To Mark & Josie Bowerman, Contrary to your "surprise" (see below) about my not knowing specifics regarding your boat, allow me to issue an immediate declaration that NO ONE here should ever be amazed by the depth of my ignorance -- sometimes it seems (even to me) to be as vast and deep as the Pacific. On the other hand, there are sometimes mitigating circumstances to my ignorance. When I was aboard the Africat at the Annapolis boat show, I tried to further educate myself. But upon receiving a 3rd "I don't know" when asking questions about the boat, including specific comparison to other power cats (for which the person I questioned wasn't even aware of THE leading competitive model), I decided it the better part of discretion to not embarass or confound the representative further in front of other onboard boat-show attendees. And thus, in similar fashion, do I ask questions here (after all, none of us were born knowing this stuff), even if my questions are "surprising" in their naivete. The great thing is that the half-dozen or so replies to my "pod" question via this forum have helpfully enhanced my knowledge on the topic. In the meanwhile, perhaps you (Mark & Josie) can add to that by sharing the plusses and minuses you've learned from the Africats' use of the pod system. Ever learning, Rod Gibbons Cruising Cats USA Date: Sat, 29 Dec 2007 06:04:13 -0800 (PST) From: Mark & Josie Bowerman <markb61@yahoo.com> Subject: [PCW] Power-Cat and the Volvo IPS or MercCruiser To: power-catamaran@lists.samurai.com Message-ID: <946896.96821.qm@web53103.mail.re2.yahoo.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" The Africat is available with the pods. This is well known, well advertised information that I'm surprised that Rod doesn't know? To answer another question yes the pods tear off to prevent hull damage and sinking. It seems that I read somewhere that the replacement cost was something like 15K for a damaged pod, ouch! -------------------------------------------------------------------- myhosting.com - Premium Microsoft. Windows. and Linux web and application hosting - http://link.myhosting.com/myhosting