Transat on a Fast Cat

“Imagine you’re driving an old rustedout pickup truck over railroad tracks,” my boyfriend, Phillip, said while trying to answer one of the many questions our friends had for us aft er we’d just spent the last five weeks crossing the Atlantic Ocean on a catamaran. I didn’t agree with him. Phillip hadn’t added the part about the bags of cement in the back—bouncing cement really captures it.

What does it feel like to cross an ocean on a catamaran? It’s fun, fast and can oft en be teeth-jarring. Each time water trapped between the two hulls rumbled, thundered and finally bashed its way out, I had to convince myself that we had not just hit a whale. While I had felt our 1985 Niagara 35, , slam into a wall of water plenty of times and suspected a hull breach, this was different. It was a special breed of bashing: a violent, shrill