We just finished a charter on a Sunsail 444 - great boat for a family vacation. First experience with a cat - easy transition from a mono. We were a large party of 10 (two families of 5). Each family took a pontoon. Plenty of room for everyone.

Pros:
- Lots of space for large crowd; walk through from salon to front seating area a+
- Elevated helm had good visibility and good communication with the mooring tender
- Easy to single-hand. All lines lead back to helm. Plenty of winches
- Ample storage throughout vessel
- Plenty of water capacity. We took on an additional 125 gallons beyond the full tanks. This was for eight nights with ten people.
- Power winch to raise main was a plus
- Easy access to all valves - opening / closing holding tanks very simple;

Cons (very few)
- VHF microphone was in salon - useless to helmsman
- Dingy rubbed against charcoal grille when on the davits - needed to deploy padding between dingy and grille to avoid popping dinghy.
- Not enough cup-holders / storage at helm. Two cup holders and no room for hand held VHF or rigging knife (both of which I like close by).
- When raising the mainsail it often got hung-up in the lazy jacks. Unable to see lazy jacks from helm - needed a spotter to watch main and give instructions to bear off port/starboard to keep main out of lazy jacks

Other items of note
- I found the mainsail traveler a non-issue. Not sure what others had issues with.
- On a cat - there are two of everything - learned this when port pontoon did not have hot water. Remember to turn on both hot water heaters!
- Forward cleats are not to be used for anything with major load. Be sure to cleat off to the proper cleats that are on the pontoons.
- Reef earlier than literature indicates. We found going to reef #1 at 15 knots worked better than waiting to 20 knots.

Hope this helps!

Cheers,

Brendan