The Case for the Cruising Trimaran

By Jim Brown

Multihull pioneer Jim Brown makes the case for cruising trimarans -- as opposed to catamarans -- in this classic book. Jim fills each page with personal stories, compelling facts, and wide-ranging insight.

Well-known trimaran designer Jim Brown offers his unique experiences and insight into the design factors that make for a safe, seaworthy, comfortable trimaran. Most multihullers looking for a cruising vessel choose a catamaran, but they may reconsider after reading Jim. He is always entertaining in his writing, and this book is no exception. He blends real-life stories with technical information about these fast vessels, and shows why multihull pioneers in the 20th century were sometimes referred to as the "Hells Angels of the Sea."

Much of the book is dedicated to the subject of "capsizing," and offers timeless wisdom on how it can be prevented. There is even a chapter about "self-rescue," and a technique for how a capsized vessel can be righted.

This book is fully illustrated with original black and white photos and humorous illustrations by Jo Hudson. Multihullers in general (and trimaran lovers in particular) will discover Jim Brown's sailing philosophy and walk away with a thorough understanding of the features and benefits offered in well-designed and properly handled cruising trimarans.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Outrigmedia Publisher
• Release date: Apr 15, 2014
• ISBN: 9780972146197

Jim Brown

I became interested in the Forex markets in 2002 after attending a stock trading meeting at a private residence. One guy announced that he had made a killing by trading the Yen against the US dollar. Who knew that the individual on the street could even trade currencies? Up until then, it was only the banks or wealthy individuals with access to this type of trading. A whole new industry was born. At first there weren't many reputable brokers around, their platforms were unreliable, spreads were huge and the internet was dial up. Forums popped up and 'trading gurus' appeared.  There was money to be made by those who were were smart at the time, either by straddling the news releases or exploiting the carry trade. But brokers also got smarter and either shut these advantages down or created trading conditions that made it difficult to profit from. My problem was, I listened to too many so called 'gurus' and got caught up in all the hype. Always thinking they were smarter than me as their systems were complex, and therefore must be better than anything I could come up with. So for a few years, I bounced around different systems, blowing accounts and giving back profits I had managed to make. There were good times and bad times, but I never gave up. I soon realized that some of the 'gurus' were the real deal, and started to pay attention to them to see what they had to offer. I became smarter with my money management, got out of the day trading habit and generally simplified my trading methods so they were easy to implement and explain. I have also dabbled with building my own trading robots with mixed success and use them at times to assist me with my trading. I now make a living from trading Forex, mainly off the 4hr or Daily charts. My systems are simple and profitable overall. I love trading Forex and I see it as having a huge potential to make some serious income. It is not as easy as some would make you believe, but if you keep it simple, control your money management, and be consistent, then there is no reason that you too shouldn't succeed in the world of Forex trading. Patience, courage and discipline.....

Book preview

The Case for the Cruising Trimaran

By Jim Brown

Copyright 2014 Published by Jim Brown at Smashwords

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This book is available in print at most online retailers.

Legal Notice

The publisher and author have attempted to verify the accuracy of the information contained in this publication. But neither party assumes any responsibilities for errors, omissions or contradictory information contained therein. The publisher and author are not liable or responsible for any losses or damages, which include, but aren’t limited to loss of personal assets (tangible or intangible), information, service, profits, business, clients or other pecuniary loss. The information contained within this publication is not intended as advice – personal, consumer, financial, legal, medical, or otherwise. This publication’s information is being provided for educational purposes only. The reader is encouraged to seek the advice of a professional whenever applicable. The owner or reader of this publication assumes full and complete responsibility for the use of this material and all related information. Jim Brown, BookSpecs Publishing, Outrig.org and OutrigMedia.com do not assume any responsibility or liability with regards to these materials on behalf of the reader whatsoever.

Additional Notice and Disclaimers

Any results stated or implied within this publication should be considered atypical, and not guaranteed results. No promises, suggestions or guarantees are made in this publication, whether stated or implied. Results may vary from one individual to another from anything that has been stated or implied. All information, including resources found within, are not to be taken as endorsements. This publication may contain advice, strategies or suggestions that are not suitable for your situation. All information is being provided on an at your own risk basis.

