FIRST TEST NEEL 43

If you're torn between the performance of a trimaran and the accommodation of a cruising cat, the Neel 43 might offer a solution, says David Harding

- David Harding

For anyone who doesn’t follow the world of multihulls, it might be easy to imagine that catamarans are for cruising and trimarans are for racing. After all, two hulls offer vast potential for living space, both inside and out. Many cats have expanded in all directions to take full advantage of that, becoming high, wide and, some might think, not particularly elegant. Trimarans, on the other hand, are the light, spindly ones that fly around at high speed while giving you no accommodation. Right?

So you might think. After all, that’s how things were once upon a time. My father used to describe the typical cruising cats of the day as ‘Dutch barns.’ Our own family cruiser when I was growing up was one of John Westell’s ‘swing-wing’ Ocean Bird 30ft trimarans. When we sold it, the new owner invited me to help him sail it to the Caribbean – so we did. In those days the Ocean Bird was one of relatively few cruising tris, following those from the 1950s and 1960s by multihull pioneers such as Arthur Piver. Then there was Norman Cross who, like Piver, designed many of his tris with solid wings (decks between the floats and the main hull), allowing fullwidth accommodation out to the floats.