I started this yesterday, but decided to sleep on it--and many of the points have already been made by excellent posts by others. A good question asked by Bill. Why not more activity on this list server--better yet, why not more power cats making significant voyages? It takes positive publicity to alter perceptions about long distance cruising. A good model is what Nordhavn has done in the power cruising world. They pushed a positive model, with lots of publicity, starting with the N 46, the N 62, then the N 40 around the World, the Atlantic Crossings. Customer rally, with lots of magazine publicity. Presence of boats at boat shows helps. The customer base built, and then the size of boats increased, with many repeat customers who bought larger boats. It takes a long time, a lot of money and dedicated staff to pull this off. There is no one builder who has had that force in the market place for crusing Catamarans. There have been the few boats recently, which have had some publicity, such as Dennis's Wild Wind IV, now DOMINO, & Bill's Hero. Some boats which were being built were never followed up on this list server. How much publicity has there been in the magazines? Maybe if Malcolm Tennant had lived, he might have been enough of a force to push the design line forward with enough publicity. If you look at the smaller cats, few if any of them have the range under power to do the ocean crossings. They could be built or run that way, but I don't believe that they are due to lack of demand. What is the cost of a new build and outfitting for voyaging of one of the 60 foot +/- Power Cats? The public is bombarded at boat shows with monohulls--not the cats. The charter crowd uses them for a week or so, but this is a different set of consumers. The cruising scene has changed. It used to be that cruisers had a lifetime of experience; it took skills of navigation and seamanship years to develop. Today, you buy a boat, you plug in the GPS route, and off you go (or so it seems--in reality these same skills need to be achieved--as are with the afore mentioned boats). The "Cruiser" of today looks at the "Great Loop" as an adventure. They buy a boat, use it for a couple of years, sell the boat and off to another adventure--maybe on motorcycles, airplanes or in RV's....There are also myths about multihulls--and perpetuated by bad publicity--such as the recent abandonment of the brand new Alpha 42 foot sailing cat "Be Good Too" after leaving Long Island in the middle of winter sailing for the Caribbean. In some ways, maybe even the America's Cup gave some adverse publicity to cats in general...for the unknowing. How many magazines such as Latitudes and Attitudes--Magazine and TV shows-- (now superceded by Cruising Outpost) with all of the publicity generated of a certain type of cruising life style by Bob Bitchin (Robert Lipkin) have there been for the Catamaran lype of cruising--let alone power Cats? Is there a Steve Dashew of cats? (Although Steve was into Cats early in his career and he recently rejected them as a power cruising platform). Steve gives cats a negative turn is his 2009 discussion: " But for long term cruising they simply do not have the speed or security of the same funds invested in a monohull....The surface area and relative complexity of a cruising multihull adds to the cost of new construction. If you take the budget of something like a Gunboat or other performance multihull and put it into a monomaran, you will come out with a faster passaging yacht.... It is not top speed that counts but what can be comfortably averaged. This is where the multi fall down. They have short term burst speed capability, but cannot average the same as a performance monomaran in the same budget range." We know that is not true, but the "word" is out there. The other myth is cost of dockage and lack of dockage. Again this myth is busted, but not well publicized. A quick search on Yachtworld.com revealed about 40 power cats which might be suitable for long distance cruisng for sale from 50 to 65 feet in length. Price ranged from $200,000 to 3.5 million, with a lot of boats in the $500 to $600K range. I personally know of at least 3 other new custom long distance cruising cats under construction, which I have talked to the owners about. I am will be sharing a meal with a boating magazine editor who owns a power cat, in the next several weeks and will bring these questions to his attention. Jim: I have been up and down the Calif. Coast a number of times, usually starting in the Los Angeles area.--and 5 trips to Alaska. You have to watch your weather,--especially at the next port where you may want to stop. There are times when you just go. We have been in every harbor with a bar on the West Coast--you want to contact the Coast Guard as you approach. The docking comes with experience, and often the larger boats are easier to handle than the smaller boats. We kept our Cal 46 (a monohull) in Sequiim for 4 winters, and our experience was the same as Dennis's we kept a couple of lamps on, and had a friend run the engienes every week or so. We did take precautions with the wate maker, but otherwise no special precautions for the cold weather. Regards to all, Bob Austin