The Catamaran Revolution

"Catamarans have been a revolution in sailing. I think even many sailors do not really realize just what a revolution it has been," says Warren Oldroyd of Quantum Sail Design's Cape Town loft. "If you go back just three or four decades, there were few catamarans, very few multihulls around. Just odd guys like Wharram in Australia, designing cats you could build in your backyard, or like Dr David Lewis, with Rehu Moana, who later discovered so much of the skills of Polynesian navigation. Polynesia is, of course, where catamarans originated."

The change to multihulls is reflected both in the leisure market, where they are prized for their space, and in the world of speed.

Racing multihulls

The speed potential of multihulls is seen dramatically in the attempts on the Jules Verne 80 Day Trophy for the fastest non-stop circumnavigation of the world. All the attempts have been in multihulls, initially in catamarans, the first record set by the Frenchman Bruno Peyron in 1993 on the catamaran Commodore Explorer, finishing appropriately just short of Verne's 80-day target, in 79 days, 6 hours and 16 minutes.

He was followed a year later by two great sailing legends, Peter Blake and Robin Knox Johston, sailing on the 88ft-catamaran Enza who cut the record down to just under 75 days.

1997 again a Frenchman, Olivier de Kersauson, sailing the trimaran Sport Elec set a new record of 71 days in what was de Kersauson's fourth attempt. Current attempts have also relied on trimarans, including that of Francis Joyon who recently set a single-handed record of 57 days, while another very determined attempt by another Frenchman, Franck Cammas on a fully-crewed trimaran, Groupama, is currently under way, racing as this is posted on the Quantum site.

The Jules Verne Trophy is also unique in that it is not a race of competing boats per se, but the record attempts are made when a competing team judges what they feel is the most favourable weather envelope, and timing starts from the initial crossing of the start line, an imaginary line between the Lizard and Ushant.

Enza also went on to set another record, when renamed Daedalus, the powerful cat was skippered by Tony Bullimore in the Oryx Round the World race in 2005, with a crew that included Nick Leggatt of Quantum's Cape loft, who had previously crewed on Steve Fossett’s world record 58 day circumnavigation aboard Cheyenne (ex-Playstation). With a specially constructed full set of Quantum sails, Daedalus placed second overall, and set a new record in the punishing leg from Cape Horn to Cape Aghulas. Recalls Leggatt: "That was a helter-skelter ride, in quite wild conditions. It was exhilirating sailing, when you experience just how powerful a big cat like that can be."

The appeal of multihulls in terms of speed, notes Oldroyd, rests on a simple principle, that of the power-to-weight ratio. Multihulls do not require heavy lead keels to stay upright, and so are generally far lighter for the sail they carry, and so potentially faster.

Leisure Cats

In the field of cruising catamarans, despite the initial lead of the French, South African boatbuilders have achieved an extraordinary prominence, led in the early years by the Saldanha yard of Dean Catamarans, and then with a sense of vision and excellent build quality of Robertson and Caine in Cape Town, using modern composites, and developing production line techniques, currently producing over 80 craft a year, mostly for the export charter-market, and the firm is aiming to more than double their production figures with a new yard coming on stream in Atlantis, 40 km north of Cape Town.

It has been a phenomenal achievement, and at Quantum this has allowed us to forge relationships with the world's top yacht-charter companies, The Moorings and Sunsail, engendering a feedback on sail usage and performance that has been invaluable, and helped place Quantum at the forefront of catamaran sail-builders in the world. (The achievements of the trail-blazing yard are discussed in a separate article elsewhere on this site.)

In the world of boats, it is inevitably "different strokes for different folks" and South African yards have benefitted from the work of talented designers such as Simonis and Voogd, and Angelo Lavranos, and more recently the winning design team of Morelli and Melvyn (the designers of the record-setting Playstation for American adventurer Steve Fossett) in their work on the Leopard range.

In South Africa alone Quantum builds catamaran sails for many different yards, all producing sailing cats of rugged and exceptional quality. What follows is a brief guide to these boatbuilders who produce a surprisingly diverse range of craft, ranging from 30-foot daysailers to the striking 76-footer from Matrix Yachts, which accommodates 10 guests and 4 crew in spacious luxury. While some of the yards also produce power cats, in the interests of saving fuel, we list here only the sailing catamarans.