CAT CRAZY, TRI FI and Other Multihull Comparisons by Jim Brown
CAT CRAZY, TRI FI And Other Multihull Comparisons By Jim Brown “There is nothing, absolutely nothing, quite so much worth doing as simply messing about in…” Multihulls! That paraphrased quote is pilfered for the most part from Ratty, the revered rodent in Kenneth Grahame’s venerated tale “The Wind in the Willows.” Of course, Grahame and Ratty said it of ordinary boats, and neither would have, even could have, said it of multihulls. But if Brown had been the author instead of Grahame, his character Ratty might have said something like, “There is nothing, absolutely nothing quite so creative as screwing around with multihulls.” By “screwing around,” Ratty would have spoken literally, meaning to conceive, gestate, whelp, wean and release upon the Earth’s fluid interface one’s very own flesh and blood multihulls. And that’, impatient reader, is what this appendix is about, so like most appendices reading it is strictly optional. In that you are reading on, please be prepared for some sacrilege. Suggesting there is something divine about boat design and construction I will try to trace multihull origins by expanding on the theorem expressed by my late friend Walt Glaser who said (in Chapter 1 of my memoir, “Among the Multihulls,”), “A man builds a boat to make up for the fact that he can’t build a baby… What else can a guy produce with his own body that so closely simulates a living thing?” It took me many years of both messing about in and screwing around with boats to apprehend this aspect of watercraft, and I admit that it still takes quite a stretch for me to accept the notion.
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