Jules,

Just a few posts earlier to your post, Mike Crawford gave a description of a collision he had with another Taipan 4.9 at the US nationals. I quote :

Race three was fun until we ran into the back of the GYC’s commodore’s new 4.9. He hit the “C” mark and proceeded to do a penalty turn right at the mark. I assumed instead that he would clear the mark and turn between “A” and “C” somewhere. I was readying the boat for upwind and was just hooking up for wire work when I looked up to see him sitting dead in the water 20 feet in front. Ron was skippering at the time and we had no time to react. We hit him square in the rear crossbar three times before we finally stopped. It was a hard crunch and I thought there would be major damage, but was surprised to find only small missing pieces of gel coat. Wow!


From this account I gether that the Taipan is stirdy enough to take a good hit without sustaining more than just cosmetic damage. This seems to me as the right description for near all beach catamarans.

Jack