Catamaran breaking rigging

[Scott Fratcher]

I'm looking to see if anyone else is having problems with rigging breaking on cats. We are on a large 58ft cat with 22mm backstays and a 19mm cross stay. We have broken the cross stay three times and broke a backstay reciently.

Every time we have broken a stay it's been in relitivly calm conditons. Not pushihing hard and in fact when the cross stay broke we were motoring into 20 knots of wind with no sail up.

Has anyone else found this with cats or is this one just a little under specked?

I should mention I seem to see a lot of de-masted cats around the harbors compared to monohulls.

Thanks
Scott

[Stephen Phillips]

Strange!! Obvious statement is, Something must not be right. What type of mast do you have? Would like to see some photos of the boat and rigging. I have a 36' cat and replaced the rigging when one strand out of 19 broke on one stay(at swage) after 6 years and over 30,000 hard miles. Have you seen a good rigger with multihull experience? Good luck and let us know how it goes. Regards, Steve

[Marlene A. Sassaman]

Are the cats you see de-masted because of faulty rigging or because work is being done on them? I don't know the procedure for lowering a mast on the big cats, but on my Corsair F28, it is relatively easy - just like lowering the mast on a Hobie 20 or Supercat 28; with the use of a gen pole I am even had a friend show me how to lower it while the boat is in the water. So the question is 'Why are they de-masted?" Could it be it is just easier to lower their masts then the masts on a monohull?

[Scott Fratcher]

Thanks for the ideas. We picked up this cat in NZ and took it to Tahiti and then on to the Tuamotu and back to Tonga where we are waiting for rigging.

I think I saw four demasted cats in and around Tahiti, and not a single demasted monohull. I saw one in the Tuamotus. A couple years ago in Panama I counted four demasted cats to one monohull. They all had a story, but they were all rigging failures of one type or another. I did not ask about the cats in Tahiti as I was just trying to get our boat sailing again.

In Panama many of the demastings seemed to come from trying to make the Galapagos. That is 800 miles of strange seas.

I guess my question is are more susceptible to rigging failures?

Scott

[Stephen Phillips]

Catamarans can have higher loads on their rigging as they do not heel over in gusts, but accelerate instead, or fly a hull. Something to avoid in a cruising cat. Cats like monos are all different, some are better than others for ocean cruising, but all boats are a compromise.

We always set/reef our sails to suit the gusts that we are experiencing. We have only 3 by 8mm stays on a rotating mast and now have Sta Lok fittings.

Steve