While the publisher and author have done their best to make sure this publication is enjoyable, certain typographical or grammatical errors may exist. Any errors, including any that may be perceived as slight of a specific group, individual, person or organization, are completely unintentional. Whenever the neuter isn’t used then it means any one gender was chosen for the sake of simplicity. This publication was created with the goal that its contents might be found useful to readers. It should not be scrutinized for other purposes, including writing style, language correctness or gender equality.

Dedication…

Yes, both of you:

Jo Anna—wife, navigatrix, typist, and most cohesive critic, with your implorement, "You can’t put in everything."

and

Jo Hudson—confidant, shipmate, and co-communicative cartoonist, with your entreaty, "You can’t leave out the sea stories."

(The cartoons in this book were drawn by Jo Hudson.)

Foreword

The book you are about to read will definitely augment your sea knowledge, and it may well change your entire outlook. For years I made my daily bread in the search and rescue business with the U. S. Coast Guard and thus have an inordinate familiarity with disaster and calamity. If there is one lesson to be learned, it must be safety first: safety in design, in construction, and in operation—whether cruising or racing. Any trip, no matter how rough or unpleasant, is successful if it is safe. The most important step toward safety is preparation. After all, good luck is the coincidence of preparation and opportunity. To be lucky, we must prepare. This book tells about preparation for safety in multihulls.

I have lived aboard Kajak, a monohull sailboat, for over six years now. She’s my home and also my livelihood. I am fond of Kajak and have great confidence in her traditional ballasted stability, especially when contemplating the ultimate wave or that insane maximum blow. But there is no room for complacency. There is little reason to believe that lead is the ultimate and only safe answer. Might there be a new, better design approach? Mother Nature herself specializes in diverse and multiple solutions.

All of our experience shows that change is the only constant and that progress moves along in waves. So read on, and ride a great new wave in safe seafaring concepts.

Sean Rafter

Kajak

Acknowledgments

Much critical assistance was necessary for me to write this book; the best of it came from my monohull mentors Griff and Iris Andersen, Michael O’Brien, and Sean and Pid Rafter.

Besides taking many of the photos, Tom Crabb commented on the manuscript from the unique vantage point of being undecided about which type of craft to build for himself, monohull or multihull, while having offshore experience in both.

Dale Nouse made me face squarely a long-avoided personal conflict, and resolve it in this book, when he said, "Don’t tell me you don’t know what happened to Arthur Piver.

Kathleen Brandes is the editor at International Marine who turned the book around from a dour safety manual to the positive multihull message, I want to run right out and buy one.

Many multihull enthusiasts also helped with constructive criticism of the manuscript. And it is the multihull sailors who provided the real stuff of the book. This is their story of survival, by them, and for them.

Jim Brown

North, Virginia

Author’s Preface to the Third Edition

Since this book was first published in 1979, the modern multihull has changed from an often suspected, sometimes reviled, sub-cultural aberration into a usually accepted, often preferred mainstream phenomenon. With the running of the 2010 Americas Cup races in giant multihulls, and the accession of extensive multihull archives at the Mariners Museum, Newport News, Virginia, the modern multiple-hulled seacraft has even entered the hallowed halls of nautical tradition.

In the 1970s, however, multihulls were still being called unsafe on any sea. Most of these upstart vessels were still being built by amateurs in their own back yards, the Corinthian community still called them anti-yachts, and their sailors were sometimes dubbed the Hells Angels of the Sea.

Nevertheless, multihull designers and a few front yard manufacturers were beginning to enjoy some measure of commercial success, and their creations were starting to dominate the boat shows. Multihull sailors were completing significant cruising voyages, and the racers were winning all the offshore events in which they were allowed to enter. Some shellbacks who were committed to ordinary boats began setting double anchors against a mounting ground swell of multihull interest. Only a few suspected that this surge announced the coming of an absolute sea change in marine architecture.

Of course, the early multihull achievements came at the usual costs of seafaring, including occasional fires, collisions, strandings, and shipwrecks. These are by far the most common kinds of maritime disasters, and multihulls were proving themselves to be uncommonly forgiving of such mishaps. However, multihulls were vulnerable to a new kind of calamity, offshore capsize. This was a fresh phenomenon, different from the usual, accepted-for-centuries, ultimate consequence of sailing offshore, which of course has always been sinking. Because most multihulls cannot sink, their capsize did not cause the stricken vessel and often its crew to simply disappear from the face of the earth. Instead it left the craft and its inhabitants marooned as castaways, sometimes for months, afloat on their inverted vehicle, often with no sure means of attracting attention to their plight. While the aftermath of capsize was obviously much preferred to the finality of sinking, it nonetheless was grist for a new and compelling type of survival story.

