Hi Dick L,Hey you've brought the sunshine,thanks DickL!My solar powered brain may work now?To throw my penneth of info on cats into the ring.Things that came to light in the testing of cats were the following. 1 If the hulls had little rocker they were very reluctant to tack.2 conventional rig with big jibs also bad at tacking.3 choppy water causing wave slap as you start to turn cancelling most of your speed and penitration during the attempted turn.In answer to No 1more rocker did work better,but was not the complete answer to tacking.My thought on this is based on triming out my marblehead yacht.Set the transome down by about 3mm and rake the mast about 40mm back.As soon as the wind blew the transome rose to above water level and the mast became vertical,ideal.Maybe that if the cat was trimmed so that it took most of the weight in the back 2/3 of the hulls when in flat calm water.when the wind drives it the hull will push the nose down to let it sit at the correct angle in the water.When you tack the drive stops and the bows will rise reducing the
the sideways area of the hull the further forward you go,in otherwords reducing the moment arm length of hull that is dragged sideways.??!![:-] As for No 2 consider this fact as you tack with a conventional rig the main depowers as you turn because it moves downwind.The jib does the opposite,sounds good the wind must increase giving more thrust?Not so,for a split second it does but then it becomes nearly at a right angle to the jib killing all drive as well as trying to drive the hull back down wind.So a small jib is better on cats[models].You can of course use a swing rig because
both sails depower and only offer the drag of the rig which is nearly head to wind anyway.As for No3
All boats suffer this sometime,if you get into irons it's just a question of letting you boat get moving in reverse,letting your sails fully out and putting in full rudder left or right as required.Most times
the boat will swing round easily then pull your sails in and away.!!???Those are my thoughts
at the moment based on books and testing out ideas,it's just that cats present quite a challenge
I think Multiman may have more info on them,but I think he maybe on holliday at the moment.
Regards Scotty