It has become routine now for me to bookend the summer sailing season with a trip to the south of France for the biannual ‘Outremer Week’. This hugely popular event…
Catamaran Sailing Techniques
Catamaran Sailing Techniques: Everything you need to know
The attraction of sailing a boat that offers the vast living space found on a catamaran may one day mean that your average monohull sailor is faced with the need…
Catamaran Sailing Techniques Part 2: Handling under power – with Nigel Irens
As you may be one day, we were new to the catamaran we were offered for this mission so we spent a good half hour in fairly open water practising…
Catamaran Sailing Techniques Part 3: Anchoring and picking up a mooring – with Nigel Irens
Among the plus sides of cruising in a catamaran is that inherent shallow draught offers access to plenty of sheltered and attractive anchorages that are not available to deeper-keeled yachts.…
Catamaran Sailing Techniques Part 4: Sailing a cat upwind – with Nigel Irens
If you were a visitor to Earth and found yourself sailing a run-of-the-mill cruising catamaran for the first time it would be easy to conclude that sailing upwind is not…
Catamaran Sailing Techniques Part 5: sailing a cat downwind – with Nigel Irens
Generally speaking, the risk of getting into trouble in a catamaran when sailing downwind is greater than when sailing upwind. This is fundamentally owing to the fact that when heading…
Catamaran Sailing Techniques Part 6: Coping with heavy weather – with Nigel Irens
When discussing how to handle heavy weather in a catamaran we have to accept that there is no one solution that works for all catamarans as the strategy will be…
Catamaran Sailing Techniques Part 7: should the worst happen – with Nigel Irens
Different strategies for keeping a catamaran safe from the risk of capsize have been discussed in other features in this series, but we do need to look more closely at…
Catamaran Sailing Techniques Part 8: the future of catamaran cruising – with Nigel Irens
Most of the features in our Catamaran Sailing Techniques series have been aimed at aspiring newcomers to catamaran cruising looking for a bit of help in getting going – even…