Hi!

I recently purchased a 14 foot off-the-beach cat. It's homemade, has an all-aluminium hull, and uses paper-tiger rigging (although as there are fittings for a jib I presume that this wasn't what it originally used). The owners knew nothing about it, but belived that the hull is based on the Sabre Cat class. However, I can find no information about this class at all - so I was wondering if anyone here could point me in an appropriate direction? I know of Sabre monohulls, of course, but that's it. I'm currently trying to resore th boat, so any information would be helpful.

Thanks heaps!

Adam.

I have never heard of a Sabre Cat. In fact, I did not know there was any aluminum catamaran except for the Sizzler. Can you describe the shape of the hulls?

I'll try to. It's 14 feet long, with a strong v-shape to the hulls. At the bow the hull is 18 inches deep, finishing in a point, and curved. At the widest point the hull is 17 inches wide. The hull is curved asymetrically - a sharp curve at the bow becoming more gradual as it goes back. The stern is 11 inches wide by 12 inches deep, again in a v-shape. The crossbars are connected directly to the hulls, although the front crossbar is slightly higher in the middle than the rear crossbar, due to being angled at about 20 degrees. The tramp is attached directly to the hulls.

I took it out once as a trial run, and it was surprisingly fast. I felt it was underpowered with the paper tiger rigging, but it left paper tigers for dead, and could hold its own (more-or-less) with an Alpha-Omega that was following an identical tack. I'm not sure if this is due to the aluminium or the shape of the hulls. It certaily wasn't due to the rigging or my sailing ability.

Actually, I was mostly attracted to the lines - it has, I feel, an elegant shape that looks fast, although I suspect it will be best in heavier winds.

Originally it appeared to be set up to take a jib, and my guess is it is about 20 years old, but that's just guessing. The last owner had it for 10 years, and it had two coats of paint under what he had applied. I have since tracked down two others, but haven't been able to contact the owners.

Thanks for any help with this - I would like to get it back to the original state, as I like the idea of an aluminium cat. It is, if nothing else, solidly built.

Are the hulls flat on top, or do they have a sharp edge all along the top of the hulls?

Flat on top. Or to be more exact, they have a slight curve running from the bow back to the first cross bar, then are very flat until the second cross bar, before having a slight curve until the stern. There are also no centerboards.

Okay, it sounds like it definitely was not copied from a Sizzler. Nobody I have asked has ever heard of a Sabre Cat. It is not listed in the Multihull Portsmouth tables. It sounds, however, like the underwater part of the hulls (being deep and symmetrical) is similar to both the Sizzler and the G cat.

First could I ask where you live?

Second, There were 2 other Aluminum Cats. The "Great Lakes Catamaran", a US company. The only one I saw had a keel formed from a standing welded seam. It looked like a pontoon boat with sails. The other was a French built boat. It looked "Dart like". I saw it in unpainted, polished aluminum. I was pretty.

Third, over the years I have seen a lot of boats built from aluminum or steel, including some beach cats. The story usually goes something like this, "I wanted one, I couldn't afford it, my brother works in an aluminum fabricating shop, we built it after work, and used the rig from a ????". They are usually very strange and end up in someone's back yard. There were a couple that were pretty neat though.

Carl, the one you are talking about from Great Lakes is the Sizzler. The actual name of the company was Great Lakes Sports. I know, because I worked for them. That's why I was asking so many questions about this boat to find out whether it was Sizzler-related. The Sizzler had the tramp mounted on pylons, just like the Hobie 16.

I live in Australia. The G-Cat does seem to have similar lines, but the photos I have found so far aren't clear enough to ascertain how similar. I wouldn't describe it as "Dart-like" though, at least based on my limited knowledge of Darts, but I should look into them some more as well.

I have assumed this boat was along the lines of what you suggest - a backyard job by someone who knew how to weld, and wanted a cat. However, I have tracked down two identical cats, and although the owners couldn't tell me anything, I was led to believe that there are at least 2 or 3 more. Which is a tad more serious than the usual backyard job. Also, the surprising speed and nice lines suggest that it was probably made fairly seriously, by someone who knew about boats.

