I've done a bit of 49-er sailing myself (after I had about 7 years of catsailing on my resume) and it is my opinion that the two experiences are considerable different. Not so much better or worse but different.

The exciting of a skiff (for me at least) is the high octane adrenaline rush when you are succesful keeping the boat upright and executing the manouvres with ballet like control. I found this to be a high pitched rush, but also extremely tiring. Over halve the time your mind is with control and staying on your toes, the racing comes second.

Catamarans, even when fitted with spinnakers, do not provide this high pitched thrill unless it is blowing nuclear. Not that there isn't a thrill to cats, there certainly is, but it is a different kind of thrill. The cats produce a much more lower pitch excitement that humms away over long periods of time. The excitement of cats is the speed and going faster and faster while being in full control. Racing cats is more like fox hunting. You can zero in on your opponent and battle him for as long as 1, 2, 3 hours or even more and still be going strong. The excitement comes from knowing the other won't tip it in or crash and that you'll have to run him down by superior trimming and smart moves. I found sailing the cats to be far more a game of planning and strategic moves then tactics like tacking on a shift. Even with a simple manouvre like tacking on a shift you have to think it over. Is the gain large enough to correct out over the initial loss, which on cats is quite big. Tacking on most shifts is a sure way to loose a race on cats as it kills your speed too much. And all this does happen at noticeably higher speeds. So the excitement builds up during the race but is less high strung, it is more of a game of who blinks first. I personally find this dueling much more enjoyable. Also because on our club race day we can do this for about 2 to 3 hours.

When I sailed 49-ers I would be so tired after 30 minutes of hard sailing that my concentration would drop off leading to more and more capsizes and mishaps. I also found a Hobie 16 to simply pass us on the upwind legs EVEN if we were planing upwind. The boat demanding so much attention that I have hardly any memories of the scenery or the conditions during sailing. In cat sailing I do have several of those where the sun breaks through after a rainy start, where I've been duelling another boat for 3 hours during a long distance race. With the crews chatting when side by side beam reaching at 15-18 knots. Arguing whether the losing boat should buy the other a crate of beer or a box of wine while keeping the pedal to the metal all the time.

A catamaran is more than a skiff with stabilizers on. The are faster, especially upwind. The way they are sailed is different. The setup of racing is different and the type of exitement they produce is different in my experience. I tried to do a short distance race on a skiff once, never doing that again. Cats also allow you to take some inexperienced friend along and have them experience fast sailing. Last season my crew brought a friend with her and after 10 to 15 minutes of getting used to the boat she was trapezing off the boat handling the spinnaker sheet. Granted the water was relatively flat with a nice and stable force 3 to 4 wind but then again even in those conditions I would never have done that on a skiff like dinghy, with or without a spinnaker. When a neighbouring club invited our club to their races then we sail our boats over. Takes about 60 minutes to do so but it won't have much effect on how well our racing goes later in the day.



Wouter