Its also not a surprise that people who buy a performance catamaran typically work much harder to go fast than the average Lagoon Leopard FP etc. Switch crew and then we would have some interesting data.😅😅

SLV AND GWTW ARE PERFECT EXAMPLES .

Thank you

You have to be super care miss using a meter on some one's boat and condemning based on any meter alone or inexperience. How would you like it if someone with a meter but no experience using it came to your boat and did this, no doubt word would travel. This has some serious downsides you need to consider. Welcome to youtube

I just bought this exact model today! Either a coincidence, or the algorithm knows about my amazon account.

This is mostly downwind sailing - if it was more allround - or tacking - typical to get out of a lee shore situation; the daggercats would be even better. Then its the trimarans...

The issue is the cost!

Having done 8 Atlantic crossings on Outremers, I will say they are fun to sail! Four were 5x's...and it's a lot of boat for a couple to handle. My happiest clients were the ones in the 51's...a size far better suited to a cruising couple. Yes, longer is faster but everything is bigger and heavier and more expensive.

Just found this video. Nice work and great review of length vs. "performance". Thanks

Fountain Pajot's don't seem to do much crossings at all in comparison with Lagoon !! Interesting !

It's always painful reading comments on videos like this. It reminds me of the worst habits of car, motorcycle, and airplane comparisons where if you disagree you must be malicious.

Are there any catamarans that are a larger version of a Maine Cat 38? The MC38 has comfortable accommodations, all the necessary equipment, designed to sail solo, but without all the weight bloat of luxury cats. The designer built the MC38 to be efficient, fast, safe, with space for five, maybe six for short voyages. It is a lightweight boat at 4t lightship, and fully loaded just under 6.15t, allowing 4,300 lbs of people and gear. A 60' build with similar principals to the MC38 would be comfortable, fast, but because of the added length would really make it rip. Speed is fun and exhilaration, but more importantly speed is safety, allowing a captain to stay ahead of or avoid nasty weather and carry less sail and still move right along. If anybody know of a larger boat with similar characteristics please let me know.

It also comes down to how often would you rather sail then motor. Light wind performance is the primary difference and argument for performance cats for me. Are they allowed to motor in the ARC? I think so, so that's another likely factor reducing the dispersion. Plus with a light fast cat, you reduce sail and stress on the boat sooner and still move at hull speed - that to me is comfortable sailing.

I'm guessing less than 1% of current boat owners could actually afford an Outremer 5X. Yes big performance cats sail faster, better upwind with daggers, get you out of storms blah blah blah. I'm sure all these guys that prefer a performance cat over a condo-maran would prefer a Ferrari over a minivan. Isn it better to buy a used leopard and actually go sailing? Or hang out at the bar and tell everyone about how one day your gonna get a fast Outremer/ Gunboat everyone will be so jealous?

I’m selling my boat so looking for ways to ensure I’m selling a safe and reliable unit. The boat is aluminum. So I guess I don’t need to do this test?

You need to know how to use it though. It takes Surveyors years gathering experience to know they are seeing. I am one, so I know.

Hello, Thank you very much for this very interesting and very well documented video. I was wondering if you have any idea when it comes to sale upwind ? Thank you. L

"Topsides" - It's a common mistake to refer to the topsides as being the deck, cabin house, cockpit horizontal surfaces of a boat. THIS IS WRONG ! Topsides are the sides of the hull from the waterline to the gunwales as opposed to the bottom or underbody below the waterline. So many people get this wrong and it makes a big difference, especially when surveying any boat. Look it up.

I think you disqualify yourself by arbitrarily disqualifying fast cats which are good cruising boats... and not taking in account the fact each boat used engine or not.

Never seen a surveyor (or anybody in the boating world) use a moisture meter like THAT! $50 is a guaranteed POS

Thanks for the video, great explanations :)

Brand?

Great tip, thanks.

