by Lenny Rudow
How do ridiculous rumors get started? We all remember that lesson in school, where everyone made a circle and whispered a sentence into the ear of the person next to them. By the time it made it all the way around the room, that sentence bore little resemblance to the original one. Well, the same thing happens in real life. An example: As a die-hard cat fan (and owner) I was disturbed to hear that someone had flipped an 18' Nautico powercat in the Ocean City inlet. So I did some investigation, and eventually confirmed that it was true. Yes, it happened--in the middle of the night, while the boat was being operated by a drunk captain, and an opposing current and 25-knot winds had created six to eight foot waves. Now, you can't find an 18' boat on the face of the planet which wouldn't have been at risk of flipping in this situation. Yet somehow, news of this event was taken by many (mono hull dealers, anyway), as evidence that cats flip in rough seas.
I've logged about 3,000 hours in powercats ranging in size from 18' to 26', and have encountered plenty of nasty seas and several summer squalls with intense wind. But I have yet to worry about flipping over in one. In fact, if anything the enhanced stability of a cat makes it less likely to flip than a monohull, not more likely. And as a general rule of thumb, the fact that a powercat is significantly more stable than a monohull of the same approximate size and weight isn't in dispute--not even by monohull salesmen and builders.
Of course, we haven't even discussed the fact that all cats are different anyway, just as all monohulls are different. Would someone assert that all monohulls are bumpy, because they rode through a tight chop in one that had a flat bottom? Of course not. All cats are unique too, and to lump a displacement cat like Glacier Bay's 26 Canyon Runner in with a semi-displacement cat like a World Cat is patently ridiculous. Nor have we addressed the fact that most powerboats which flip do so after being swamped--not while they're running through the seas.
Maybe you've heard this rumor yourself, and maybe it even came from a relatively reliable source. So don't take my word for it. Google "powercat boat flip," and see what you come up with. You'll see some people who repeat the rumor without citing any source or event as evidence, but you won't find any Coast Guard figures, studies, or even reliable articles or design papers that back it up. And that's because the flipping cat rumor is just that--a rumor. And if you own a cat, as long as you don't go running through an incredibly rough inlet at night while drunk, in all likelihood the only thing that'll be flipping is the fish in your cooler.
 |
| Will it ever flip? Not likely - the enhanced stability of a cat is one reason why I bought a Cat |
0 comments:
Post a Comment