My only lead before the help I was given here was that the last owner believed it was based on a Sabre Cat, but that now looks very unlikely. There is a manufacturer in Western Australia called Sabre Catamarans, but they make 80 foot high-speed ferrys, so unless they used to make something considerably smaller I suspect it isn't them.

At any rate, thanks for all the help. Luck holding I'll be able to get it into the water in the next week or so, and I am looking forward to testing it under race conditions. I'm not sure if an aluminium hull will prove to be a benefit or a liability, but it shoud be interesting.

Thanks heaps!

I hope this is not the same company. The only boats I ever saw by the Great Lakes Catamaran Co were some rentals on a lake in Iowa. They were beyond ugly. They looked like a cross between a pontoon boat and a Hobie 14. They were built like a pontoon boat. The seam for the hulls was along the bottom, with raw welds. There was also a peddle boat version with sails. I was told these boats were built for the State of Iowa as rentals.

I wanted one as a playboat and to see the looks on peoples faces at the starting line when they saw the raw welds on the bow.

Carl,
Nope, must be a different company from Great Lakes Sports. Nothing to do with Iowa. Great Lakes Sports Mfg. Co. was in Ohio, Greater Cleveland Area. No welding involved. No visible bolts, rivets, seams, or anything. The Sizzlers were actually very pretty boats, made of stretch-formed aluminum and filled with foam. Beautiful paint jobs on them. Very sleek and racy-looking. The deep-V shape of the symmetrical hulls was what inspired Hans Geissler to design the G-Cat the way he did. Some new people in Cleveland recently bought all the left-over hulls and all the machining equipment and were planning to start building them again. I think I kind of discouraged them. You know me -- I think there are already too many designs on the market.
Paul Swenson, the engineer who designed the Sizzler, also invented some little hydrofoil-type things that clamped onto the hulls to give them some lift. Very experimental, and I don't remember anybody getting very enthusiastic about the idea, so I don't know whether they actually worked or not.
Paul also designed a simple roller-furling device for the jibs, just involving a PVC tube attached to a plastic drum. Worked great. He also designed the ginpole-type mast-raising system for the Trailex trailers, and we sold that as an optional accessory.

I remember talking to Hans Giessler, and he mentioned that he used to sell Sizzlers and that they heavily influenced his G-Cat designs. He said the only thing 'bad' about them was that the foam would start to retain water and make them very heavy.

Also- I've heard of planes that use aluminum floats have trouble with sand and pebbles puncturing the floats while sitting on a beach....

Supposedly, it was not the foam per se that caused them to get heavy. The concept was to completely fill the hulls with foam -- the kind you pump in and it expands and goes everywhere when exposed to air. The foam supported the shape of those hollow, stretch-formed aluminum hulls and made them very strong. And supposedly it was the kind of foam that has closed cells that cannot absorb water. The secondary idea was that with the hulls completely filled with foam, you did not even have to worry about getting water in the hulls and did not have to worry about draining them.
PROBLEM: The foam usually did not entirely fill the hulls in an even way, and there would be voids here and there, and you had no way of knowing where they were -- top, bottom, front, back..... So when water got into the hulls -- as water always does -- it would collect in the voids, and there was no way to get it out.
Personally, it seemed to me that the foam also absorbed water, even though it was not supposed to.

The Sizzler did not have a problem with stones puncturing it, as far as I know. It had a sharp edge all the way around each hull, fore and aft, where the two halves of the hull were sealed with a stainless steel "U" strip. It protected it well -- you could have pulled it up onto a concrete launching ramp without hurting the boat at all. But that sharp-edged bottom also was a problem for pulling it up on beaches, because it would dig in instead of sliding on the said. Definitely had to have beach wheels.

Surprisingly, today I stumbled across an advert for a Sabre Cat which is for sale down the road from me - about 10 minutes drive at the most. If I get the chance I'll be stopping by to find out a) what Sabre Cats are, , and b) whether or not the hull shape matches my own boat. It should be interesting.

Regards,

Adam.

Did it look something like this? Ad is on ebay for the magazine ad, closes in four days, no commercial interest



http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=2150744796

sail fast