Catamarans
The modern cruising catamaran has arrived
The arguments are over and the verdict is in–cruising catamarans comprise a rapidly growing percentage of the cruising fleet worldwide. Their advantages of space, stability, speed, and handling under power are truly compelling, and modern cats are every bit as reliable as monohulls. This long overdue, in-depth guide will help you choose and cruise the right catamaran for your needs.
“An authoritative guide for novices and experienced sailors; the best book written on the subjects since the early 1990s.”–“Trimaran” Jim Brown, renowned multihull designer
“In Catamarans, Gregor Tarjan shares his enthusiasm for yachts with two hulls, based on years of sailing all types. An excellent introduction.”–Dick Newick, legendary catamaran and trimaran designer
“If you are contemplating spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on a cruising catamaran, the small price of this book is probably the best investment you could possibly start with.”–from the Foreword by Charles K. Chiodi, publisher of Multihulls Magazine
Customer Review: Stunning photography, wonderful text
I own many sailing books (including books that specialize in multihull sailing), but this one makes you want to jump through the pages onto the boats. What wonderful photography. This is not said to take away from the wealth of information written by Gregor Tarjan, just to tell you what a joy is has been to read (drool) my way through this book. You will not be disappointed.
Customer Review: Beautiful photography and interesting text
This book is an excellent addition to the stable of books dealing with cruising catamaran sailing. It’s a heavy hardback with beautiful photography, an attractive layout and good diagrams. Picking up this book after reading Charles Kanter’s ‘Cruising in Catamarans’ or its recent update published as ‘Cruising Catamaran Communiqu?’ you wonder how two books on the same subject with similar ideas behind them could be so different!
This book is beautiful and would make a wonderful coffee table book as well as an interesting read. There’s some great photography often in beautiful locations. There are also photographs and plans of different catamarans and the text is helpful. Tarjan doesn’t spend too long on the old chestnuts of catamaran vs monohull and will they capsize but he gives a good overview of general principles of catamaran sailing, heavy weather tactics, manufacture, some technical information on hull shapes, rigs, keels vs daggerboards and benefits/downsides of different configurations.
It becomes clear very quickly when reading this book that Tarjan tends to spend time on larger cruising catamarans. Here in the UK most Cats vary from 26ft - 40ft; most that I see are probably 35ft or less. Tarjan mentions the 34 foot Gemini 105MC in his text but most of the cats he discusses/photographs are whoppers, 45-60 feet. Perhaps these are more common in America but for sailors in UK waters they might make your own boat look a bit weedy.
Tarjan also is keen on speed. He perhaps affords it more importance than many cruising sailors would and there’s plenty of discussion about how useful speed is to get you away from bad weather, but the text reads very much as if the cruising cat owner is really also a racer and I would imagine this is not very often the case. Charles Kanter’s contention that most cruisers aren’t speed freaks seems more likely to me and his more thorough and detailed treatment of catamaran sailing is perhaps more useful to the novice than in this book where less time is spent on multihull seamanship and more of that time on trimming sails for maximum speed.
However despite these reservations this book is a great read and good value for the price. It has at the end the apparently obligatory list of current multihulls (including one that’s 100ft long!) with a very short amount of copy on them and a couple of photos. There are some helpful appendices with the Beaufort scale, a long-range cruising equipment checklist and other stuff and the photo credits, much appreciated because of the quality throughout of the photography and printing. The downside of this book? This author, although interesting, doesn’t grab your attention in the same way as Charles Kanter. I think this makes another excellent addition to my cruising catamaran bookshelf but I wouldn’t choose it over Charles Kanter’s ‘Cruising Catamaran Communiqu?’ if I could have only one book because that has more information for the medium sized cat owner to find helpful (by this I mean the 30-40 foot range). But it’s still a great book and worthy of five stars.
