Odd catamaran

[wes]

A friend traveling in Finland spotted this strange asymmetrical cruising catamaran with off-center mast. Very peculiar, but also a beautiful design as you might expect from the Scandinavians. How do you suppose the mast is stayed on the outboard side?

[NateD]

I did a little digging, and it looks to me like it is unstayed!

Check out page 24 of this pdf: http://multihulls.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/IMM-bladet-1-2012.pdf

It looks very similar (or is) a Harryproa Visionarry, designed to allow the blind to sail. http://www.multihull-maven.com/Boats/Visionarry

[InertBert]

Cool.  The rotating rig thing seems intriguing but that mast pivot must be crazy.  It seems like its more of a curiosity than a solution.  Also, its a 49 foot boat that only weighs 4 tons!  As a fan of heavy boats, that sounds like it might get a bit hairy in big wind.  I'd love to take that out for an afternoon/weekend, but if I had that kind of money, I think I'd rather spend it on something more... normal.  I am glad that there are at least some crazy people who build boats like this though, because there are many more ways to sail a boat than a regular sloop and I love to see all the creative ways that people come up with to pull/push a boat through the water.

[Bob23]

...from the country that brought us SAAB's. Looking down the list that Nate linked us to, I find that our strange catamaran came in next to last at the race. The boat reminds me of a proa in which one does not come about as we understand it, but rather the mast rotates and the boat reverses direction. Very cool and very fast.
Bob23

[CaptRon28]

It's a French designed or built rig that was once sold in the US by Forespar. Bill Forseman, the owner of Forespar, had a Catalina 400 built about 15 years ago without a mast and which was then modified to take this un-stayed rotating assembly. The boat was supposedly fairly quick downwind but did not point as well as the standard sloop rig. Some other 400's had raced against it several times and that's what I heard from them. If I remember the name of the company that made it I'll post it here. Photo of Catalina follows.

[wes]

Nice research, Nate. I see that "Ono" is her name, not her make. "Most Orginal" indeed.

Wes

[HeaveToo]

That is a unique boat indeed.  I wonder how well it sails.

I have seen a few boats with stayless masts.  They are unique rigs.

[Aldebaran_III]

It's a proa with an Aerorig copy.
The mast is always on the leeward side of the boat.
It has two centreboards and a rudder at each end. When the boat is tacked, bow becomes stern and vice versa, the whole rig is rotated to put the jib at the new front end.
Proa sailors don't call it tacking, they use the term shunting.

http://harryproa.com/index.php/about/shunting

Derek

[CaptRon28]

Its called an Aerorig.

There are a number of un-stayed boats around, including the Freedom and the Nonesuch to mention the more popular ones. The former was sloop rigged and the latter had a wishbone type of cat rig. Mast up front, single triangle sail, and a wishbone around it.