[quote=benedict]I'll toss in one other idea that goes along with what pbegle said: Find a sailing buddy.
I don't have a ton of experience on monohulls, but with a catamaran, especially in a good blow, it's easy to point up on the wind, sheet in hard, get up on one hull, and THINK that you're just FLYING. Ten minutes later you realize you've made practically no headway because you oversheeted and are essentially stalled. Watching your buddy's boat blast past you at a sliiiightly wider angle off the wind is a great way to let you know that's what happened. (It's also a great way to learn to swear like a sailor!)
Some other ideers:
Don't move stuff around if you don't have to, especially on light wind days. Cats are very sensitive to tiller input. At the very least moving the tiller around will cause drag. At the worst it'll shake the shape out of your sails and de-power your boat.
Find the ideal sailing attitude of your boat and stick to it. If you hear gurgling coming off your transoms, that's energy being dissipated as something other than forward motion through the water. Move your crew weight forward. (But if you start to risk stuffing a hull, get weight aft!) On my Prindle I put two tape marks on the insides of my hulls. If I kept the water between the two lines, I was doing it right.
Catamarans can go fast enough, and are light enough, aerodynamic drag plays a real role in boat speed. Keep your deck clear, and keep a low profile. I love getting all Captain Jack Sparrow, standing up and holding onto my stays as I face bravely into the wind. But it makes for a slow boat. If in doubt, watch some ACWS footage on Youtube and see how the pros do it. (Ok, ok, the whole part where they hike below the surface of the decks for an hour at a time... er... no. Gimme a trap wire and a beer!)
Keep one hull just touching the water at all times. This is a catamaran's most efficient heeling angle. The sail is still almost vertical, so you're still extracting the maximum power out of it. And you have half the wetted area of your hull, so you've minimized drag. I think it was Randy Smythe who came up with the idea of sitting on the leeward hull on low wind days, just to keep the windward hull out of the water.
All of this helps with straight line sailing. Which is nice, but it's not the whole picture if you're thinking of racing. Honestly what kills a lot of racers is tacking and jibing technique. One slow tack is enough to drop you by several positions in a race. Learn to roll tack quickly and efficiently without losing much boat speed. Jibes are faster by definition, but directly downwind sailing is one of the slowest points of sail for a cat, so you want to spend as little time pointing downwind as you can. Jibing technique is equally important.
This last bit probably doesn't need to be said, but I'll say it anyway: Apply all of this with a measure of caution for the sake of your crew. There are two very different ways to sail a boat: as if you were racing, and as if you weren't racing. If you always sail as if you're racing, eventually friends and family can get tired of the Captain Bligh act. If at any point you hear yourself saying, "AVAST ye scurvy dogs! Hard alee! HARD ALEE! MOVE!!!" it's time to point a little lower, let out the sheets some, and let that F18 blow past. Don't give your crew reason to chuck you in a long boat and sail off to Tahiti.
Tom[/quote]