I commend you for finding this data set and bringing a quantitative approach to comparing the boats. I really like your conclusions. Your way of dealing with different years is simple and reasonable. I do have a few suggestions on your analysis. Rather than plotting length as a function of days, I suggest interchanging the variables. Days should be on the vertical axis and should be the dependent variable of the trend line, since length is a cause of days rather than the other way around. I also suggest using a multiple regression (rather than the univariate trend lines) where you could add dummies for the boat brand and even account for year in the model.

Great video ! Thanks for sharing

A very interesting analysis. I am a theoretical physicist that has take all the useful math courses. In addition, I have done a many similar analysis of what I call apples, oranges, and pears. You can compare these things provided you use some of the analysis leveling techniques that you did. Great job of analysis, from a guy who has done a lot of analysis. The second point is that the US Navy has for a long time known the length of boat is the limiting factor for speed. For a given boat length you will get a geometric increase in power vs. speed. Then there is a practical maximum speed for a given length. Thus, no big surprise, the largest ships in volume are aircraft carriers, but they are also the longest ships in the navy. Again, no big surprise all the aircraft carriers speeds are classified information, BUT it is very well known that the aircraft carrier are easily the fastest ships in the navy. Why? The US Navy has even developed formula that approximates speed, horsepower and length. Thus your analysis point that a narrower cat is a bit faster, but not that much faster than the fat hulled boats holds high credibility from the US Navy POV. One of the most critical issues is the type of sails was not covered. For many years Dacron sails were hands down a clear speed advantage over cotton sails. Today, that speed nod goes to properly designed carbon fiber sails. Thus if you are up for the extra money, carbon fiber sails will make a stogy performing boat faster. From your analysis, take a long Lagoon say 60 ft. add better and more kinds of sails that are carbon fiber in the right places, then the spacious Lagoons look even better. The reason for this is the shape of the sail determines much of its power delivered. Flatter sails make much better "wings to fly." Lift is the term in wings, but sails are identical to wings on airplanes. Wing shape is a known critical factor since the 1930s when NASA tested airfoil shapes extensively. There has been no improvement in airfoils other than laminar flow wings. Another factor not in your analysis is mast height and the resulting increase in sail area. But there are significant limits to those tall masted boats. They are much harder to sail fast and keep upright. Thus, the issue of safety must also be considered. You did touch on this factor, but additional emphasis on safe design needs to be considered. The more sail area, and the higher it goes (faster winds are up higher), then the safety factor drops dramatically. Parallel to this safety issue is the skill requirements needed to sail safely. The performance boats require much better sailing skills. Again, a great analysis with very practical application. Thank you for a job well done.

Can you use this on the floor/hull of a boat while in the water. My core is only 1/2". With inner and outer skins it's between 3/4 - 1" thick and I don't have a liner. So if I put that on the floor with boat in the water, it's only 1" from water. Would this likely give a false reading? Would this work with carbon fiber skins or would they conduct and give a false reading?

Thank you for putting out this info.

It is very surprising that the F-39 tri was so slow. This should be a fairly fast boat. I have a smaller 31' tri (F-9A) and the fat cats are no competition for it. However, I've never sailed with them over longer than a 2 day race so maybe the F-39 was drastically slowed by excess weight, inexperienced crew, lack of sails, or malfunctions. Even with some extra weight though, I would not have expected the smaller fat cats to pull away like they did. That is a very nice looking F-boat.

This info is very important to potential boat buyers, and very few are putting it out there. Thank you for the data crunching. Hopefully you will do more of this with more recent ARC results and other events if possible.. I'd really like to see data comparing mid sized fat cats. Like Leopard 44 vs Leopard 45 vs Lagoon 450 vs Lagoon 42 vs FP 44/45. Maybe there is performance info compiled on these but I haven't seen it.

I guess it comes down to lighter air situations. The performance oriented boats can actually sail in 10kt air while the fat cats really struggle. These low wind times are also when the seas are normally flatter and conditions can be beautiful. Great for a performance cat, unless you end up carrying extra weight for cruising (or just because you are a packrat). The extra weight affects the performance multi far more than it affects a fat cat. Living on a boat is already a spartan existence. The farther up the performance designs you go, the more spartan it becomes. So how do you want to live and what will you sacrifice for it?

