Rod, webre jealous. In our sailing around in the Windwards and Leewards, we often see power cats (as well as sailing cats) speeding through 8-10 foot seas at speeds approaching twice our 7-8 knots. Some of the power cats appear to have wave-piercing hulls and are traveling at speeds approaching 20 knots, but we have never been close enough to be able to see the design, although we have seen what we thought was the same or similar at anchor. The French seem to have to greatest numbers of power cats, from huge, impressive ferries to 30-footers. As much as we like bgoing slowlyb inshore, we would be certain to enjoy faster passages offshore, and as we age, less roll would be welcomed, paravanes notwithstanding. Unresolved, for us is the cat "lurch" in head or following seas. We aren't sure if we'd trade that for the pitching we experience with either the sailboat or the troller, which is really a cutaway full-keel sailing hull. I hear you regarding the air cushion. And yet what we have heard from sailing cat owners is that a boat with a greater tunnel height is better. Webd be interested to hear how this is reconciled with what we perceive is a smaller height in order to generate the cushion you speak of. Regards, John "Seahorse" > The weather had deteriorated even a bit more. For more than a day he was taking white water over his flybridge . . . but, as with most cats, he also found that despite the comfort afforded by the built-in stability of two, widely-spaced hulls at lower speeds, there was the added benefit (known to all cat users, whether their cats are 10' or 70' in length), that as the water gets rougher, adding speed (completely unlike with a monohull), gives an increasingly MORE comfortable ride because -- starting at about 11 or 12 knots -- a "cushion of air/foam" begins to develop between the hulls. I've experienced this running from FL. to the Bahamas. As anyone who has run the Gulf Stream there knows, when the wind clocks around (about every 7-to-10 days), and blows from the north, directly against the northward moving stream, the seas build up into blocks -- not waves as we normally know them, but blocks (flat-sided "hunks" of water from which boats "fall off of" for distances of 4 to 6 feet or more). Frankly, I was plain frightened when a skilled cat captain took me out in those conditions and launched us off some of the "blocks." It initially seemed crazy to me that he'd INCREASE the catamaran's speed in these flat side blocks of water. And yet, very quickly I discovered this "built-in cushioning effect," afforded by the tunnel -- the cat's hulls and the bridgedeck (horizontal platform between the two hulls) -- that pockets this air/foam and creates the cushion. ************************************** See what's free at http://www.aol.com.