Some needful reading, a great Curtis Mayfield post, and in the "Symbolism speaks volumes" department...
A while back, I did a post on one of my favorite small production catamaran designs, the Prout Sirocco. Afterwards, I bemoaned the fact that no one designs boats like the Sirocco anymore to my friend Michael up in the PNW.
So, here's what popped up in my mailbox yesterday...
Named after a hot dust-bearing wind of the North African desert, the Ghibli has a lot in common with the Sirocco. They're both twenty-six feet long, have a very similar accommodation, and both are shoal draft.
However, the Ghibli has a lot more going for it. For starters, it's a new design and there has been a lot of advances in multihulls in the last four decades since the Sirocco came on the scene. While I'm not a "Newer is always better" kinda guy, I will admit that improvements in construction and materials allows the Ghibli to weigh around a thousand pounds less than the Sirocco and, where multihulls are concerned, weight is a huge factor in performance.
I should also add that the styling is lot more what people think a modern cat is supposed to look like if that is something you find important.
Designed as a DIY-buildable cat it would be a relatively easy and fast build. As costs go, you should be able to build a Ghibli for what a good condition 40-year old Sirocco is selling for. If you wanted to bring the costs down it would make sense to get together with some other Ghibli builders and co-op the buying of materials and suchlike which could really lighten the materials and systems costs.
I'm still waiting with anticipation on another design from Mr Schacht that he described as...
"I have a typically strange boat in the works that I think you’ll like".
My kinda guy!
Listening to UB40 cover Curtis Mayfield
So it goes...
