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Trailerability-- Large multihulls cannot be shipped over
road, due to their wide beam. Only some of
smaller, folding designs will allow trailering.
Haulouts also can be more complicated for multihulls. There are yards that have travelifts wide enough for them, or cranes to lift them, or railways to pull them out of
water on tracks, but these yards are fewer and farther between than those that can't handle
extra wide beam.
Conclusions -- It seems that outside of a couple of minor inconveniences, a multihull is
only boat that makes any sense. If this is
case, why doesn't everyone have one? There are a couple of reasons. One is
unfortunate reputation they earned early on in their evolution. The other is
expense involved in achieving ownership of a quality cat or tri. These boats are expensive to build, whether as one offs or as production models. With a trimaran, 3 hulls (amas) and crossarms (akas) to connect them all together are needed. For production this requires expensive tooling up for a company to invest in even before they ever get a boat on line. There are also a lot more materials needed to build two or three hulls than are needed for
one finished hull of a keel boat.
Other than a production model
buyer has
option of having one custom built by a reputable yard or of building it himself. Neither of these options is cheap, fast, or easy.
There are used multihulls on
market, and there are a lot of good ones out there. There are also a lot of not so good ones. It's critical to hire an experienced multihull surveyor to be assured that
boat was built and maintained properly and is sound.

Linda Cullum is from Cape Cod, MA, with a second home in Vermont. She is the author of Learn to Sail! with Multimedia! an Interactive Sailing training CDROM which teaches all aspects of Sailing incliding Knots, Piloting, Rules of the Road, Weather with digital video from Sail Magazine, narration, animation and quizzes. Visit her site at http://learntosail.net Wishing you the best in your sailing endeavors!