Introduction
As an avid catamaran sailor, I have never understood why it is not a more popular sport. I tell people that I ride catamarans, some look at me as if I have started speaking a foreign language. Others ask all the usual questions imaginable that end the conversation with an exciting sounding wow. Doesn’t it scare you? The honest answer is yes, most of the time, but isn’t that why we play these sports, to be excited and scared at the same time? I love that feeling I get when my heart is beating in my throat and the adrenaline is pumping. hoping for a little more speed.
Catamaran racing, as you can probably guess, is a far cry from the laid-back images you may have in your head, casually sitting on a beautifully designed yacht in the deep blue sea, gliding through the waves, with the wind blowing in your hair. and a gin and tonic in your hand. If you want to go catamaran racing, be prepared to get really wet!
What is a catamaran?
For those of you who are not sure what a catamaran is and how it differs from any other sailing boat, the main difference with a catamaran is that it has two identical size hulls instead of one, which is why they are also known. like multihulls, not mono. -helmets. The hulls run parallel and are joined by two transverse beams, one in the middle of the ship on which the mast and sail are mounted, the second at the rear of the ship. The square area created between the hooves and the cross beams creates an area for the fabric platform known as a trampoline, although it sounds and looks like a gymnastics trampoline, you won’t get much height by jumping on it (most likely you will make a hole in that). Catamarans generally have two sails: the main sail and the jib, others have a third sail known as a Gennaker (this is a cross between a Genoa and a spinnaker) and it is mainly used only on racing boats.
Types of catamaran
The largest of the regatta catamarans are those that participate in the Copa América, these boats measure between 14 and 22 meters in length and can reach speeds of up to 45 knots (51 mph) and carry a crew of 11, the Copa América more It recently made news headlines due to the tragic death of English sailor Andrew Simpson while training in San Francisco and while the good publicity for the sport is a great loss to the sailing fraternity.
The Americas Cup boats are not the type of catamarans in this article, I am writing about the smaller and easier to use boats that are accessible to people who are on a budget to spend on an exciting new hobby, (as long as they want the sea and getting wet).
Most small racing catamarans are 4-6.5 meters long, a second hand one can be a pricey buy at around $ 800 or £ 500 for a boat that is definitely good enough to get you on the water. . .
Flying a helmet
If you have ever seen a monohull sailing at any speed, you will have seen that it tilts at about 45 degrees, the same happens on the catamaran, the only difference is that when the boat begins to tilt, one of the hulls rises out of the water until it is wonderfully balanced on a single hull, this requires a lot of skill to master, the art of flying a hull without capsizing (the technical term for when the boat falls over) when the boat is flying a boat is sometimes required to help balance the boat so it can get more speed, this is done by the crew standing on the side of the boat leaning back between 45 and 90 degrees to the hull, hanging while trapeze in a harness (a cable that comes from the top of the mast) and the higher the hull is raised in the water, the more vertical it remains; this can sometimes be a bewildering place when flying a helmet to its full height while bouncing off the waves, an image that I’m sure you see might seem totally inconceivable if you’re not familiar with the sport, and now you’re starting to think that I may have mixed sailing with the circus somewhere along the way.
The question is why catamaran racing?
Imagine this … you are sitting on one of the hulls, the sails are all perfectly trimmed as the boat slowly glides through the waves, the sun is shining and it is a glorious day, the wind begins to pick you up, you tighten the sails. , the hull starts to rise out of the water, your heart starts to beat faster, it glides towards the trapeze cable as the hull flies higher and higher, it is now almost vertical on the side of the hull, the boat now glides to All the way through the waves at a speed of knots, the boat has an angle of 45 degrees and leaves in its wake a visible trace of turbulence as it passes.
The only question now should be, why not?
