The word "catamaran" goes back to an Indian term, which designates a boat consisting of "tied together trunks".
history
easily . A long time before the Europeans had undertaken far sea voyages with such built boats.
Already in the 5. Century they managed the distance between Fidji and Hawaii.
The
first double trunk boat in Europe, the 30 foot "Invention I"
was designed 1662 by the Irish Sir William Petty and
found even the support of the King Charles II.
In a regatta of the "Royal Society" it struck all other boats.
In the following years (1786) the Scot Patrick Miller
built several two - and three - trunk - boats, which however could not
become generally accepted in the long term.
In
1876 Nathanael Herreshoff beat the entire fleet with
his 25' Amaryllis at the New York Yacht Club’s Centennial Regatta.
He was promptly banned from all future races.
The boat was built following the Polynesian outrigger canoes.
It received however, instead of starting the acknowledgment of this type
of yacht, a prohibition, which can be expected, with further boat races.
The further development of the catamaran was first stopped.
In
1937 Eric de Bisschop, a Fench explorer and ocean sailor,
built the forerunner of the modern catamaran, a 35' double canoe, on Waikiki
Beach in Hawaii.
He named her Kaimiloa.
He then sailed through the Indian Ocean, around the Cape of Good Hope,
back to Cannes, France. The voyage took 264 days..
In the 50's the Americans Woody Brown, Alfreds Kumalae and Rudy Choy built a catamaran as alternative to the surfing on Hawaii.
The
introduction of the plastics to the boat building
revolutionized the production ways. It was the transition from single
to quantity production.
The development and spreading of the beachcatamarans could not be stopped
anymore.
For
better distinction one partitioned the catamarans into different construction
classes in the context of limits of size:
A -, B -, C -, D and E - division
A-Kat L 5.48 m/w 2.28 m/ sail max. 13,90
mē
B-Kat
L 6.10 m/w 3.05 m/sail max. 21,83 m2
C-Kat L 7.62 m/w 4.27 m/sail max. 27,88
m2
D-Kat L freely
/ w freely / sail max. 46,40 m2
E-Kat unlimited L+ w/ sails of max. 92.90
mē
"International Yacht Racing Union" in England and still belongs to one of the oldest and most activ catamaran classes in the world. Due to a minimum of construction rules such as lenght, witdth and sail area it has beenpossible for the numerous designers to develop a boat outstanding performance.
This
led to the fact that the A-Cat as a multihull has becomea pure high-tech
boat and is nowadaysconsidered as the formula one among all the sailing
boats.
Modern materials such as carbon and cevlar are being used for the mass
production of hulls and masts, a potential of development which has been
recognized and approved by modern industries, whereas others still satisfy
with glassfibres and
aluminium masts.
However,it’s always been a pure A-Class sailor to win the Championships.
This shows about the high level of performance within the class is and it leads us to amazing numbers of entries for such Championships.
The International A-Class A-Class Rules
allows 80 to 100 entries which means for each country to sail pre-selection events.
As early as 1970, the big brother of the Hobie Cat 14, the Hobie Cat 16 made its debut. Did Hobie imagine then that he was creating a catamaran class which was going to become, very soon, the most important one worldwide?
Today there are about 200.000 Hobie Cats sailing around the world.
Over 4,800 Tornados have been built, with 1,200 class association members worldwide.
In order to broaden the access to elapsed time racing to a maximum of catamaran sailors, Pierre-Charles Barraud and Oliver Bovyn decided then to create in 1994 the Formula 18 using the SCHRS formulas to compute the performance parameters.
(from IF18CA)