Catamarans, Every Sailor's Guide [Hardcover]

Gregor Tarjan (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 9, 2006

A long overdue, in depth guide to the lifestyle of modern cruising catamarans, focusing on design and seamanship issues with a special chapter highlighting notable production multihulls.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"An authoritative guide for novices and experienced sailors; the best book written on the subject since the early 90'" -- Jim Brown

"Stunning photography and beautifully illustrated. A must read for any openminded sailor written by today's leading industry expert" -- Multihulls Magazine

From the Publisher

CATAMARANS, every Sailor’s Guide is an authoritative work, written and illustrated by Gregor Tarjan, who is one of the multihull industries most recognized experts. This book is an objective in depth reference work that should not be missing in any nautical library.

Modern multihulls are now accepted as the safest and most comfortable cruising sailboats. The author, who is a trained yacht designer and expert sailor discusses all the latest catamaran developments and reviews basic concepts of design, construction and important multihull characteristics.

One part of this book surveys desirable attributes and what to look for when considering purchasing a catamaran. There is even a catalogue of noteworthy production boats, which will help readers compare, rate and evaluate different types. Full of informative illustrations, graphs and spectacular photos, the book examines subjects such as multihull seamanship and how it differs from sailing a ballasted boat.

With an influential foreword by international guru Charles Chiodi, this long overdue book is a perfect introduction for monohull sailors to the possibilities of these exciting sailing machines, but at the same time serves as an invaluable reference guide for catamaran owners alike.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 278 pages
• Publisher: Chiodi Advertising & Pub Co; 1st edition (September 9, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1880465086
• ISBN-13: 978-1880465080
• Product Dimensions: 11.5 x 8.7 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3.6 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #497,462 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #58 in Books > Sports & Outdoors > Outdoor Recreation > Sailing > Instructional

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Good Performance Sailing Tips, Nice Pictures, September 13, 2007

By 

Amatori Augusto (Milan Italy) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Catamarans, Every Sailor's Guide (Hardcover)

This book is beautifully laid out and would look good on anybody's coffe table. Multihull champion and dealer Gregor Tarjan outlines modern catamaran advantages over monohulls and describes what attributes make them perform well - as seen in several other multihull texts, but with nicer pictures here.

On and off throughout the book he explains how to get the best performance out of a catamaran: his discussion on how best to use Apparent Wind, VMG and daggerboards to one's advantage is the best I have seen, with easy to understand charts and drawings. There is a chapter on construction with interesting information (e.g. cycles to failure for different types of materials) but I found it difficult to relate it to any particular production boat. Anchoring and heavy weather sailing get light treatment and are much better covered in other texts.

The author concludes the 200 pages of main text with 50 pages dedicated to Noteworthy Multihulls. Each of 25 multihulls gets a two-page spread with beautiful pictures, just the most basic of specifications, and a very short blurb that could have been written by the builders themselves. After the good discussion of parameters, construction, and evaluation coefficients throughout the book (e.g. Hull Finess Ratio, Sail Area to Wetted Surface, bridge deck clearance, payload ability etc.) I was disappointed that data was not available to compare the different Noteworthy Designs based on what I had learned in the previous pages. Other than the fact that Outremer is the most present builder in the pictures, this book will not help you decide whether you should buy a Catana 47 or a Switch 51.

Overall, even though the information was often scattered throughout several chapters, I liked Catamarans-Every Sailor's Guide mainly for the beautiful pictures and the excellent seamanship discussion.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars "A picture is worth a thousand words..." Lots of pictures and great information, July 13, 2007

By 

B. Robinson (Florida) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Catamarans, Every Sailor's Guide (Hardcover)

For a long while I have been dreaming of owning a cruising catamaran and went online to get information. I ordered "Catamarans, Every Sailor's Guide" and believe it to be my best investment of time and money so far. The information comes from an author with considerable experience who appears to be unbiased. It is full of photos and layouts for current (2007) production models. I hope future editions of this text are available for future models as I believe this is an excellent source of information for those wanting to learn more about modern catamarans.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Rough conditioned book, May 6, 2009

By 

M. Tether - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Catamarans, Every Sailor's Guide (Hardcover)

I would tend to agree with some of these reviews-except the copy of the book I received (New-$53.94 w/shipping) was very rough. Lots of pages stuck together, pages that had been separated were torn and frayed. In general it looked like a book that should have been rejected from the printer, not sold. My email complaint has not been responded to, and I now have asked Amazon to take action against the Aeroyacht. If you purchase this book and then go to the buyers comments about Aeroyacht you will see that they only have a 20% satisfaction rating and a 40% dissatisfaction rating. Not really reflected in these reviews.

All that aside, the book offers about the same amount of quality information about catamarans that any worthwhile cat salesman would tell you in an hour. Pictures are very nice. The slant is that he sales the only worthwhile catamarans in the world.

Would I own the book-sure. But, buy it where you can look at the quality first, and hopefully on the discounted rack.