I can remember the first time I actually saw a cruising catamaran up close. We were anchored off of Union Island near Grenada in a chartered Beneteau 35. Since it was high season, we had to rush with the rest of the pack from anchorage to anchorage in order to get a good spot. Luckily, at Union Island, we had snagged a great spot within swimming distance of a beach. About an hour before sundown, three cats came weaving in through the blockade of monohulls and anchored in prime territory just off the beach. We were amazed by their huge cockpits, and also at their ability to anchor in the skinny water. "I don’t know about those things, Honey, I understand that they are prone to flipping over," I said to Christy with authority. When the anchorage got rolly, we noticed that the cats just kind of bobbed once while our boat started a pendulum action and kept rocking for a while. The next day most of the anchored boats took off towards Tobago Cay, and the cats left us in their wake as they streaked ahead. Hmmm, we thought, this bears some looking into.

Most Brokers Are Not "Multi" Talented

Back in Annapolis, we discovered that most people had strong opinions but knew very little about cats. Like me, many had heard that they tend to flip over, could not sail to weather, and that was about it. We found passionate but ill-informed opinions on both sides. "A cat’s most stable position is upside down" and "a monohull’s most stable position is on the bottom". These did little to help our learning curve. It took some searching, but we found some knowledgeable brokers, and after reading a few books, we became a bit more educated.

Pick Any Two

Cats, like all boats, were an exercise in compromise. The old saying regarding buying a boat holds true for cats — between performance, comfort and low price, pick any two. We have found that catamarans, like monohulls, vary greatly in speed and pointing ability. Just as a J105 and a Morgan Out Island 41 have different features and benefits, so do different catamarans. Which was the Ford, the BMW, the Rolls or the Yugo? The best thing we did to advance our knowledge was to sail as many cats as possible in as many conditions as we could. We chartered a cat in Martinique, cadged rides at boat shows and even traded dockspace for some time on a Catana 431. We knew we wanted a cat at the higher end of the performance scale, and of course we wanted our comfort too. True to the formula, our used Switch 51 whacked us in the wallet.

Zia Specs

All that said, our Switch 51 works really well for our family. Mom and Dad get one hull, the kids get one and we all share the middle. Each of our daughters has a separate cabin, and they share a head. Our hull has one cabin and a head with a separate shower. The middle, or the bridge deck, has the salon, galley and nav station. On deck, Zia has lots of room with a 25-foot beam. We have dual trampolines up front, and the bimini is covered by a trampoline, making it great for sail handling and sunbathing.

Zia has three furling headsails: a genoa, a stormsail and a gennaker on a bowsprit. We have a cruising chute, but we have to lower the gennaker to set it. Our full batten main has three slab reefs that are put in from the mast base. She has twin dagger boards that increase draft from 3 feet 8 inches to a full 9 feet for upwind sailing. Zia has a high bridgedeck clearance, which is the distance from the water to the bottom of the deck between the hulls. Waves can slam the bottom when sailing upwind so the more clearance to let the waves roll underneath, the better. For windless days we have twin 40-horse Yanmar saildrives that will make 7.5 kts under cruise power with both engines and 6.5 kts with one engine. We almost always motor with one engine, since using both doubles the fuel and maintenance and only gives us about a 15% speed increase. The twin engines allow us to do a 360 within her own length, which is a big help when maneuvering around the dock.

So, How’s She Sail?

In a word, she sails like a dream and gives us 200-miles days with any kind of decent breeze. But there are some definite tradeoffs from monohull sailing. We don’t get that wonderful feeling of feathering up into a puff and then bearing off a bit for speed that we used to in our mono. When a puff hits, Zia just accelerates forward, and she will really punish you if you try to pinch up to weather. Catamarans have a fast, kind of jerky movement in waves, which takes some getting used to. A lot of multihulls have a problem tacking and need to backwind the jib to get the nose thru the wind. Zia has deep, high-aspect rudders, so tacking her is a breeze. The downside of those excellent rudders is that they are the first thing to hit bottom if we run aground. We generally lower the daggers to a point just below those delicate rudders when we are cruising in shallow waters.

We have not had her in any big storms (of course one of our big goals is to keep it that way) but in the Caribbean 1500, when the fleet ran into a three-day gale, Zia came through fine. Even reefed down and flying the stormsail, we would surf well into the teens in complete control. Half a dozen boats had to drop out with major problems ranging from losing a rig to losing rudders. We do carry a drogue and a parachute sea anchor and we fervently hope never to use them.

All in all this boat suits our family’s needs perfectly. Plenty of room in a fast, easy-to-sail and seaworthy package. But there sure are times that we miss the fun of carving upwind in our trusty old monohull.