GIGO...

One of the scariest things I've read in years, a needful lexicon, and it's getting pretty hard to respect any government agency these days...

Do you know what I find frustrating?

All those so-called truths that aren't really... Like schooners or gaff rigs can't sail to windward, deep draft is more seaworthy than shallow draft, and multihulls don't sink.

The thing is, that like most things, it often depends and, more often than not, gross generalizations often tend to bite you on the ass if you're not careful.

Take the whole multihulls might capsize but they won't sink urban legend... Sure, a catamaran or trimaran does not have tons of lead but the lack of ballast is no cure for sinking unless the boat has positive buoyancy...

The real question is does a given cat or tri have positive buoyancy and how much? The answer is it all depends.

Sadly the question is a lot harder to answer than you'd expect... A wood or wood composite cat/tri you can pretty much expect it to float because wood floats.

Fiberglass, on the other hand, might or might not. Solid fiberglass pretty much sinks like a stone but some glass composites of the foam core variety will float while others don't and it mainly depends on the glass to foam ratio in the layup. Which is why next time you find yourself cutting a hole for yet another thru-hull you might want to throw the resulting fiberglass disc in the water and see what happens...

It gets worse. Even if your hulls have some positive buoyancy, all that stuff aboard you can't live without and various needful systems tend to add up quickly and, for want of a better word, becomes ballast. I think it's safe to say we all know what too much ballast does to positive buoyancy!

So, some multihulls don't sink and some will because the lack of ballast is not the only factor you're dealing with. Of course, like all good myths there's always a seed of truth somewhere in the mix. When the first claims of multihull superiority (think Wharram/Piver days) were being tried out almost all multihulls were wood and glass and did not sink...

Personally, I don't think being unsinkable is all that important (hey, I still think ferro-cement is a great material to build boats with) but I'd sure want to know just where my boat stood on the whole buoyancy factor whether it was a monohull or a multihull.

Listening to Richard Thompson

So it goes...