The Complete History of the C-Class Catamaran Challenge Races From 1961 to September 2013. The fastest boats powered by wind - up to 3 times faster than the wind - 27 knots in 9 knots of wind.
Southend-on-Sea, Essex -- (ReleaseWire) -- 11/27/2013 --In 1961 the British Royal Yachting Association challenged the USA to a catamaran ‘Challenge Race’. Like the newly reinstated America’s Cup, named after the yacht ‘America’ not the place, it would be a best of 7 match race series.
The Eastern Multihulls Association of the USA accepted this Challenge and set about finding the fastest catamaran not longer than 25 ft with a maximum sail area of 300 sq ft. As luck would have it a west coast team won over the East coast team.
So California raced against the Britain and unexpectedly lost.
For the next 7 years the British kept winning against the Americans and Australians then accepted a Danish Challenge, but this time they lost the trophy: never to regain it.
The trophy stayed in either America or Australia until 2007 when the Canadians won. They repeated the feat again in 2010 but in 2013 the French were victorious.
What is little understood is that these boats are the fastest for their size in the world. They used wings instead of sails as far back as 1974.
Today with only 300 sq ft of sail these catamaran reach speeds of 35 knots and can sail up to 3 times faster than the wind.
Intrigued?
We have written a history of these little known but so influential boats. We now want to get it printed.
The illustrations are unique, the history complete and all that is needed is to turn it from our electronic copy into a real 400 page fully illustrated book. Help us get Crowd Funded at Indiegogo.
Project URL: http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/faster-than-the-wind-class-c-catamaran-racing