>>Wouter, regarding the lack of a trapeze on the Hunter 170: of course, you are right, but I did add a trapeze to my boat last season (one of many performance enhancements and the only trap equipped H170 in the US that I know of). I only got to use the trapeze (singlehanding) a few times before the water got too cold but what a blast! Might I actually find it easier to trap on a catamaran than a monohull?


Mostly so , yes. On the other hand I think the Hunter 170 is a daggerboard boat with balast in the bilge. This means it can't be capsized. Catamarans however can and cats do require a little more sensitive steering than a balasted monohull. Skiffs are entirely different of course, these require alot more finess on the helm. So for all intents and purposes I think the cat would be a most natural progression from the Hunter 170+ trapeze.



>>I did find it easier to trap sloop rigged because the boat had a fair amount of weather helm when uni rigged. There's no easy way to adjust CE vs CLR as far as standing rigging goes (and never had time to play with changing CB or rudder positions). I assume that uni configured catamarans can be setup for a balanced helm (via mast rake)?

They are. This, as you have seen, is a much debated topic among sailors but it all boils down to this :

-1- reducing the FEEL of weather helm can be done both by mast rake and rudder rake

-2- reducing weather helm itself can only be done by mast rake.

Point -2 is advice from a performance point of few and it is often also the easier of the two to adjust. Certainly on cats.

Think of it in this way. Both mian and jib have their won CE and the combine CE is somewhere between these two.

The best performance is achieved when part of the side loads are carried by the rudders as well. Otherwise these add only drag for no gains at all. Assume the protions of the loads are optimally distributed between board and rudder. Now take away the jib. The new CE moves to the position of the CE of the Mainsail. Ergo, the leverage of the new sail force to the baord and rudder changes. From now on the rudder takes a large portion of the sideforce and the board takes too little. Now you can mask this away by reraking your rudder but your performance will still be suboptimal. You can bring the performance back to optimal again by raking your mast further forward and bringing the CE of the Mainsail to the postion of where the combined CE of the slop used to be.

Often mono's do allow the mast to rotate a little forward or backward. Upgrading your hunter may be as simple as placing chainplates between the (shortened) stays and the hull points.


Wouter