Seems to me, the only real reason to shoot for fast is getting away from storms, but they're still under 30 mph and will hardly be able to outrun serious stuff. AND, they'll haveta slow down and reef up as conditions git squirrely. Boat solidity and comfort oughta come first.

Not a good analysis of true sailing preforms. The only reason Lagoons raise to the upper end is because they're pigs that don't sail well and rather than sail, their motored.

You really should have included the eliminated boats as well in the analysis. This seems biased.

Thanks for the great explanation and demonstration!

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What about HH, Gunboat ... ?

"You're gonna need a bigger boat". I'm am floored that a Bali 5.4 (what I consider the ultimate condo-cat) made a passing among the fastest of all boats.

great idea.. glad i found this today.

So you made a video about how to do something and the video shows us how to do nothing. Got it.

This is just about worthless. Anyone can make an estimate on boat speed based on waterline length. Duh! Of course longer waterline length will be faster, and also safer. What people want to know is how these boats stack up against each other sailing upwind, in various wind conditions. Can they sail upwind in light air or do they give up and motor. Take a look at the Leopard 58, super comfortable, and the factory videos show water coming out the back---the motors are on because they suck sailing. The earlier Leopard 62 has almost no bridgedeck clearance. Now consider sailing east in the doldrums in the Pacific. Most of these boat could not do it. An Outremer or Gunboat could. Speed is enormously important for light air sailing upwind. Slamming factor. What is the bridgedeck clearance? Tradewind sailing downwind? While you have data, it is not the sort of data we need. Everyone likes their comfort. It will cost for comfort and performance. There is no escaping that. Kudos for pulling this information together. It was well done. Until we see some upwind sailing numbers, I'd say, all this really means is motor like hell offshore when the wind is light for most production cats.

This is my boat, there are many like it, but this one is mine.

What is the brand of meter ?

I bought one of these a couple months ago, and it has saved me from having to get several surveys on boats I thought were good. Similar to what he said, I'm finding very few, actually only one (not for sale), dry boats from the 70s and 80s under $30k. Sadly, most of these boats are junk. One other point a surveyor told me - just because it's dry doesn’t mean it's solid. It could have had moisture years ago and then dried out, but left rotten wood. So you should still do the sounding test with the hammer to insure the boat is solid. I'm having a tough time finding a good sailboat😒

Nice video. Great advice and also about the anti fouling paint.

Can you clarify, are you referring to moisture in a balsa or plywood core or can you get moisture in solid fibreglass?

What’s the part #

extremely usefull analisys... thanks¡¡¡¡¡¡

I think you re missing the point here. Performance catamarans are not about being faster, but about getting the vessel moving in light winds instead of motoring, and sailing the direction you want to go, pointing higher to the wind, without putting on the motor to tack. Taking the ARC as comparison takes out the field where performance catamarans have their advantages. That you are comparing usable space at the end seems to underline your bias, since it got nothing to do with speed. If you took all that analysis on an upwind course in comparison aswell, would actually be very very interesting.

Great video. We very much came to a similar conclusion, longer is faster, and comfort to us is everything. (living on board for 12+ yrs) But we see a youtube trend towards "performance" and see people flip over backward to have that kind of boat. But knowing that we spend 80% of our time either at anchor or in a marina, it does not make sense to us to even look at a performance boat. To us livability and customization (making the living space we want ) is a top priority, and also the quality of details, and then the bigger the better..... that is..... over and above 70 ft it becomes difficult to maintain single-handed sailing.. And then when we possibly cross the Atlantic that one or two times in a lifetime... we may have more days of fun doing so in comfort vs someone with a spartan-like high-end performance boat that must be sailed on edge, with the constant risk of overpowering and breaking things. Meanwhile, we will enjoy it in all comfort and toast to the decision.