Has anyone sailed Escape's new PLAYCAT? Just curious how it performs and what the quality is like.

Check out the July issue of Cruising World. There is one on the cover of that month's magazine and article inside. Steve Callahan used it to to cruise the Maine coast. Good article and you should enjoy it.



Don

I read that article... unfortunately it focused more on the details of the trip and the weather conditions than it did the technical aspects of the cat. I bought the mag in the airport figuring it would be a good read for a short hour flight.



At anyrate, what I can't figure out is how you beach land that thing with the rudders the way that I think they are? The tiller arms just go straight into the hulls, I'm assuming on the bottom of the hulls are the rudders?

If I remember correctly (saw a photo somewhere), the boat has a skeg on the bottom of the hulls and the rudders are flush with the bottom of the skeg so they won't strike ground.

Check out this link--it has some photos...



http://www.escapesail.com/playcat.htm

The article in the Cruising World magazine did cover mostly the trip, but at least we had a beach cat on the cover of a major magazine. I have been a fan of the article's author, Steve Callahan ever sice I read his book "Adrift" (76 days surviving in a liferaft after his sailboat sank off the Canary Islands).



Kirk Newkirk at Key Sailing had one of these boats at his place. I looked it over and it definitely isn't a performance boat. The boat did have a skeg configuration with the rudder behind it, whereby, you would never hit the rudders, because the skeg was deeper and in front of it. The boat is made using the roto-molded process, like a lot of the kayaks you see out now. I imagine that this was a pretty good boat to use for cruising the coast of Maine where the beach landings are few and far between. The plastic boat could handle the rocks a lot better than a fiberglass one. Looks like a good rental boat.



Don

Wonder how much turning leverage you really get out of those short flush rudders Jake. Wouldn't have done us any good Saturday.

I saw the Playcat at the Chicago Strictly Sail boat show in January. The retail price is $3999 which is pretty good compared to the Hobie Wave price of $3800. I was astounded to see that one of the dealers at that show was offering the Playcat for only $2500, but only at the show - no extension for thinking about it or whatever. That was such a huge deal! If I had not already owned five boats I would have taken that one home with me! It has a very interesting design to allow a narrow waterline while sailing singlehanded and then it quickly flairs out to carry four adults very well also - the best of both worlds! It is a very clean, well thought out design and I would like to sail it sometime.