Cat's eyes on the horizon; It's a cat's life as Richard Moore

Sleek, menacing and moody the cats are back. Next weekend, at Elie, on the East Neuk of Fife, Scotland's 30 racing catamarans will resume battle in the first SNECCA (Scotland and North of England Catamaran Class Association) event of 2001, the seventh year of the six-race series.

Any visitors to Elie stumbling upon this spectacle will surely be tempted to linger, particularly if there is enough wind to show the cats at their best. Like the animals, the boats' abbreviated name seems so appropriate - catamarans are temperamental, as well as sleek and slinky. They'll only really come out to play when the wind is up.

Then they do exactly what it says on the tin: go extremely fast. Like a Porsche on amphetamines, according to one report. And about as impressive as a Lada with a puncture on a calm day.

Actually, that is unkind; a more accurate description might be a cat with a sore paw. The catamaran still looks the part, even when it appears to be limping across the water.

But when the wind picks up, the sight of a catamaran in full flight is one to behold. We have all seen pictures of the boat tilted up on one hull, careering along at an impossible angle, but seeing this in action is quite a sight, and so completely different to anything else on the water.

Even in still conditions such as the flat calm of last Sunday, unfortunately, when I ventured out with SNECCA organiser Chris Browning, there is still the spectacle of the catamaran accelerating with a gust of wind as its narrow banana-shaped hull lifts out of the water. Once again, like a cat the movement of the boat is graceful and efficient.

Aesthetically, there is a simplicity about catamarans which detracts from their sophistication. True, the original design and concept developed just 30 years ago owed much to the simple windsurf board, but the catamaran, Browning points out, is not a boat in which to learn rudimentary sailing.

Expertise is needed, yet there is, contradictorily, a straightforwardness to the task of travelling at speed. "In a cat you could be sailing really, really badly but still going very fast. So you still feel good," says Browning. "If you don't sail a dinghy well you don't actually go anywhere, but in a cat you pull the sails in and then point vaguely in the right direction and it can go like a bullet from a gun."

Browning and his girlfriend, Valeri Gilliland, compete together, first in the forthcoming SNECCA races and, later in the year, for the first time, at the European championships in Greece.

Joining them in Greece will be another catamaran from Scotland, belonging to their Edinburgh neighbours, Alistair Dickson and Maggie King. Dickson is credited by Browning as being a "Scottish pioneer" for introducing catamarans to Port Edgar, the marina in the shadows of the Forth bridges where they both do their sailing.

When Dickson first pitched up with his catamaran, 13 years ago, he was turned away. It was felt that catamarans were "far too fast and far too dangerous" to be let off the leash in the company of dinghies. Now they've been accepted, though Dickson can't quite remember how that happened. "I just sort of worked my way in," he laughs. Browning draws a comparison between catamarans and snowboards: "Five years ago skiers looked at snowboarders and said, 'bloody snowboarders'.

"Now everyone's snowboarding. Cats are not exactly mainstream, but their popularity is growing."

But, as Browning says, the catamaran isn't for the novice. Most helmsmen have at least two years' sailing experience even those, like Dickson, whose introduction to cats came through surfing.

Browning, 28, has spent his life sailing, while Gilliland made her maiden voyage at the age of 26, just four years ago. "I enjoyed everything about it immediately," she says. "It's so exhilarating, though I would still describe myself as a novice. An expert crew, perhaps."

"Oh, Valeri is better than she thinks," chips in Browning, a remark that draws a quizzical look from Gilliland. "That's not what you said last Wednesday," she laughs.

It's clear that anyone who owns a catamaran (Browning's Holbie cost #6,000 and #1,500 can buy a second-hand vessel and trailer) is hooked on the thrill of skimming along at 25 knots; one hull in the water, the other high up in the air.

"That is a real buzz," says Gilliland. The more pragmatic Dickson, meanwhile, describes the sensation as being more akin to "a sense of doom", while Browning adds that if you don't topple the boat all the way over occasionally, then "you haven't been trying hard enough".

"On one of my first outings I completely fell off," recounts Gilliland. "I just let go of everything in the middle of the Forth. It was a wild, windy day and the boat did something I didn't think it would do. I could just watch the rope going through my hand. It was like something from a film."

Gilliland dismisses the notion that it is a good "couples sport" making a sound like "yuck" at the very suggestion. Certainly it is a sport that seems to be ideally suited to mixed crews. But couples? Maybe too many cat fights.

"You will hear shouting and bawling on the boats," Browning says, "but as soon as they come off the water it's generally over." What is that exactly - the argument or the relationship?

Browning and Gilliland say that they don't compete at the very top end of the sport, though they're aiming for a creditable "fair to middling" placing in the European championship. "There will be 128 boats, so let's say top 75," offers Browning.

"No," protests Gilliland, "Let's say we're going to win it." She is joking, she adds, and acknowledges that the top sailors have remarkable ability, as she witnessed last year when up against one of the top Aussies. What makes a good catamaran sailor? "I don't know," she laughs. "If we knew that, we'd be up there."

Copyright 2001
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