Sailing Today

Tom Cunliffe

For those of us of the monohull persuasion, heeling is a fact of life. Once the wind moves onto, or forward of, the beam, life is lived at an angle. My friends who sail multihulls think we’re all crazy to put up with it, but monohulls do come with certain inbuilt advantages. Although they heel over relatively easily, their stability rises as the angle from the vertical increases. Even lying on their topsides with the mast in the water, most of them are still trying to self-right. The multi, on the other hand, has only two truly stable states. Right way up or upside down. Mercifully, for a well-designed tri or catamaran, you have to work really hard to achieve inverted status, so the problem doesn’t arise except in extreme circumstances. The other big drawback is finding and paying for marina berths, but on the plus side

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