Randy Pickelmann" had written: > I believe that Beebe concluded that his sail rig on PASSAGEMAKER wasn't worth messing with and he all but abandoned the idea. On the other hand, if the engine is down, some kind of sail rig would be better than nothing. I guess it depends on where you are going and what kind of cruising you are planning to do, i.e.: bad plan if you are doing the ICW. Brian responded: I wrote a little discussion about motor sailers recently, MotorSailing Catamaran Concept (defining 'the best boat to undertake a world cruise'), wherein I noted Beebe's rig. The opening couple of paragraphs went like this; "I sincerely believe that a well conceived Motor/Sailer is the most practical, capable, comfortable, safe, economical vessel for serious ocean passagemaking......while retaining the ability to fully explore the most remote, and often shallow coastal regions of the water world. Even in Beebe's book,"Voyaging Under Power", the bible of the power-only crowd, his vessel, "Passagemaker", was a motorsailer, albeit smaller rigged than he really wanted. Many of the examples he offers as prime passagemakers are instead prime coastal cruisers, 'semi-displacement' hulls not optimized for long passages, but rather coastal cruising, where rapid transit is a primary requirement, while fuel use and surviving ultimate conditions are secondary considerations. 'Trawlers' today are gravitating toward these semi-planning hull configurations, and twin engines, as buyers become reluctant to accept slow 7-9 knot vessels. And forget wide appeal of primarily sail-powered vessels, particularly with our aging population, so how about those old versatile motorsailers. We don't hear much of motorsailers these days....not a popular subject. The old traditional, stoutly-built vessels, with a hefty engine(s), were necessarily compromised in both their sailing and powering statistics. Let's modernize the motorsailer. The multihull planform holds great promise to improve this breed. The long slender hulls of the catamaran vessel have proven real efficient to push under both power & sail.....not only efficient, but not limited to the traditional slow displacement/length hull-speeds. Just what the motorsailer needs....far less compromising increases in both sail and power performance, while maintaining an economy of operation that truly allows a sea-kindly, long-range capability. ....the remainder of this discussion can be found on the power cat forum at <http://lists.samurai.com/pipermail/power-catamaran/2005-March/000006.html> Brian Eiland beiland@usa.net http://www.RunningTideYachts.com distinctive multihull expedition yachts