Glen-L.com

Hello,

I've been a catamaran guy for a long time. Then moved to a J-24 and a year later a 36ft sloop. After seven years I sold the sloop. Now a year later I'm missing the action. I recently came accross a Hobie 20 minus sails, daggers,rudders. And a guy is selling his J-24 for a good price. I always had this wild idea of adding Hobie hulls to a J boat and there ya have it, a trimaran. The basics I have. Cut off the keel, attach hulls and tie in the cat rudders to work with the J rudder. Also I guessed the best place to tie in the rear cross bars would be at the traveler location of the J, but as for the front, you have the hump shape of the deck to deal with. My guess is that this combination would prove to be really fast, say around 12 to 18 knots depending on loading and point of sail. Any thoughts out there?

I don't see how puttting more hulls on a monohull will make it faster. You would need to mount the cat hulls so they take some lift off the center hull and reduce drag. They might a little but your center hull is too big for it to be an efficient idea.

You could add more sail if you put cat hulls on and that would give you more speed, but I suspect you will be limited to the theoretical hull speed of the large hull except on occasions when you could get a following sea to help push you on a plane.

I think you would have better luck putting those hulls on an OK Dingy or some smaller boat where you have a better chance of overcoming the weight of the hull and the hull had a better shape for planing.