I'm pretty sure in Rick's book, it is covered. When I crossed over to cats, the first thing I did was buy his book, and several others, to get up to speed on cat handling.

In your scenario, let's say you are both already on one hull, double trapped and then along comes the puff. The more experienced crew is going to see it coming and be ready for it.

As far as boat speed, as I uderstand it from the books, you don't want to "change" the boat's attitude through the water, as every change (expecially the tiller) is like putting on the breaks. So you want to keep the hull up the same height, (just kissing the wave tops), and keep your headding exactly the same (unless it's a lift or headder) so what needs to be done is anticipate the puff, ease the mainsheet enough (and-or pull on more downhaul) to keep the boat attitude in the water the same, trap harder, or what ever else you can do, to accelerate with the puff, and then trim the main back in as the puff goes by. It's all easier said than done but the more experience you have, the more instinctive it becomes, and you can keep your head out of the boat, looking for the next puff.

In your scenario (and we've all been there) the less experienced crew is reacting to the puff too late, they are losing lots of power from the puff by letting the hull fly up too high, pinching too much and then easing the main too much to get it under control, and slowing down instead of accelerating in the puff, they are looking inside the boat instead of outside.

But as we agreed earlier, the experienced crew handled it because they were -experienced-, saw it coming, reacted perfectly, ahead of time, instead of too late, etc. and little by little, the pulled ahead. At least that's what is supposed to happen.

In all the monohull books, (like Stuart Walker's Small Boat Handling Techniques) they tell you to steer with your sails, not your rudder, because every time you move that rudder, you are creating drag. I think the same holds true for cats. And as Alex Shafer told me 100 times (with one of his sneakers way up my butt...) "Don't PINCH!!!"