Kankama said..
Oh my god - such stupidity shown here. Now don't get me wrong I LOVE trimarans. I got my first at 15 years old, my second at 21, lived on board that and cruised it for 2 years with a growing family and was designing a 40ft version for the next boat. My best friend asked me to build him a trimaran which I did. As I was drawing my 40ft tri (it had so far taken about 2 years to design) even my best friend who was also a tri lover said I would be happier on a cat - Blasphemy! So I drew the accomodation plan of a 35ft cat - within minutes I had more than twice the room of the tri, with greater payload, same performance, easier construction, less bea, less cost and more resale. Needless to say - even this tri lover built the cat.
What the Bogan doesn't get is that Lagoons are not the ultimate expression of multi design. For some reason he thinks if a Lagoon can't sail he needs a tri. This is so stupid it beggars belief. He could have got a Schionning, or Grainger, or Pescott, or Outremer, or Chamberlin cat. Any good Aussie desigmed and built cat.
I predict he will find the Dragonfly is incredibly hard to live on compared to the cat. It won't take anywhere as much payload, it will be less comfy underway, will be twitchier to sail and on top of this - not able to be driven hard enough in its overloaded cruising state to go fast anyway. Our 31ft racing tri cruised slower than our non racing but performance oriented cat. The Dragonfly will be dragging her bum and going slow but this is the main thing - if he does want his crew to stay on board after a couple of days - he will not be able to push the tri at all to get peak performance.
The other thing people don't get about tris is that the do not allow you to get away from each other. The cabin sole is probably about 40cm wide. This means EVERY time you want to move you have to ask your partner to move. My wife and I were in our 20s when we did but it got old very very quickly with others. It is great to go aboard a mono or cat and be able to move without needing to orchestrate the move with the rest of the crew. You are going to hate each other in a few weeks unless you are so in love but they don't tell you that in a brochure
The silly thing with wing masts and tense ropes in the cockpit and loud banging interiors and awfully light boats, is that they make you slow down. In order to live on our tri, we had to throttle her back almost all the time. We throttle our cat back over 15 knots upwind and 18 downwind. Otherwise my family would mutiny and get off. Performance boats need to be able to do serious speeds in choppy water with a minium of effort and motion. And you don't get that from a carbon tri over specced on sails and masts that is dragging her bum because she is heavy. Real performance comes from getting up to 8 knots quickly in nice light winds. You don't need a carbon tri to do this.
THis is a great example of following a silly deep dive on the net instead of looking around and talking to people who pass you in nice boats. Well, it's his money to burn, and I think he is doing a good job of getting through it fast. The best way to get real performance is not to go carbon but to leave stuff behind. Make the boat lighter, cheaper and simple by keeping it simple - saves money and improves speed. Tris are a great buy for the singlehander or couple (you get all the shallow draft and speed advantages of a cat at cheap rates) , but get an Aussie one - a Simpson Liahona, a Chamberlin Cirro, or a Yank Harris is fine. But don't buy a tri because you think you will go faster - you won't.
He's a Harley Davison rider and fast car owner. All those performance boats you mention probably have a 3-4 year wait. Danny likes to buy new stuff of the shelf not waiting around for **** to happen. He is also successful business man and will use this as he's next platform to send him into retirement in his 50s.
