Flight Risk served a breif stint as a test platform for a biplane rig when the previous owner wanted to test the concept in advance of designing a 60' cruising cat. Upwind powered both sails well, broad reaching was fine, dead downwind allowed the sails to be deployed outboard on opposing sides of the boat, leaving the tramp area amazingly open. On a beam reach, and maybe 20 degrees above and below, the windward rig did indeed shadow the leeward sail, which just fell gently inboard and sat there quietly. As a beam reach is a fairly fast point of sail for a catamaran, losing the power of 1 rig was not real annoying, the boat maintained about the same speed as going upwind. The owners conclusion was that the biplane rig, with no headsails, was really a fine solution for shorthanded sail handling aboard a big cruiser. No headsails to mess with, quite easy to reef the leeward sail while on a beam reach. If each sail had 2 reef points there were 5 configurations of decreasing sail area. When I bought the boat I returned it to its original sloop rig, with assym spin and roller furling screacher, significantly more sail area, complexity, and the ability to fly a hull, which I love to do. I'm not sure if that particular rush could be produced with a biplane rig. But it could be fairly high performance if designed as such, with headsails and sufficient sail area overall.


Dave