Because some early multihull promotions tended to attract wood-butcher builders and greenhorn sailors, some boats were real abominations, hard to look at and cranky to sail. Often lacking centerboards and good rudders, and sailed by neophytes, multihulls often exhibited poor performance and lubberly handling. In addition, corporate sponsorship of daring ocean races sparked a level of competition that encouraged reckless driving of developmental boats. Inevitably, several sailors of both the cruising and the racing endeavors blundered into capsize. These crackups may or may not have been more frequent, per passenger mile, than the sinkings then happening in monohulls, but capsize definitely received its fair share of attention, even sensationalizing, in the yachting and the general press. The question became, What’s The Matter With Multihulls? This book was written to answer that question.

Re-reading it today, the author has been thrilled by its sea stories, some so wild and improbable that they are certainly the truth, but jolted by its many accounts of close calls and losses from one disaster after another. Each of them contributes to a long list of multihull dos and don’ts, some of which seem excessive but others have made their way into the accumulated wisdom of multihull seamanship and offshore racing rules.

Most of the book still seems valid, especially in light of the many succeeding incidents that support its early conclusions. Of course there is some new information pleading to be added.

For example:

-- The notion of designing and preparing offshore multihulls to be inhabited if capsized – as opposed to the crew taking to a life raft – has been vindicated several times. Most notably, John Glennie and his companions in the trimaran ROSE NOEL survived for 120 days (yes, four months) aboard their inverted craft. Their predicament was desperate at times, but they were sustained by the contents of their well-provisioned boat, eventually even cooking their food. When they finally drifted ashore in New Zealand, the same country from which they had departed, they were in such good physical condition that local authorities disbelieved their story.

-- We have learned the hard way to avoid using the water-activating feature of self-inflating life jackets. In today’s marvelously lightweight but grossly overpowered racing multihulls, the extreme level of competition makes occasional capsize inevitable. In that event, self-inflating PFDs can trap the wearer underneath the boat.

-- The prospect of unassisted self-righting of capsized multihulls, as espoused in Chapter 8, remains largely unfulfilled. Nevertheless, we now know that the towboat-assisted re-righting method, also detailed in Chapter 8, can be used in open sea to recover inverted multihulls at least as large as fifty feet.

-- Multihull seamanship remains essentially unchanged since the book was written. Anchoring, storm tactics, sail handling and stowage, as they pertain to multihulls, have been modified mainly by the introduction of new types of anchors, storm drogues and sea anchors. Of course, the old stuff still works and costs less.

-- It is sometimes said that the best storm survival tactic is to keep the vessel running off at speed. This is practiced by the Round-The-World racers, who just keep driving hard in gales, even in the Roaring Forties, under spinnaker. This may be the way to win stunt races, but it has no place in a small boat with a tired crew and restricted sea room. The tire drogue and the surplus parachute, as described in Chapter 6, still belong in cruising multihulls.

-- Alternatively, several examples now indicate that the way for multihullers to survive great storms is to drop all sail, batten down and ride it out. This tactic, formerly doubted by multihullers, is supported by several incidents when the waves got big and the crew got scared enough to radio for rescue and risk life and limb to be evacuated aboard some Samaritan ship. Months – even years – later, the abandoned multihull is reported drifting, sometimes in another ocean, right side up with spars standing, waiting for its doubting crew to return. These examples support the old fisherman’s quote, A drifting boat never gets in trouble with the sea, only with the land. They also support the old standby, newly applicable to multihulls, Don’t leave the boat!

-- In making the Case for the Cruising Trimaran again today, as compared with the cruising catamaran, the book’s old contentions weaken but still hold. The trimaran’s outer hulls still offer those large and precious airlock spaces that can float the vessel high enough for it to offer capsize habitation to the crew inside the main hull. (The catamaran has airlock spaces too, but not when ventilated for habitation.)

