The Advantages of a Catamaran
Catamarans have several obvious advantages over traditional monohulls such as seaworthiness, stability, and fuel efficiency. Cats, however, have been slower to catch on in the US market than they have in places such as South Africa, New Zealand, and Australia, notorious seafaring nations whose populations appreciate how a boat handles in rough seas.
Those who spend or have spent a lot of time on the water know how important a boat’s ride and sea keeping characteristics are. Less experienced boaters might put more emphasis on how a boat looks or how many cushions a boat has, but if you’re going to spend a lot of time on the water, you don’t want your boat to pound as it crosses waves and boat wakes and you don’t want to get wet.
How a boat rides and handles is a direct result of the shape of its hull. There are specific trade offs in the benefits of varying hull designs. When choosing a boat, it is important to know the pros and cons of each style.
At one end of the spectrum is a deep V hull design and at the other end of the spectrum is the flat bottom or skiff hull design.
Flatter bottom hull designs such as skiffs and flats fishing boats are designed to have shallow drafts and operate in shallow water. The downside to these designs is that the less sharp the hull design, the greater the boat-wave impact, which leads to a less comfortable ride when in rough seas or choppy conditions. Flatter bottom hull designs displace less water and therefore are more fuel efficient and can operate with less horsepower.
The deeper the V or the sharper the V of the hull design, the less the boat-wave impact, which leads to a more comfortable ride in rough seas or choppy conditions. Further, deeper V hull designs displace more water and therefore are less fuel efficient and require greater horsepower.
Whereas traditional V-hull designs have trade offs between draft, fuel efficiency, and comfort of ride, catamarans do not. Catamaran hulls incorporate the best qualities of the deep V hull and the flat bottom hull.
Ride:
Tideline hulls contain 2 very narrow, sharp entry, deep “V’s, which slice through waves at a sharper angle than even most of the deepest V mono-hulls. As the “V”s of a Tideline hull are narrower and sharper than most of the deepest V mono-hulls, Tideline’s hull creates even less impact with the water than the ride of the most deep V mono-hulls, making Tideline one of the smoothest riding boats on the market.
Tideline hulls provide a smoother ride than most any deep V hulls and flat bottom hulls.
Stability:
As Tideline hulls contain buoyancy on each side of the beam, these boats have great balance and very little “roll” from side to side, even when the beam is perpendicular to the seas.
The stability of a Tideline Hull is superior to that of most any deep V hull.
Fuel Efficiency:
As the “v”s of a Tideline hull are narrower and sharper than most deep “v” hulls, Tideline’s hull creates less drag and less water displacement, making Tideline more fuel efficient and requiring less horsepower than most comparable sized deep “v” hulls.
Draft:
As Tideline hulls contain buoyancy on each side of the beam as opposed to buoyancy in a single V, the draft of a Tideline hull is less than that of most similar sized, similar weighted hulls. There is no other boat on the market that combines the shallow draft and the ability to handle big seas and rough conditions as the Tideline 235.
