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sail445 said:
The cats in general don't pile on the fiberglass and a grounding on rocks or coral will usually tear out the bottom.


It depends on the multihull. Each one is designed and built differently. Most of the cats in the charter fleets have lower cost nasty performance robbing stub keels intended as a safety margin for the many groundings that will happen. The stub keels along with all the other weight that gets stuffed into the point really depreciate the performance. Once aground the twin hull configuration can make getting off more difficult resulting in greater damage if there is any surf, rocking, or pounding issues. Today very few manufactures use any more expensive and heavy performance stealing fiberglass than they have to. If there is an issue with a charter cat versus a charter mono hull aground the general difference is the cat is wider and heavier with little chance of using heel to get off. Some claim the addition of the sacrificial or "bumper" stub keels on the rental cats are unsafe by robbing the knowledgable sailor the ability to point and sail away from a lee shore. There is no question other than saving a few dollars and providing a perceived margin of error that a knowledgable marine architect would design multihull with dagger boards in place of the stub keels. Real multihulls have daggerboard. Many of the early Dream charter cats had dagger boards. The difference in performance is stunning. Like night and day,