MATTHEW SHEAHAN

From the leading edge of professional racing and the america’s cup to the lastest cruising cats, multihull design is setting the agenda

When Lloyd Thornburg’s bright orange Gunboat 66 cat Phaedo2 came smoking past in the other direction flying a hull at Les Voiles de St Barth this spring I thought little of it. This may be a cruiser/racer catamaran, but Lloyd and his professional team of rock stars delight in pushing things to the limit. Few others drive performance cruiser cats to this level. Flying a hull might be quick, but clearly it comes with risk.

But as the rest of the fleet screeched by on one hull, it struck me that things in the cruiser/racer cat scene have changed. From Christian Guyader’s TS42 to Jim Vos’s HH66 Nala, each one was being sailed like a beach cat, and as if this were the norm.

As a fleet they looked pretty cool, too: sleek, aggressive, modern and a long way from the common perception of cruising cats.

Things are moving fast in the grand prix world as well. A few weeks later I was fortunate enough to be offered a ride aboard the 100ft foiling trimaran Gitana 17. While we didn’t quite have enough breeze to get up onto her foils, I am still reliving the sensation of helming at 22 knots in just 12 knots of wind.

The recent GC32 Worlds on Lake Garda and the Extreme Sailing Series are examples of the fascinating era of cat racing on foils, as are the Olympic Nacra 17s and the new Australian-born Superfoiler class. And it’s not just foiling machines that are pushing the multihull agenda. The Tour de France à la Voile made the switch from one hull to three for its famous event, while the Match Racing World Tour moved to 32ft cats.

But surely none of this is of any relevance to the weekend warrior?

Not so, I’d argue. I think I’m being forced to change my mind about where the new strains of development are coming from.

Among the fleet of 12 TP52S at the opening event of the 52 Superseries season in Sibenik, Croatia, nine were new. This class is well known for being is a hotbed of development, with TPS representing the leading edge of design and construction. Rightly so – each costs around €2 million apiece and engage some of the best brains in the business, all of which has helped to make a significant contribution to the general technology trickledown.

From sheeting angles of just 3-4°, which mean that even the skinniest beanpole of a foredeck crew can’t pass through the slot between the jib leech and the mast, to carbon eye terminations for the cap shrouds that you’d barely trust on your key fob and decks so flush that they look like they have yet to be fitted out, the level of refinement is staggering. At some point in the future the development will affect us all in some way, whether we yet know it or not.

But how much of this detailed refinement is influencing mainstream design when compared to the huge leaps forward in multihulls?

The America’s Cup has had a lot to do with both raising awareness for two hulls over one and has influenced the design and construction of other racing craft. Foiling has been the most obvious step forward.

Ironically, the move back to monohulls for the next America’s Cup is argued by many to be anything but. With their gecko-like canting T-foils, the new AC75 is more of a foiling trimaran when at speed, albeit one without the floats. So here, once again, a multihull concept is setting the agenda.

Consequently it is hard to avoid the conclusion that multihulls are having a greater influence than ever before. From modern styling to modern flying, the multihull world is also taking some big strides forward away from the racing world.

At the sharp end, DNA’S re-worked G4 foiling cat (see Yachting World July issue) has revisited the world of foiling for performance cruisers by offering an automated foiling control system to avoid the embarrassing fate of her predecessor, the Gunboat G4, which capsized off St Barth in 2015 . (She had a more hands-on method for flight and for which she ultimately paid the price.)

At the cruising end there is plenty of development, too, with established monohull designers stepping into the multihull world while some manufacturers report impressive sales figures for boats they have yet to launch.

It all seems to be adding up to a quiet revolution in which multihulls are no longer a niche, but are dramatically setting the trend.

‘MULTIHULLS ARE NO LONGER A NICHE’