Catamarans are more expensive than monohulls.

Monohull vs catamaran speed. While you can get away with a cruising load on a monohull the same weight has the tendency to slow a catamaran. Monohulls slice through the water effortlessly. Catamarans are faster than monohulls.

Catamarans will generally have a jerky fast motion while monohulls tend to be more gentle and slow. Years ago cats were focussed on high speed especially for racing. On average a cruising catamaran or trimaran is around 25-30 speedier than a conventional monohull of an identical size.

The catamaran was found to have a smaller block coefficient 1 and due to significantly lower resistance the catamaran requires less power to perform at the same speed and carrying capacity of a monohull. Monohull debate see here. Catamarans vs Monohulls From a performance perspective as a general rule monohulls are faster into the wind than catamarans yet cats will leave monohulls for dust on downwind legs.

Monohulls heel upwind and when the wind is on the beam while catamarans stay flat but pitch upwind. We forgot to include these last time. Catamaran speed is relative.

Speed Its often said that a catamaran is usually faster than a monohull of similar size but even on our old heavy displacement monohull a Tayana 37 weve overtaken modern bigger cruising catamarans. Generally cats slide sideways leeway a lot more when sailing into the wind than monohulls meaning that you will travel further on an upwind leg in order to get where you are going than on a single hulled. You basically get near racing monohull speeds but with all the creature comforts that come with a cat.

Why does this performance discussion persist. Logs for deliveries for monohulls and catamarans from the Chesapeake to the Virgin Islands about a 1500 mile trip with varying conditions we find that the catamarans of the same size average about 20 better passage speeds. A monohull is generally faster to respond to the helm in other words they turn faster.