I found this french patent application from 1994 for a novel catamaran rig and it seemed like quite a good idea to me.
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It is basically a biplane rig with the masts inclined toward the centre of the boat and attached together at the top. It seems to be a very efficient way to carry the mast loads on a catamaran. Also the windward hull would be pushed down while the leeward hull would be lifted counteracting the normal heeling forces.
Has anyone seen or used a similar rig?
Doesn't look too promising to me.
It seems that the leeward rig wold be getting "dirty" air from thew other rig.
If you can have a wide boat and if you choose a vertical masts configuration, like the Hobie trifoiler, I think that the configuration would be worth it for a "recreationnal" boat but I am not certain how well it would perform upwind
It is very unfortunate that the Team Philips catamaran was lost, it would have given us alot of valuable information on that type of rig
Also since both rig overlap unless going unwing at a very tight angle, part of the winf would be cutted away from the leeward rig.
At least, if both rigs are somewhat vertical and wide apart, the interference would be minimize. You would be required to have a fairly close angle of attack with the apparent wind but that can be achieve in most case with a very fast boat.
To my knowledge there a a few boats lake this: Charente Maritime, Techniques Avancées, Team Philips, O'Paf2, Hobie Trifoiler...
As you can see, these are pretty "optimized". The only two boats that did a certain amount of real world sailing are the Hobie Trifoiler and the Team Philips that was unfortunatly lost at sea
With the angles rigs, you will not be able to get the slot effect that a gennaker and a main sail will have so the concept doesn't look as it would work at all.
in France, they have a french expression: "Geo Trouvetout" that mean something like an inventor that tries something without knowing exactly why and hope that it is going to work.
Nowadays, peoples are starting to thinmk that the fastest beach catamaran ON THE RACE COURSE would carry an uni rig upwind and would launch a spinnaker downwind. I think that the A-cat proved quite well that you do not need a jib to go upwind.
Having a second mainsail that close would be like getting another catamaran to cover you all the time.
Correct - this has been tried and used before.
The concept certainly works better in a trapezoidal shape, like in the Hobie Trifoiler.
I don't think it can be patented - many record breaking attempts have been made with similar rigs.
Cheers