Catamaran vs Monohull - A comprehensive review from owners of both

it's the Battle of their bows that's right we have been busy busy busy on board clarity the last few days can barely even move around inside clarity right now we got so many projects going on oh my god the cushions are torn of the laundry room was just about finished nice job Nik got the solar that's underway but it is a mess mess mess so we're outside and we are weighing in on the very very popular debate catamaran versus mana haul dump dump dump we've had three mana holes and one catamaran so we officially can give you the pros and cons of both we're experts no really it's a little weird to see people doing this pros and cons of catamarans and versus monohulls some of them have never even like they owned a mana hall they've never owned a catamaran but they're talking about the pros and cons and that happens the other way where they own a catamaran they've never had a mana hole and they're making a comparison yeah we are uniquely qualified three mana holes one catamaran and I want to give it away right off the bat there is no clear winner that's right it depends on what you want to do I think it also depends on your attitude but I think if we show you all the pros and cons you can see where me you may need to adjust your attitude and we get a lot of questions about this via email and in comments so we thought hey let's just have it on the record let's do it and be thorough so here we go boy are we gonna be thorough kind of make it into your game show the first category between the cat versus mano is money well catamarans got a couple dollar signs yeah you get a lot more bang for your buck when it comes to mana holes got a hundred thousand dollars to spend on a boat you can get a very very decently outfitted decent-sized mana hall and you are barely scratching the surface with a category either gran does not buy you a whole lot yeah value yes if it's a question we we think if it's a question between going now with a monohull versus going a whole lot later with a catamaran I would say maybe go now because yeah because if you wait you may never go yeah that happens to a lot of thing that but that's the reality you're faced with berthing catamaran losses that is correct if you're planning on only cruising part of the year let's say three to six months it might make a lot of sense to just stick with the mono whole because the berthing costs for a catamaran are so much more the best you can do is about 1.5 times the cost of a mono whole in some cases especially on the islands you are paying double the mono whole rates and that really really adds up for year-round if you're out cruising all the time you're not going to spend a lot of time in marinas but when you're in marinas it's gonna cost you a lot more on a cat nothing to do there yeah maintenance yes there's another very very clear winner when it comes to maintenance not just the cost but the extent of maintenance monohulls of course have just one engine one rudder the rigging can oftentimes be simpler and doesn't have to be changed out quite as often the standing rigging on a catamaran really needs to be changed out about every eight to ten years models you can probably get by with a lot longer than that hauling out calling out Wow who knew this would be so difficult not only it's a lot more expensive to haul out of catamaran but when you've got a boat that's 25 feet wide you've got to be in a larger yachting facility a larger boat yard where the larger travel lifts or a larger crane and there are fewer of those out there and they know it so they charge a bit more trucking now this is something I've never really heard talked about in the cat versus wanna whole debate but with our last boat we were able to truck it up and down the west coast saving a lot of wear and tear and exposure to the gnarly Pacific Ocean and we had friends last year was the year before they trucked their 47-foot monohull coast to coast that's amazing you skip the canal you skip all that wear and tear and you can just truck your boat across the land not so with most catamarans anything a beam er than about 14 feet it's a no-go now catamarans did end up with one green on this subject ready and that is selling that's right when you go to sell your mana haul even if it's a very very nice mana haul you are up against every other mana hole that's been manufactured since about 1975 it seems and there are fewer cats on the market so when it comes time to sell seems everybody wants a cat and if you're priced right it's gonna go quick all right that's category number one the money category and it seems to me the cat Imran's lost the mana hole is the clear winner when it comes to money yeah number two is category number two is sailing sailing and the first subject is tradition yes we didn't really know what word to use here but when it comes to that romantic notion of gliding across the water under billowing sails I don't know the traditional mana haul for us seems to win out just a bit that's right you are sailing the way our ancestors sailed it's true original first boats and there's something pretty magical about that yeah when you're bounced around in your little mana hole it's the same as when Joshua Slocum headed out for his round-the-world trip so we give it to the mana home yes sailing well sailing well it is easier to learn how to sail well on a mana home and that's basically because you can feel the wind and you can feel the responsiveness of the boat much better on a mana haul than you can on a catamaran you just don't get the feedback so sailing well is easier on a model and I would say this smaller the boat you can learn on the better I don't know it's kind of a toss-up I think I want to switch