I would like to add that despite my sturdy talk above, steering a patin-a-vela isn't so difficult as it seems to be.
Most of you do not realize that this cat has a very small beamsize. Original I believe it was 1.5 m, but I narrowed it even further down to 1.2 m.
That's because I replaced the original wooden beam-planks with two sawn-off old nacra beams (broken at the dolphin striker).
So, the cat was also transportable on a normal luggage trailer
flickr.comYou can imaging that manoeuvering between swimmers is now simpler.
(the same applies for righting the cat after a flip!).
Finally the very special hull shape makes the cat very sensitive for weight distribution (far more then on a normal cat).
Sitting and sailing is a peace of cake:
flickr.com