Deck

The Pacific Cat has a hard deck rather than a trampoline. This is one of the reasons this boat is almost 200 pounds heavier than a comparably sized trampoline cat. There's just a lot more glass there.

One of the implications of this that didn't dawn on me for a while is that the running rigging on the P-Cat bears a lot more resemblance to the running rigging on a monohull than it does your typical catamaran. This led to a lot of confusion while I was trying to piece together the foresail sheeting system.

While the mast was up, my daughter and I measured the foresail and marked out two marks on deck with blue tape. The first pair of marks indicate where the clew of the foresail comes back to when sheeted in hard. It actually extends aft of the mast. It's a genoa, not a jib! I found two photos of a P-Cat in Phil Berman's "Catamaran Sailing" that indicate this was standard on this boat.

The foresail has a pair of blocks attached to the clew of the sail, part of a 2:1 sheeting system. This is typical for a catamaran. What's not so typical is that there are leaders between the blocks and the clew that are almost the length of the cockpit. The rearward pair of tape marks indicate how far aft the jib blocks are when the sail is sheeted in tight. It's almost all the way back to the rear beam!

This hint provided the last clue I needed to piece together the foresail sheeting system on this boat. More on that in a later picture.