these in general if you're starting from scratch with no experience sailing boats I think that it's easier to learn how to sail on a category okay still harder to learn how to sail well but easier to learn enjoy it's true yeah more upright sail management oh yes so imagine yourself on a dark night without a moon and the wind is piping up and it's time to reef the mainsail well on a catamaran you aren't journeying on deck heeled over like this it's mainly flat it might be moving around it's probably moving around quite a bit but it's not healing over sail management is so much easier on a cat yeah all right upwind oh yes the old upwind abate your catamaran doesn't sail upwind very well well my bottle hole certainly goes to weather better than your cat okay okay okay we are gonna give it to the mono home with better overall upwind sailing ability but there's a huge asterisk here there's a huge caveat and that caveat is that when you're cruising you almost never sail to whether you are always looking for weather conditions in which you are on a broad reach of beam reach or sailing downwind gentlemen as they say don't sail to weather all right the next category is storms that's right we've been in real storm conditions about 15 years ago on our first cruise about 4 days out of San Diego huge breaking C's 6065 not wins it was a 35,000 pound mana haul and it was a handful it was quite a story you can see it on another video on our channel we have not been on this catamaran in full storm conditions so just based on our experience we would say that while we could probably handle those conditions on this boat we would rather be on a mana home in storm conditions the trick of course avoid the storm positions altogether and with the technology nowadays you can pretty much do that right yeah and a weatherman on board that helps okay the next one is comfort at sea comfort at sea and this should come to no surprise to most folks that the catamaran is really the clear clear winner here yeah the fact that you're not healing the fact that you got all this open space when you're at sea in most conditions overall it's much much more comfortable on the category the next subject is confused seas yes this is where we're looking at waves and swells coming from two different directions and after being at sea in this boat and confused seas and in mana halls we have got to give it to the mana home the mana haul handles confused seas especially with lighter winds better because you've got two holes with the catamaran the waves are reacting with one hole at a different time than they are the other hole and you get kind of this jerky motion you're kind of and you're up at the helm and it does feel a bit like a washing machine yeah so while cats are in general more comfortable at sea than mana holes in really confused seas we give it to the mono ah motion the age-old debate with catamarans we don't like catamarans we don't like the motion on them all right the motion is different on a cat it's quicker it's faster overall though motion goes to the catamarans it is much better it's much much more tolerable than the motion of a mana hole which is maybe slower but much more dramatic and that really wears you down over time and the next one is ooh maneuvering we're gonna give it to the catamaran in a big big way we're talking about maneuvering in confined spaces and for the most part maneuvering out a cantor brand is a lot like pushing a shopping cart you're pushing one side then you're pushing the other if you want to spin it you just put one engine into reverse spin it the other way you can spin this boat pretty much in its own length which is amazing and I got to tell you what the monohulls we've had this most stressful part of the entire thing was always the docking yeah because of course you want to come in slow but the slower you come in the less rudder effectiveness you have they back up sideways maneuvering a cat is so much easier big one for the cat that's right Anchorage access goes to the catamaran yeah it's it's much easier to find a comfortable spot in most Anchorage's on a catamaran but it's not just because of the shallower draft I mean that's one reason when conditions are rougher further out you can get closer to Beach where it's shallower but something people don't talk about a lot are bugs and there are some there are times there are conditions where it's much more comfortable to be out further away from the beach than close in because the bugs are biting closer in in a catamaran you can get further out and not be quite as affected by swell in the mana hole you really get a tuck in clothes this one is a little bit counterintuitive shallow-water that's right okay see the mana Hall goes to the mana Hall we are talking about navigating in shallow waters and you might think okay the shoal draft is gonna make it easier to navigate in shallower waters however with the catamaran you have two holes so if you do go aground you have one chance to get off that's to back away with a monohull you hit ground and if you get a lifting keel you can lift it up or if you don't you can also heal the boat over you can catch off with an anchor tip the boat sideways and get yourself off that way so in that way shallow water navigation we actually give it to the monahons and the third category is livability that's right what it's like to live on these things day to day and I see a lot of green in the camera I don't think they're gonna be a lot of surprises for you here yeah most of these go to the camera let's break it down number one comfort and anchor yes do we need to even say anything else you're not rolling around you're anchored you're flat it's basically like a houseboat at that point very comfortable living at anchor on