Michael.

It really depends on what you’re looking for in a catamaran. The Endeavors and Catalacs are considerably older designs than the Gemini 105Mc. I know of two Geminis that have ridden out hurricanes on moorings or at anchor, so I don’t really feel that the Geminis are that lightly built. One thing to be aware of is that Geminis, like my Telstar, are built with a specific price point in mind, and that the fit and finish of the boat reflects that. While the boats don’t have the elegant fit and finish of a Lagoon or Quorning Dragonfly, neither do they have the prohibitive price tag.

Both the Gemini and the Telstar give you a lot of boat for the buck. They have solid bones, but do have some shortcomings. However, they give their owners a chance to get out there and go, far sooner than they would be able to do so on another brand of boat in many cases.

I’d point out the relatively high resale value of the Geminis says a lot about them as a brand. Be aware that Performance Cruising recently split into two companies. Performance Cruising now only handles the Gemini catamarans, and is partnered with The Catamaran Company, and owned by a management company that is run by Laura Hershfeld, Tony Smith’s daughter. The Telstar 28 and its operations are now owned by a new company called Performance Sailing, and that company is owned by Tony Smith. There has been a delay in resumption of producing the Telstar 28. IIRC, Tony, along with his wife Sue, are going to be sailing a Telstar 28 down the Pacific coast of North America as a demonstration of the boat’s capabilities next year.

Nice blog, by the way. I found it researching Gemini’s. I spent twenty years living on Cape Cod, working in offshore and underwater field. Now I live in the Turks and Caicos Islands, and it does my heart good to see people freezing in Buzzards Bay, ha ha. ( Just kidding)

I don’t think that there is a good base of knowledge, since the construction techniques used in GRP boats is so varied. Even among boats of the same design and from the same manufacturer, especially with factories that do hand layup of the laminate, there can be a significant disparity in the weight of the boats. Up to a certain point, the lower the percentage of resin in a laminate, the stronger and lighter it will be, provided there is sufficient resin to properly wet out the fibers.

As for costs… I think that there are too many factors to say what the costs would be. You’d also, probably, want to look at the costs over the lifespan of the boat. Steel has serious maintenance issues and if the wrong steel is used, the problems can quickly destroy any value to the boat. Maintenance is also an important issue. A properly designed cored GRP laminate is going to be far stronger, stiffer and lighter than non-cored GRP construction and far less expensive for the same given strength of laminate. A good cored GRP laminate is also going to have far better fatigue resistance characteristics as I understand it.

Size of the boat also plays a major part. Boats under 40′ LOA really aren’t suitable for construction in steel IMHO. Steel is also a very lousy material for multihull construction, where weight is such a primary consideration. Given how much stronger carbon fiber, kevlar and spectra based laminates can be than steel per weight, there really is no comparison.

What to you think would be the differences in weight, strength, and cost between your “ideal construction”, conventional GRP construction, and say, steel?