A monohull is not a good boat off the beach. “We lived on the beach (at Laguna Beach), and they were the only boats that were really usable off the beach. if you were a surfer, you wanted a little more thrilling thing. “I didn’t know anything about sailing so I wasn’t confused by any past ideas. Getting a little wet never discouraged an old surfer like Alter. how they not only tip over but how they can go over frontward, disgracing the skipper and the boat.’ ” A guy sent me a story out of an 1800s magazine about how they ‘had now been seen and tried enough that there’s no reason for anyone to go any further experimenting with them, and their pieces littered the shorelines. “It goes back to the 1800s when (Nathaniel) Hereshoff got thrown out of a race at the New York Yacht Club because he came up with a catamaran. This guy’s got this $50,000 (monohull) and a $2,000 (catamaran) can just destroy his speed image. Maybe because they’d go faster than monohulls. The problem was, Alter said, that “catamarans had not caught on. It was for two people to sail and six people to drag.” “It took six guys to drag it off the beach. “But it was not a beach boat,” Alter said. We would have been the fourth boat to finish.”Ī short time later, Alter bought a P-cat, an 18-foot, 600-pound catamaran with a solid wing section instead of a trampoline. Then the wind died and we coasted up to their line.
![topcat sailing topcat sailing](https://photos.inautia.com/barcosNuevos/9/2/8/2/topcat-45-55233090070369686969565552564551x.jpg)
#TOPCAT SAILING FULL#
we had to be doing a full 20-plus knots going down that bay,” Alter said, recalling the thrill.
![topcat sailing topcat sailing](https://i.pinimg.com/originals/63/62/38/63623848ea3cc47ded4aee44037e1321.jpg)
“We’re like 75th, but when the wind came offshore blowing 20 (knots), all those big boats started heeling over. Then the wind died and everybody caught up near the finish. “At dark we were at the Coronado Islands and were the second boat,” Alter said. Catamarans were unofficial entries in the Ensenada race in those days when they would lie off the starting line and take off with the monohulls, soon leaving most of them behind. That was my position.”Įdwards, a lifelong friend who went to work for Alter when he was still in high school, had a small, 20-foot catamaran. I stood on the hull and hung on to the daggerboard. “I went on an Ensenada race with Phil Edwards (in the 1950s),” he said. So we’ve been in the whole range of boating and enjoyed all of it.” Then I saw how they probably hated us, too, having a little boat tack back and forth in front of them.