-- Of greater interest today is the contention, well founded by experience that trimarans enjoy a somewhat smoother ride especially when driving upwind through an offshore seaway.

-- These trimaran advantages fade in today’s marketplace. The world has gone catamaran crazy, to the extent that many cat cohorts don’t even consider trimarans to be multihulls! The reason, of course, is that catamarans offer the condo-style accommodations so highly valued by those who naively consider boats to be less vehicle than domicile.

-- Many fixtures common to the early cruising multihulls are rare today: Kerosene stoves and lamps, rowing dinghies made of wood, sextants and paper charts. Instead, modern multihullers seem to want refrigerators and freezers, air conditioners and chart plotters, computers and long range radios. No doubt these marvelous inventions add comfort and convenience when they work, but the onboard power requirements have skyrocketed, adding greatly to cost.

-- When it comes to comfort, the most effective new gadget for offshore sailing surely must be the satellite telephone. If double packed in waterproof enclosures, with towels to dry the user’s hands, and spare batteries for protracted air time in emergencies – all stowed in the boat’s Calamity Pack and secured absolutely in the bilge – this wonderful device can almost eliminate the castaways’ main plight of attracting attention to their predicament. Other devices such as today’s registered EPIRBs now make offshore search and rescue far more effective. But at zero hour there is nothing more effective than long range voice communication.

-- The good old hand-held VHF radio, one unit dedicated to the Calamity Pack and stowed together with the Sat Phone, will provide short range conversation during actual rescue operations. As emphasized in the chapters that follow, the likelihood of cruising sailors needing such equipment is extremely low, but the very existence of a comprehensive Calamity Pack containing these wonders can go a long way toward relieving the crew of that nagging offshore angst that keeps so many would-be sailors on the beach.

-- There is much more cruising information available today, books, charts and on-line/radio services that really cover preferred cruising routes, up to the minute and area-specific weather analysis, and shore side circumstances port-by-port. Many of the old favorite cruising destinations have become sullied by development, but there is still plenty of choice cruising ground accessible to the well-found offshore voyager in a shoal draft boat.

And so we come to the book’s original premise, now corroborated by another thirty years of evidence: The single most irrefutable advantage of the modern cruising multihull is not so much its speed but its combination of splendid seakeeping properties together with shallow draft. There are many more accounts today of the multihull’s ability to withstand great gales at sea and also sneak around in thin water, even shoot the surf to slide onto a beach or snuggle in the mud, either for refuge or for fun. This combination of features, mutually exclusive in most seagoing watercraft, is nowhere more concentrated than in these boats of many hulls. Their wide-track stability, unsinkability and inhabitability, even if stranded, burned, holed, flooded or dismembered (again, all the most common kinds of marine accidents) gives them a far wider ragged edge between mishap and tragedy, and in a far wider variety of circumstances, than in any other seagoing configuration.

Since the first edition of this book, the business aspects of multihulls also have evolved in unique ways. Until about 2005, while the world’s economy boomed, multihulls both power and sail were on the economic up side of the industry, about the only growth area in a frenetic boating marketplace. Five years later now, the global economic contraction has left most production boatbuilding severely depressed. Nevertheless, multihulls are still of interest to investors. New ventures in production multihulls include designs for racing, cruising, commercial chartering and excursions, open-sea ferrying and military applications.

These investments persist despite the fact that multihulls – both production–built and custom-built - have become astronomically expensive. This is partly because multihulls are simply more expensive to produce. In addition, both greed for speed and the lust for modern inconveniences have led multihulls down the primrose path of super-high tech, glitz and cost. Indeed, the modern front yard-built multihulls are priced into an obscure corner of today’s marketplace, and the added costs of berthing, maintaining, repairing and storing the larger multihulls now further restrain their popularity. At the same time, their desirability has helped create a pent-up demand for truly modern watercraft of all types.

The monohull marketplace is being squeezed away from large boats that require in-water berthing toward small craft that will fit on a trailer. This happens to coincide with projects that can be owner-built and stored in a back yard or garage. There is an absolute explosion in this owner building, but it is confined mainly to small single-hulled vessels like kayaks, sailing dinghies, rowing boats and runabouts. Most are built of plywood/epoxy, and all can be either cartopped or trailered. The purveyors of boat plans drawn for amateur construction of these types, and the manufacturers of pre-cut parts kits for them, are thriving.

