Hi All, It is good to see so many experienced people on this list. I will introduce myself. I have boated one way or the other all my adult life. The major facts start as marrying into a family that owned an tour boat company. Starting with 2-40' and 1-47' cypress over oak single screw rather open boats. Later I bought the company and replaced these with 2- 80' actual twin sternwheelers. If any one wants to talk about paddle wheel boats let me know. I did much of the design and construction. My first offshore travel started in '79 when, with the whole family sailed from Marina del Rey to Miami through the Canal on a 37' Polycon catamaran. After this all my pleasure boats have been catamarans. That boat had a hull delaminate, so I sold it and built another almost the same and had it trucked to my ski area where I hauled it to Lake Superior and back each year. 17" beam. I retired in '89 and had a 50' Prout Quasar built in England. Sailed her back to Duluth, made some improvements and then circumnavigated and back to Duluth. After several trips to the Bahamas. In doing this I did the Eastern Loop three times. Once clockwise and twice counter clockwise. After selling her. I started the process of building a 60' powercat in New Zealand. Launched her is late 2001 after a fire damaged the first try. Sailed her to Seattle via Fiji across to the Marquises, to Hawaii and Seattle. !0,000 NM. In the last two years Wild Wind IV has been to Alaska twice and is now in Ventura CA. I will be back on the boat Dec.27th for the start of the trip to finally bring her home to Duluth via the East Coast and Newfoundland by late next August. My interest after my travels both under sail and power is the best of both worlds a motor sailer. A cat is perfect for this. A cat can sail a 8-10 knts easily and still power like WWIV and 15-20 knts. If like us, we had to slow to 8-10 to conserve fuel, why not sail that fast and not burn any fuel, and quiet too. With a mast on a cat the problem of beam seas can be reduced. I almost made WWIV a motor sailer but the props. stopped me. Now that I have had time with the CPP's on WWIV I understand more. Just such a design with lots of innovations still sits on a shelf next to my desk. I will be signing off the list next week, so if you have thoughts contact me quickly. It will be fun looking at them while we travel. Dennis Raedeke Wild Wind IV 60' Pachoud Powercat

>Dennis Raedeke Wild Wind IV 60' Pachoud Powercat >I will be signing off the list next week, so if you have thoughts >contact me quickly. Dennis, rather than unsubscribing, you can chose the "no mail" option for when you're under way. In that manner, you can still post progress reports to the list but won't receive postings. I'd encourage all list members to do so when passagemaking. Here's a question for you, Dennis: A friend mentioned seeing speed and fuel burn numbers somewhere on your passasage from New Zealand to Seattle. He said he could not see any efficiency advantage of the catamaran over a monohull in the numbers. His take was that you were going as slow as a monohull abd burning as much fuel. When you have a moment, please comment on that, hopefully sharing any data collected. --Georgs