advantage they might have had.
One man who has done more than most to prove that these notions are fallacies is Richard Woods. Involved with multihulls since the 1960s, he has designed dozens of catamarans (and a few trimarans) up to 69ft (21m). He has built and owned around 20 of them himself, and sailed tens of thousands of ocean and coastal miles in both his own designs and those of others.
Unlike some multihull enthusiasts, however, Richard hasn’t limited his activities to two or three hulls. He has raced and crossed oceans on monohulls – even designed a few – and continues to race performance dinghies. It’s fair to say his experience of sailing is quite extensive.
Until about 20 years ago, I used to pop down to Torpoint not infrequently to sail with Richard on his latest design. Torpoint, as any British multihull sailor will know, is the multihull Mecca of the UK – Millbrook Creek specifically. That’s where Pat and Pip Patterson ran the Multihull Centre and where Darren (Mr Dazcat) Newton and Simon Baker set up Multimarine before taking the Multihull Centre under their wing too. It used to be rare to see a single-hulled boat anywhere near Millbrook.
Millbrook is also where Richard lived when, in July 1991, he launched his new 30ft (9m) Sagitta catamaran. He and his then-wife and co-designer, Lilian, had spent two years building the wooden hulls as plugs, then making the moulds and finally building the first boat with materials that were cuttingedge in their day including biaxial and quadraxial glass and Divinycell foam.
Richard concentrated on the design work while Lilian did most of the building in a big tent in the back garden. At the bottom of
