Hi all

Went down to the Marina today to show my wife this boat www.boatsalestas.com.au/sail-multihulls/simpson-36-private-island/211588/ that i have been watching on the net for a while and the Kim from Boat Sales Tas was on board showing someone else over the boat

Asked if we could have a look as well as we have not had any experience on Cats and it was nice but a bit small for what we would want in our next boat (contemplating buying a live aboard)

While looking over it wondered what it would be like sailing a Cat in stead of a mono and whether I would feel a bit disjointed from the boat

Has anyone one the forum had any experience sailing both and just wondering what your thoughts are

Regards Don

Gday Don

Private Island is not really a Simpson. She is an Elite 11 that has been lengthened. Elites were flop moulded and then cut and twist Cloud 9s. Simpson had nothing to do with the design but he designed the Cloud 9.

As to cats in general, I love cruising them. For me, and remember this is an opinion, cats are fab for most cruising. You walked past ours to get to Private Island. It averages about 8 knots on the chart, we averaged about 10 knots for about 12 hours when we crossed the strait, all under autopilot.

A nice cat will allow you to go faster than an equivalent mono but that is not only why I like cats. We can push Kankama up creeks. We have spent 1 week in Hill inlet, 10 days in North Zoe, and don't get stressed about shallow water. There are no design compromises to get a capable cruising cat to draw 50cm - ours does.

Another thing a good cat will allow you is privacy. Friends/family come on board and they have their own space so that we don't get sick of looking at each other. We also have plenty of space to spread out.

I like staying upright as well, the motion is quicker but if you get a well designed one, it won't hobbyhorse excessively. Our cat has beaten to windward for hundreds of miles to get south from Lizard et al and she does it really nicely.

On our cat we take lots of toys and the boat is really fun. The stern steps allow us to jump off the boat and clamber back up easily. The large back deck gives easy dinghy storage, huge solar panel area and space for twin sea kayaks, all safely stored when underway. Our kids loved having birthday parties on the cat, and they would fill the boat up with friends and frolic for the day.

As for feeling disconnected from the boat, I get it. Our boat has less feel than a mono which is not great for racing - but great for cruising. I don't want the heel, the spray, the tug on the wheel - I want smooth. This makes cats harder to sail in light winds upwind, as they can feel pretty dead but ours has certainly felt alive. She loves going upwind in 15 and a broad reach in anything from 7-25 knots will have you really grinning. She ticks the miles along and strides. I still love sailing her, even 18 years after building her. That said, there are heaps of cats I couldn't stand sailing, lumps of things that are heavy and incredible with windage. I don't understand why people buy them.

But, our boat is not perfect and may not suit Tassie weather. We found Tassie to be, sadly, disappointing and that may be our choice of boat. We can power around with our twin outboards but prefer to sail and Tassie's mercurial winds have proven more trying than anywhere else on the East coast. We often sail whilst the locals chug along. She is harder to heat than a mono and the vicious gusts that have had us dragging for the first time move us more quickly than a heavy mono. There are few shallow anchorages (although crossing St Helens easily was a plus) and we don't frolic around a much as further north as the water is colder.

So in the summer our cat will head north again and although we adore Tassie, we will visit by car next time. We love hiking, so being tethered to a boat whilst Mt Field, Cradle Mountain, The Overland Track, and all the other walks are so close is hard for us. Sitting in picturesque Cygnet, Port Huon or The Quarry is nothing in comparison.

If you are thinking of heading north then a cat may be a great boat for you. When I first went cruising in 91 there were few cats. In 2000 there were many more. In 2014 (last trip north) we outnumbered monos in most anchorages and sometimes it was all cats. The market has certainly switched in NSW/Queensland cruising.

cheers

Phil

Thanks for the kind thoughts. Our cat has a great rig, with small cutter staysail and deep reefs for sailing to windward in heavy stuff but she is pretty hard to heat.

I do love Tassie awfully and would love to spend a couple of years getting to know her better. I am just not sure that with the limited time I have, whilst still working, that this time is not better spent walking into the huts at Mt Field, getting to the walls of Jerusalem or getting tough enough to do the South Coast trek. Our cat is fine for it, I just can't really hack looking at Adamson's peak all the time and not getting to climb it. Then when we hired a car, it was so much more fun we just kept the boat in the marina and kept touring and walking.

In Queensland, almost all of the good stuff is off the coast, The islands and remote places are only accessible by boat and the shoreline is pretty boring once north of Noosa. So touring Queensland without a boat would be excruciating. But in Tassie it is the shore that is the exciting part and you can get to almost everywhere by car and kayak. We spent 4 days paddling up to the Franklin last trip after driving to Strahan.

Going along the NSW coast is pretty much a delivery. Apart from Broughton Island you can get everywhere by car with a kayak on top. Same in Victoria and to a large extent Tassie. My cruising has been influenced by my trips to the reef and I hoped Tassie would be similar to Queensland but it has the sirens of the bush beckoning me when I am on the boat and we weren't game to leave our boat on the hook for longer than 8 hours. It was pretty hard to take.

cheers

Phil