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Hey i'm Greg, from Saint Cloud,Fl. I built the Bearcat sport with a few modifications. Great boat.

Welcome to the forum Greg. Do you have any pictures of your boat you could share with us?

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"Nothing screams poor craftsmanship like wrinkles in your duct tape."

Actually, yes. Plus a brief description.
I built an aluminum Bearcat in 1999, for sport diving, with a few modifications:
LOA less outdrives 26' 0"
Beam 9' 10"
Other modifications include:
Raised tunnel height 2" over the design height
Modified the cross beams from 7" shop built beams to 8" commercial avail channels
Moved the rear bulkhead forward to allow clearance for smallblock Mercruisers
Added stiffeners to the transom for the sterndrives
Added mounting rails and covers for the engines

I live in Saint Cloud, Fl just a few miles from Lake X, which is Mercury's testing facility. Before building the boat, I had the oppurtunity to have a meeting at Lake X with the head of Mercruiser division. After the discussion he made suggestions for engines and drives for the boat. We decided on carbeurated Mercruiser 5.0 @220 hp ea, and Bravo 1 sterndrives with 1.65 gears. After the boat was built we were invited to the testing facility to have the boat propped for the best performance. Even they were amazed at the performance, and we finally went with 21p Mirage Plus counter rotating props.
The engine systems are completely isolated from each other including electrical and fuel, with their own 75 gal fuel tank and battery. Therfore if there is a problem with one, the other should be just fine. We have a 4 blade spare prop 15p which will get the boat on plane with only one engine, but just barely.
Performance:
WOT 4800 rpm, 58 mph with 21 people on board. Same with 2 people
3400 rpm cruise speed 40 mph, 1.75 mpg. Loaded or not doesn't make much difference.
This boat will cruise 4-5 foot swells at 40 mph without jumping. As you pass over a swell and expect to slam into the side of the next swell, the boat just eases onto the swell like landing on a sponge. the ride will get uncomfortable when the wind blown chop gets up to about 2-3'. The tunnel height is not high enough to clear the chop, and it will pound the flat bottom of the tunnel. I am glad we raised it 2" over the design, but would raise it even more if I rebuild. We have made several trips to the Bahamas in this boat. note: I love being on the water, but I am prone to seasickness, so I choose carefully when I go out. Therefore seas are usually somewhat calm, but as you know, contitions can change almost instantly. And being 20 -30 miles offshore, we have been caught in some nasty stuff. As i said before the main disadvantage of this design is the pounding in a tall chop. In 4' swells a 34' monohull could not keep up with us, even inside of our wake. They would jump every swell and slam into the next, and had to slow down. There is a learning curve for a catamaran. For instance a catamaran will turn flat like a car without leaning into the turn like a monohull. So it has a tendancy to make you slide sideways. Floor space on this boat is ideal for diving. Lots of room for equipment and divers. A typical diving trip would be about 7 people, 12-14 tanks, gear, coolers, etc. It would get crowded at times but if managed properly, wasn't a problem. The boat never struggled to get on plane with the power option we had, and we usually had about 2500 - 2800# of people and gear.

Welcome Greg! Thanks for the photos of your Bearcat--it looks great! Hard to image 21 people on board--that must have been "cozy". Glad to have you on the Forum...

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That was during the Mariel boat lift!!!!:

http://stumbledownunder.files.wordpress ... .jpg?w=300

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Oh, by the way I didn't mention the 43 more people stuffed into the cargo holds under the floor.

Actually 21 people is true, twas Labor Day 1999, first time on the lake. Family and friends from everywhere wanted to go for the maiden voyage, from babies to adults (some of the adults were also babies). The guys, probably 5-6 of us were all standing around the cocpit, everybody else was seated. So we were cruisin around the lake, about 5 mi across, and someone yelled "the cops are after us". I turned around and looked, sure enough, I could barely see flashing lights about a mile behind us. We stopped and waited, and as the Sheriff pulled up, he was on the radio calling the other Sheriff boat who was coming around the lake in the opposite direction to stop us, saying, " I finally caught em". He checked to make sure we had life jackets for everyone, we did, and proper safety equipment, we did. Hey, I also knew the guy. He shook his head and gave a "holy #%$@", and we were off again.
It was quite an exciting day to have spent all of our spare time for 6 months cutting and welding aluminum, and finally get out on the water to see what our creation would do. I could not have been more pleased. The Hankinson plans were easy to follow, and also easy to modify to the dimensions we desired. As of now, sadly, the boat is down. It needs full repowering since both engines are wore out and not reliable any more. Though we got years of use out of them. It's gonna have to wait, there are more important things to spend limited funds on right now. The boat hull inside and out, and in the bilges, are still like new, except for cleaning and paint. I hanen't seen any sign of signifigant corrosion anywhere. In case anyone is interested, total cost for the project except finish and paint which came later, $33k, including custum trailer.

21 people on board and launch AND a police chase to boot!

Would make a good movie I think.

Thanks for sharing the details with us... us builders are nuts for stuff like that.

(... or are we just plain nuts either way)

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