The Leopard 39 by Robertson and Caine is a livable platform with great comforts and stability but with catamaran sailing qualities requiring special consideration. She is a motor|sailboat with emphasis on motor. One per hull allows excellent handling. For example with one prop in idle forward and the other in idle reverse can spin the boat on its own axis center-line. With a single throttle advanced the boat can be made to turn about the axis of the opposite hull. This is a terrific for docking or maneuvering within restrictive confines.
The catamaran is not known for sailing into the wind well at all. Whereas a mono-hull might be able to point reasonably high when going to weather, the cat struggles to come within 30 degrees on either tack (for a total of 60 cardinal degrees unusable). Unless sailing off the wind or with lots of spare time you’ll find yourself motoring in such cases.
A catamaran with sails raised is a beast. From a dead in the water start the boat has to be gently coaxed to begin sailing in the desired direction. The jib can easily overwhelm the rudders. Hardening sails early or too soon forces this boat to head up and cranking the helm has no effect as rudders stall. She goes into irons and back to square one suggesting that the engines are best used to mitigate this indignity. Also, I noted that when tacking (another typical catamaran shortcoming as they rapidly lose forward way when passing through the eye of the wind) is that the rudders are again too easily overpowered during the maneuver. If one doesn’t finesse the jib properly its as if you hit a barrier and fail to complete the maneuver. Gentle rudder control is necessary as they become ineffective if you rush the helm. I have a bit of Hobie Cat handling experience and memories of this returned very quickly only magnified!
2200 engine rpm from the sail drive gives a thrifty 4.5 knot cruise speed. The bottom was due a cleaning and I reckon a .5 knot drag loss penalty because of this. The engines are your friend. Use them to establish your route and then, wind conditions allowing, shut them down and enjoy a tranquil sail. Broad run sail speed conversion was roughly .5 to 1 or in other words with 8 knots of breeze our boat would do about 4 knots. The best speed that we saw was 6.5 knots during a 17 knot gust on a dead run. Reaching is the point of sail that results in the most performance fun and the cat will not disappoint.