The multihull’s participation in trailerable boats has been restrained by their width, but several clever means of reducing beam for trailering have been developed. These too have tended to increase in price, but such collapsible multihulls remain popular, especially in trimarans. The outrigger platform of the trimaran is inherently easier to disassemble or articulate of trailering than that of catamarans. Consequently, the small trailerable trimarans enjoy considerable activity, and new designs of this type are emerging.

This book was written at a time when the multihull phenomenon was still driven mainly by do-it-yourselfers. Are we to see a re-emergence of this? Perhaps, but only in the smaller sizes that can be crafted in a garage and kept on a trailer … at least for now. But let’s consider that the original attraction to multihulls was not just for their promise of unprecedented speed. The small day-sailing multihulls of the 1950s were also irresistible for their remarkably low cost when owner-built. By the early 1960s, their converts realized the larger models, also cheaply owner-built, made offshore adventuring accessible to anyone for the price of an ordinary automobile. As the 1970s approached, owner-built multihulls also offered a perceived escape from the political turmoil of the times, its antiwar mayhem, and its threat of nuclear annihilation. Throughout this progression, the crews improved, the designs matured, and the multihull movement imparted a growing countercultural identity to its devotees. A conspicuous alternative life style resulted, and this may have driven multihull development more than anything else. One difference today is that multihulls are no longer countercultural. Their widespread acceptance, even preference, has caused the loss of their once-prized exclusiveness.

Considering the loss of this product personality, will we ever see a re-emergence of the owner-builder for the larger seafaring multihulls? Who can say? Perhaps a few can-do individuals will still wish to consolidate their assets in a vehicular home that can move about the earth without the need for much if any fuel. By avoiding geopolitical hot spots the cruising sailor can still savor the diversity, plurality and beauty of foreign lands and cultures, all interspersed with expeditions into this world’s last great wilderness. How to live!

A more long-range scenario is that the modern multihull will some day be regarded as just another brain child of the age of waste, but born with the paradoxical mutation of unprecedented energy efficiency. If so, let’s hope that this mutant, when propelled either by poles, paddles, sails or non-fossil fueled engines, will mature in time for serving in the green recovery.

If this book is still around by then, well… Hail to you, oh future multimariners! Please know that it was the author’s fervent hope that the notions recorded here, together with Jo Hudson’s inimitable cartoons, may at least entertain you with its seaborne shenanigans of old. Look here for evidence of how your newfound re-inventions came to be, and maybe there’s a smattering of wisdom to be gleaned from all this early soaring on the sea.

Fair Winds!

Jim Brown

Hick Neck, Virginia

March 21, XFC2010

Chapter 1 – How Do You Justify The Multihull Concept?

We had met just that morning on the dock, John and I. We agreed about a lot of things as we talked. Both of us had done some distance cruising, neither of us had a bent toward racing, and we each enjoyed boats . . . if not all boats.

When I pointed across the harbor to my little trimaran cutter, the Scrimshaw, and explained that my family and I had come from California in the boat, John seemed to stiffen a bit. We’ll have to talk about multihulls sometime, he remarked.

Now it was evening of the same day and my newfound friend and I were standing toe-to-toe in a very crowded harborfront lounge. It was July 1976 in Newport, Rhode Island. We were trying to talk above the noise of a celebration in honor of the singlehanded racers. John leaned closer to make himself heard and, speaking over his glass, he asked me this question:

I don’t know how to broach this except to just come out with it. We all know that multihulls are capable of such wonderful things, but we also know that they can capsize. Now you must tell me, how can you justify this concept? How can you rationally go to sea, with your wife and family aboard, in a craft that is just as stable upside-down as otherwise? What’s the point of cruising in a boat that has the potential to put you in such a helpless position?

I never had the chance to answer him. First of all, I was unprepared for his directness. Having made my life around multihulls for about 20 years, I’ve become accustomed to the controversy that they cause. On the West Coast, particularly, I enjoy bouncing back the good-natured razz that comes from conventional sailors. But there I was in Newport—the very seat of traditional yachting—and suddenly this friendly traditionalist had put it to me point blank!

Stalling for time with a laugh, I started to say (as though to clear the air of any animosity), "It’s okay, John, it’s okay with me . . . you can sail any kind of