a catamaran and you spends probably 90 to 95% of your time at anchor now remember our flopper stoppers with blood pressure yeah to get rid of the role in the Pacific on our first big mana haul we had flopper Stoppers they are like these wings that you put out from the boom and from a spinnaker pole and they dampen the roll and it was an art we could get the boat fairly flat but then the wind would shift you just a little bit and you're rolling again it's a great name flopper start on first off for the mono holes that's right water access it's really nice on the catamaran with the sugar scoops that's right some of the newer mono holes have the low easy-access transoms that you can swim right up to and it's only maybe this far off the water but by-and-large monohulls you're climbing up a ladder to get out of the water whereas with the sugar scoops it's basically like a little staircase that's very very yes the davits okay how often do we see our mana hole sailing friends towing their dinghy oh my god everywhere it's actually a little dangerous to do that not only are you slowing your boat down but they did thingies do flips sometimes and yeah you get into some big following seas it can Ram the back of your boat and it's also an opportunity for somebody to take the dinghy pretty easily with davits like we've got it's pretty easy to raise the boat the dinghy up whenever we're not using it in fact we barely ever well we never told the dinghy but we barely even leave it in the water yeah we go we hoist it out because it's just so easy and the sound of it you know hitting the hole or just seeing the water so davits are such a great thing on the catamaran shade yes Shay both to the catamaran yeah you basically got like a back porch here we called the front porch and it's very well shaded a lot of the modern casts are exactly this way mud holes you got a cockpit frequently you'll put some shade over it but you just don't have the shaded space is our sunscreen people ask oh you must go through so much sunscreen no we just stay in the shade that's right right you stay cooler that way too pet friendly goes to the catamaran which is the reason why we ended up in a catamaran sugar really helped us make that decision because that was a deal killer for her on the model yeah as she was getting older and older she was comfortable at first on the mono haul then she just would kind of crouched in the corner we've got friends that have large dogs on monohulls it's doable but it's so much easier yeah and this is just our opinion right and the next one is yes yeah this is another one of the main reasons why we went with a catamaran we had had guests on our mana halls and even on the 46 footer which was fairly large it was very difficult to get private space just to get to an area where is quiet one couple can chat while the other one isn't disturbed obviously with the two holes and in this case four bedrooms everybody gets a private corner that's great and noise yes well on a mana hole you're more or less living in the water that can actually be kind of cool I remember when we first got down to Southern California and we were docked up and it was quiet and we heard all this whole trickling and crackling and all these sounds and we're like what's going on what is that we had never heard it before of course that's all the sea life that you hear in the water around you I remember once in Alaska we were on a charter boat up there in a sailboat monohull and we looked at our little window and there was like a sea lion sleeping right next to the boat and it was just the coolest thing did a mana hole you're living down in the water that's noisier in a catamaran you're living above the water for the most part yeah so depending on if you like that kind of noise that can be a positive on a model for us we like the cats they're quieter and last one that goes to the catamaran is exercising something that we should do more but it's very difficult to get exercise on a monohull we had good friends down in Mexico where they had like a stair stepper stair climber on their mana hall and a Richard be down there every other day working up a sweat but it's difficult with limited space yeah so we have great space to work out on the bow we've got the TRX band so we'll go out there and get a little bit of muscle toning and and working out beefing up but yeah just having more space it's good to get the exercise so another another category that the catamaran takes is livability clear winner in the livability category this is the final category and it's called the nuts and bolts this is kind of a general category yeah it's kind of general first one is aesthetics well the winner we think is the mana hole we don't want to step on any toes here we like the look of our leopard 46 I think it's a beautiful boat I don't want to single anybody out but I do think that there is a lot of less pleasing catamarans aesthetically there I don't want to say ugly but there's a lot of catamarans out there that are really really tall and bulbous and boxy looking and I think in general I like the mana Hall look that low sleek nautical look so I kind of have to edge this one in for monohulls in terms of aesthetics okay the next category is ventilation ventilation and that does go to the catamaran yeah we've got how many opening ports on this boat one two three four five six seven eight if you count the bathrooms you've got 12 opening ports on this boat on our monohulls it's always been just the companionway and like two overhead hatches and that's just about it the ventilation on a catamaran is just so much better yeah ah the next one is solar solar capacity goes to the catamaran it is all about real estate in the Solar game and of course when you got it both