You say:
who doesn't know the Polynesian side.
---based on remarks like the below, I don't think YOU do. Sorry if this offends your Eurocentric sensibilities...

You said: For instance the attempt to build a catamaran warship by Sir William Petty or Herreshoff adding the gaff and sprit rig and taking on the yachts of the time in what sounds like modern beach cat fashion. Many years later we consider a sprit/pole to almost be a required part of modern cat design.

----go here: http://www.pvs-hawaii.com/canoe/canoe_evolution.htm

---A crabclaw IS a sprit rig. Both the Polynesians AND the Arabs (catsail, JUST like the Sunfish rig-look at a felucca) were sailing upwind for thousands of years before the Europeans happened to stumble upon it.

The basic, long, narrow, V-hull design is pretty old. In fact, neither Amaryllis (flat bottomed) nor Petty's design is as 'modern' as the Polynesian cats. They used the shipbuilding techniques that we now consider 'old' (frame-and-plank) whereat the actually OLD Polynesian techniques are more like what's being done now (stitch-and-glue, tortured ply, bulkheaded). The materials are now different, sure, but the basic hull concepts from the Polynesians are now just pretty much refined. I have this info from reading what the designers (Wharram, Shuttleworth, etc.) have to say. They looked to the Polynesians for first principles.

Here's another tidbit: Battened sails were invented by the Chinese - have a look at junk-type sails sometime. Works the same... the Chinese have a saying about how the sail is 'an ear listening for the wind.'

Again, sorry to offend your Eurocentric sensibilities, but credit is due where it's due, and these designers just refined the concept-they didn't invent it. But then, there's nothing new under the sun.