Catboat Thesis  Catboats vs. Ease of Launching –you can't get easier to launch than the Com-Pac line (Picnic Cat = 14ft, Sun Cat =  17ft, Horizon Cat = 20ft) with their Mastendr Mast Raising System. Some of our residents make it off the trailer and  sailing in a Very Quick 10 minutes. Some of the other catboat lines also offer hinged masts, but we haven't heard much on  how easy they are to set up right. A line that comes to mind there is the Marshall Catboats. (Sandpiper = 15ft, Sanderling  = 18ft, Marshall 22 = 22ft). I do know that the Nonsuch line produced the 18' Naiad (Bill Wickett, who periodically visits  owned one). It was possible for a couple to get the mast up. The Nonsuches are like normal catboats on steroids–think of a  Windsurfer rig, blow it up, and put it on a boat. Naiads are no longer in production, but you can get them used if you  watch long enough. Really fun boat. There are other Marconi rigged boats if gaff rigged just isn’t your style. Alerion  Express Cat I believe has a furling main. Catboats vs. Ease of Single-Handing –the catboats were initially designed for fishing families–just a man and his little  boy pulling fish out of the water in each boat. You have one giant sail, one sheet. The halyards come back to the cockpit.  No headsails to fuss with. These boats are shallow water boats, for boats longer than 20 feet, you'll only have a draft of  about 2 feet and a few pennies. Less of a wade to the beach if you've got kids. Catboats vs. Roomy Cockpits –catboats are the beamiest recreational sailboats out there–if you're looking at monohulls.  Their beam is about half their length. It adds stability and damps down the rolling motion compared to what you'll see in a  sloop to something much smaller and slower (and much more agreeable to a frightened wife or kids). For example, my boat  is 18' long, and 8.5' wide. Half of my boat's length is cockpit, the other half is cabin. So the cockpit is 9' by 8.5'. That's about  the size of Rhode Island, you know. Catboats vs. Dry Cabin –that whole beam thing comes back in to play here, and adds room to the cabin space. There's  room in the cockpit to sit down, have a nap with the wife, take a ****, store some food, make a cup of tea, whatever.  There's a lot of storage outside for your gear, but if you have lots and lots of gear, there's a lot of storage inside too. No  mast in the way–it's way up forward in the chain locker. You might have a centerboard trunk to deal with in some of them  (in others it's out of the way). By the way, the large beam means she has a large waterplane area, so you can add more  gear to the boat than you would a sloop before she starts sitting a lot lower. Catboats vs. Stability –yeah. Lots of it. They won't react as much to you jumping on board as the sloops do, the added  beam acts as a damper to what rolling motion there is in comparison to a sloop. The only bad little thing about catboat  stability is that should you manage to actually get pooped in a really bad storm, bad things could happen (very rare  occurrence, usually she "Rises" to the occasion). But you'd have pulled a big stupid being out in that bad of storm in the  first place. Catboats vs. Sloops ... The Advantages of a Catboat:  Easy to handle–less sails, less lines, so there is instant gratification for new sailors. However, there is a learning  curve, as the vessel is hard to learn to sail well, so there is still a challenge for more advanced sailors.  It's easy to have all the lines come back to the cockpit, so it's rare anyone actually has to leave the cockpit to fuss with  anything, thereby making it a safe boat.  Beaminess adds to initial stability.  Very shallow draft boats, especially the centerboard boats. (The Wylie Cat and some of the Nonsuches being the  exception, with fixed keels). This allows exploration of shallow waters that similar sized non-catboat vessels would be  unable to visit.   Easy to single-hand, for people just getting into sailing, people with kids, and people whose knees don't care to go  scampering about deck frequently. In some cases the boats has been set up for people who are confined to wheelchairs.   Have a traditional salty-looking aesthetic appeal in most cases.  The beaminess affords a lot of room in the interior, creating a sense that the boat may be 5 longer than she truly is.  Meanwhile, the cockpits are generally enormous.   These vessels on average hold their value better than other vessels, if decently maintained and located on the East  Coast.  1 atboats vs. Seaworthiness –a wave on the stern quarter will shove her around a bit but she is generally a heavier  boat than a sloop of her same length, and her beamy nature does a lot in the way of added mass and damping to  counteract most wave forces. C  Posted By: KristenPosey, 18' Sanderling. TX/LA 