it's 25 feet wide and a big coach roof and overhangs you can put a lot of solar on we should have close to 1,800 watts of solar by the time we're done with this next conversion on a monohull it is difficult to squeeze in more than maybe seven or eight hundred watts and that's going to cover all of your Bimini and we had it on the side panels you're gonna be sticking it everywhere yeah all right the next one is engine access that goes to the catamarans yeah we've got separate engine catches the engines are outboard of the living spaces and that cuts down on fumes but also it's much easier to reach around to different parts of the engines on our other boats I'll tell you the boat yoga was even worse in the mana halls trying to get behind the engine or to the side that didn't have the access panel it's much better on a cat in general well here's one that the monohulls take is cleaning that's right all that real estate that gives you the solar and the workout space I'll tell you it's a lot more fibreglass to clean 46 foot Munhall this boat is a leopard 46 46 foot Munhall a couple hours to get it all done right to clean this boat it's a day-long process to do it well polishing waxing that's all gonna be much more expensive on a boat this size just because you've got so much more surface area yeah so cleaning we give it to the model yeah whole cleaning goes to the catamarans you've got more hole to clean on a catamaran you've got two holes but it's actually easier to clean because the shallower draft means you're not diving down quite as far you've got scuba equipment this doesn't matter at all but in general I would say that cleaning the holes on a cat is easier than cleaning the deeper hole on a mono hole and the final topic is organization which I think goes to the catamaran yeah I think it's it's a pretty easy call here it is so difficult to stay organized on boats in general you've got all these spare parts you've got provisions you've got your clothes you've got camera equipment you've got dog stuff and it's really really hard to organize your stuff on any boat on a mana hall where all the storage is crammed back and below and on the sides you have quite quite a few less opening ports so staying organized on a model is much harder on a catamaran all that storage can actually be a bit of a problem because you've got the space for it you can fit it on board it's pretty easy to overload yeah cat yeah we still need to go through and toss out a lot of stuff on clarity so obviously we've given you a lot to consider I don't want to make it sound like a catamaran is just hands down better than a mana it just depends on what you're gonna do with it I think that if you were gonna sail only a couple months a year and have a boat in storage really an argument could be made for going with a mana home maybe you're gonna live on land most the time you don't need all that space you don't need to have all those live-aboard accoutrements and you're not gonna pay all the extra berthing all the extra haul out fees and the upfront costs for the boat however if you're going full-time and you can afford it I do think that overall the catamaran is just a very very clear winner after the miles we've done in mana halls and the miles were done on this cat I wouldn't trade living aboard a catamaran for a monohull or just about anything yes I think that's a good point when you're talking full-time living I would say for sure a catamaran would we ever have a mana hole for a part-time living yes absolutely in fact I suspect that when we're done living full-time on this cat and we move back to land part-time full-time we are absolutely going to have other mana holes in fact for day sailing I would prefer a mana hole I like heeling over just a bit I just don't want to live on a boat that's healing over 24/7 while you're underway yeah yeah so I think it just depends on what you plan to do with it how badly you want to get out there if you cannot wait and you're talking three five years down the road I say you might want to just get yourself a monohull even if it's an inexpensive one that you can do on the weekends or on your vacations I think that our YouTube channel and maybe other YouTube channels might make it seem like you just have to have a catamaran in order to go cruising and I just don't think that that's the case yeah we don't agree with that yeah if it's a choice between going now with a mana hole you can afford or waiting 10 years or even five years to do it on a catamaran I say by the Affordable mana hole now go get a taste of the life you can always change it up and go to a cat later if you really really like it thank you so much for tuning in while we are living at the dock here in Wilmington yeah we will have some other boat project related videos coming up for you in the next couple of weeks we really really appreciate your likes and your subscriptions and all your comments it's really been fantastic to have this interaction in fact videos like this well they come to mind because of the questions that you're asking we read all your comments all your emails and that really sets us up for doing videos that spread the love spread the knowledge just a bit yeah and it's fun for us to go through these again and organize it in our minds as well and and cover these topics so it's it's fun thank you and it makes us appreciate this cat just a little bit more yeah okay see you next time all right

Channel: The O'Kelly's

Views: 988,731

Rating: 4.882081 out of 5

Keywords: catamaran vs. monohull, catamaran, monohull, Leopard 46, liveability, liveaboard, lifestyle, sailing, cruising, comfort, maneuverability, pros and cons, boat shopping

Id: oSCSmI830yg

Length: 26min 2sec (1562 seconds)

Published: Thu Aug 29 2019