Multihull sailing - Racing or Cruising?
Multihull sailing - Racing or Cruising?
Every now and then the issue about “multihull sailing for who” is brought up, meaning what are the characteristics of the typical multihull sailor. As always there is no black and white answer. However what we frequently see is that speed (….even in our story telling…) is emphasized a lot and with speed comes racing. In our case this is actually not true, potentially we have not fully brought forward what it is about – an experience which makes sailing and nature even greater.
Yes we have a lot of action and racing pictures and movies, however the vast majority of the time our Seaon sailors just sail for fun and great pleasure – with their families including children and even grand children from age of a few months to grown up. There is Alex and Henrik who sail with their families and young ones across the Baltic from Sweden to Finland, there is Bernard who enjoys the waters outside Bretagne with his grand children, there is Sebastian in Lausanne who is sailing with his family as much as times permit (almost daily that is…. And actually always docking with sails – Captain Sebastian principally does not allow the use of the engine except if there is absolutely no wind).
This is why we get somewhat astonished when we get the question: “Can you go cruising with a Seaon? Can it be sailed by a “normal” (!? Let’s not define “normal” at this time!) sailor? Do people sail with their children? Obviously the answer is YES! And obviously it means we have to think more about the “evangelism” we are preaching (we are not religious ….but very passionate!)
We have mentioned it before – we designed the Seaon 96crb to satisfy our sailing (and to some extent racing) vanity, but mostly to fulfil a joyful (with families!) sailing experience, where amongst other the production technology we use help us to make the boat easy to handle due to less need of sail area. The high stability and high speed of trimarans demand very hard work by the crew when handling large genoas. Beating upwind in a narrow strait with our self tacker jib is a real pleasure.
Every now and then the issue about “multihull sailing for who” is brought up, meaning what are the characteristics of the typical multihull sailor. As always there is no black and white answer. However what we frequently see is that speed (….even in our story telling…) is emphasized a lot and with speed comes racing. In our case this is actually not true, potentially we have not fully brought forward what it is about – an experience which makes sailing and nature even greater.
Yes we have a lot of action and racing pictures and movies, however the vast majority of the time our Seaon sailors just sail for fun and great pleasure – with their families including children and even grand children from age of a few months to grown up. There is Alex and Henrik who sail with their families and young ones across the Baltic from Sweden to Finland, there is Bernard who enjoys the waters outside Bretagne with his grand children, there is Sebastian in Lausanne who is sailing with his family as much as times permit (almost daily that is…. And actually always docking with sails – Captain Sebastian principally does not allow the use of the engine except if there is absolutely no wind).
This is why we get somewhat astonished when we get the question: “Can you go cruising with a Seaon? Can it be sailed by a “normal” (!? Let’s not define “normal” at this time!) sailor? Do people sail with their children? Obviously the answer is YES! And obviously it means we have to think more about the “evangelism” we are preaching (we are not religious ….but very passionate!)
We have mentioned it before – we designed the Seaon 96crb to satisfy our sailing (and to some extent racing) vanity, but mostly to fulfil a joyful (with families!) sailing experience, where amongst other the production technology we use help us to make the boat easy to handle due to less need of sail area. The high stability and high speed of trimarans demand very hard work by the crew when handling large genoas. Beating upwind in a narrow strait with our self tacker jib is a real pleasure.
/Jan
