There are a few example of sucessfull boats with unstayed mast

The more common example is the Laser 1

Another example is the wite wings the 36' trimaran by Dick Newick
http://www.wingo.com/newick/



Finally, the Nonsuch boat
http://www.nonsuch.org


Let me ask you a question, if you board an airplane, would you feel more secure if the wings were held in place with steel wires...

I feel that the unstayed mast are the thing to come on recreationnal boats. It will be much more difficult to install an unstayed mast on a beach catamaran and the extra reinforcements will likely weight more but it could be possible as well.

The Team Philips experience was a disaster. The designer went against the trend of all the other race boat and they had little support in the communauty. Team Philips bashing became common. Also, their boat lack testing and ajustement. The concept worked for a while but the boat was lost.

It would have been really interesting to see Team Philips in the first part of the race. My feeling is that in medium wind, it could have been faster than the other more conventionnal boats. In the 40th parallele, the situation could have been reversed because I think that the Team Philips boat would have been handicap in bigger waves

That is my opinion