Why Cats

I started sailing cadets in 1980. Moved on to crewing Scorpions before sailing Lasers. Discovered girls, stopped sailing. When my hormones had settled down I tried windsurfing as my job was pretty mobile - loved the speed but hated lying in cold water waiting for the next gust to waterstart. Sold my boards and bought a Vortex. Unfortunately the only one in Ireland to do so. However, helming from the trapeze is the mutts nuts, my club sails Hurricanes and the European champs were being held there 6 months later. No boat gives a bigger bang for the buck! Sold the Vortex for just under £3k, bought a Hurricane for just over.

It was just luck that my club sails Hurricanes but the boat suits me cos I am too heavy to be competitive in a D18 or Spitfire. Actually I am to heavy to be competitive in a Hurricane (that's my latest excuse). However the best advice is to sail what is popular at your local club. When we all started to put spinnakers on, either in Sport or SX mode, I followed.

Would I go back to mono-hulls? I would happily sail anything that floats and I do miss not being able to rig up and go in 10 minutes. Towing is also a bit of a bugger even if you can tow flat (I can). I am off to Blessington, Co Wicklow this weekend and some of the roads are only an inch or two wider that the boat. Also, I cannot sail a twenty-foot cat single-handed so I'm buggered if my crew is unavailable.

But the speed is sensational. 49ers can beat us downwind but only just. Cats are stable but to sail them at their best you have to fly a hull and keep it there and that takes balance. There's lots of ropes and things to pull and try and understand which, as an engineer, I like.

But the key things about sailing is sharing these experiences with other likeminded individuals and then exagerating about them in the bar afterwards.