We left Marco Island, last Saturday, and took two days to get to Marathon. After three days there, we had a nice southerly to sail to Miami. We made 80 miles, all under sail, on Thursday. Definitely one of those sails to remember.
Originally, we were going to leave Marco and spend a week going to Key West and trying some new anchorages. But, Yammy's Dad decided he did not want any of the furniture and appliances in his new condo, and we took the offer to take it all. We did a whirlwind trip, carrying items for our kids from VA to NY and back down again. It was a lot of work, but worth it help out the kids. We can do that boat trip next year.
As usual, it's Roy's Tech Time.
Everyone thinks cats can't point. I used to as well. When we were looking at cats, I checked the sailing polars on all of the them to see which would best suit my needs for performance. Our cat said it can point to 40 degrees apparent, so we went for it.
We already have written about the performance gains, from last year, and are very happy with how she sails. But, leaving Marco put the pointing ability to the real test. We had SW winds and had to sail close hauled all the way back. One the first day, we had huge, confused seas and 15-20 knots of wind. Not good. We could point to 40 degrees. But, had 10 -15 degrees of leeway. We gave up and sailed into Everglades City inlet and anchored for the night.
The next day, we had the same winds, but no leftover slop and swell. Now, we could point 40 degrees and had 6-8 degrees of leeway. We sailed 70 miles that day and never changed the autopilot setting. Another great sail.
When looking for a cat, I wanted a dagger board model, instead of the fixed keels we bought. My feeling was you need deep boards to help a cat point. We could not find one that had the cabin type we wanted and the broker, sensing my disappointment, told me that you would only point a few degrees higher, than our boat and maybe a few tenths of a knot faster. Being new to cats, I bought it.
Over the past week, I have been doing a lot of research on the leeway issue and the reasons why. It is true that a dagger board cat will only point a few degrees higher, but you only get a few degrees of leeway. Similar to a mono haul (1-5 degrees). As most of you know, this is due to lift.
The underwater foils, keel and rudder, generate lift. Just like your sails and airplane wings. However, they do not generate lift until there is some sideways motion to get it started. It is a combination of the forward motion and sideways drift (leeway), that creates the lift. The reason fixed keel cats have so much leeway is the limited surface area of the shallow keels and rudder. Mono hauls have deep keels and rudders and generate more lift, minimizing leeway. Dagger board cats can draft as much as 9' with the boards down. That is what is needed to help stop the leeway we saw.
All that said, we would not be able to sail in the keys with a 9' draft, so we may have still had a leeway issue as the boards would not be able to be dropped down all of the way.
There is a new cat, that utilizes fixed keels and an adjustable foil on the trailing edge of the keel. Kind of like a second rudder. The idea is to create lift without having to slide sideways first. I am waiting for actual reports on how well they work.
There are noise and sticking problems (due to marine growth) with dagger boards. That is why Gunboat (very fast cat) has just switched to swing keels. But, they had problems with those as well.
Now when everyone says that cats can't point, they are wrong. You just have to evaluate the amount of leeway potential. But, most designers will never admit to it being as bad as it is.
I hear a lot of people saying that every cat they see is motoring. This I can believe upwind. If we turned on our leeward motor, we dropped the leeway to under 5 degrees. But, when there is that much wind, I don't motor. So that is why we ducked in and tried it again the next day.
Not sure if we would ever trade up to a different cat, but the design criteria will be a sticking point I am sure.
