Catboat: Encyclopedia - Catboat

Catboat

Catboat - Description

A catboat (alternate spelling: cat boat), or a cat-rigged sailboat, is a sailing vessel characterized by a single mast carried well forward (i.e., near the front of the boat).

Although any boat with a single sail and a mast carried well forward is 'technically' a catboat, the traditional catboat has a wide beam approximately half the length of the boat, a centerboard, and a single gaff-rigged sail. Some catboats such as the Barnegat Bay type and more modern catboat designs carry a Bermuda sail. A jib is sometimes added, but this may require a bowsprit, and technically creates a sloop sail-plan.

It is generally accepted that the origin of the catboat type was in New York around 1840 and from there spread east and south as the virtues of the type - simplicity, ease of handling, shallow draft, large capacity - were discovered.

Historically, catboats were used for fishing and transport in the coastal waters around Cape Cod, Narragansett Bay, New York and New Jersey. Some were fitted with bowsprits for swordfishing and others were used as 'party boats' with canvas-sided, wood-framed summer cabins that could be rolled up.

Around the turn of the 19th century, catboats were adapted for racing, and long booms and gaffs, bowsprits and large jibs were fitted to capture as much wind as possible. The decline of racing and advent of small, efficient gasoline engines eliminated the need for large sailplans, and catboats today are used as pleasure craft for day sailing and cruising, and have the virtues of roominess, stability and simple handling, though many catboats have poorer upwind performance than well-designed sloop-rigged craft.

Perhaps the most well-known catboat is the 12-foot Beetle Cat daysailer. Fleets of these one-design boats are found in harbors all across New England, often competing in races. In the 1960's, Breck Marshall based his 18-foot fiberglass Sanderling upon an existing, wooden design. The Sanderling has since become a very popular boat, with more than 700 built, and it has helped to rekindle interest in the catboat. To honor Marshall and his contribution to the type, the Catboat Association funded the construction of the Breck Marshall, a 20-foot catboat built and berthed at Mystic Seaport.

The terms catboat and cat-rigged are often confused with catamaran. Catamaran describes the hull structure of a boat (specifically, it refers to two hulls side-by-side) whereas cat-rigged and catboat describe the sail plan and vessel type, respectively. To add to the confusion, some small sporting catamarans are cat-rigged and both terms are abbreviated cat when no ambiguity is foreseen.

Catboat - Other Types of Sailing Vessels

Bark | Barque | Barquentine | Bilander | Brig | Brigantine | Caravel | Carrack | Catamaran | Catboat | Clipper | Dutch Clipper | Cog | Corvette | Cutter | Dhow | Fluyt | Fore & Aft Rig | Frigate | Full Rigged Ship | Gaff Rig | Galleon | Gunter Rig | Hermaphrodite Brig | Junk | Ketch | Mersey Flat | Multihull | Nao | Norfolk Wherry | Pink | Pocket Cruiser | Polacca | Pram | Proa | Schooner | Ship of the Line | Sloop | Smack | Snow | Square Rig | Tall Ship | Thames Sailing Barge | Trimaran | Wherry | Windjammer | Windsurfer | Xebec | Yacht | Yawl

Categories: Boats | Boat types | Sailing vessels and rigging | Sailboat types

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Catboat", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki