A multihull is a boat or ship with more than one hull, whereas a vessel with a single hull is a monohull. The most common multihulls are catamarans, and trimarans. There are other types, with four or more hulls, but such examples are very rare and tend to be specialised for particular functions.
A sailboat or sailing boat is a boat propelled partly or entirely by sails and is smaller than a sailing ship. Distinctions in what constitutes a sailing boat and ship vary by region and maritime culture.
A sailing hydrofoil, hydrofoil sailboat, or hydrosail is a sailboat with wing-like foils mounted under the hull. As the craft increases its speed the hydrofoils lift the hull up and out of the water, greatly reducing wetted area, resulting in decreased drag and increased speed. A sailing hydrofoil can achieve speeds exceeding double and in some cases triple the wind speed.
Randolph L. Smyth is an American competitive sailor and two-time Olympic silver medalist. He is a multihull specialist, who won two Olympic silver medals racing catamarans, and has won innumerable national and world titles skippering multihulls. In a 2003 profile on him in Sailing World magazine he was described as America's greatest multihull sailor. He was born in Pasadena, California.
Farrier Marine is a catamaran and trimaran manufacturer based in Christchurch, New Zealand.
The F-27 Sport Cruiser is an American trailerable trimaran sailboat that was designed by New Zealander Ian Farrier in 1984–1985.
Lock Crowther was an Australian multihull sailboat designer. He grew up in Bairnsdale in the East Gippsland region of Victoria. Though his first name was Lachlan by birth, he insisted on being called Lock or Lockie.
Bunyip 20 was a day racing trimaran sailboat designed and built by Lock Crowther and his family in 1959, while he was still a teenager. It was named after the Bunyip, an Australian mythical creature.
Jim Brown is a multihull sailboat designer who collaborates with John Marples.
Victor Tchetchet was a pioneering early modern multihull sailboat designer from Ukraine who is thought to have coined the term 'trimaran', though Éric de Bisschop built a trimaran in France earlier. He was also a landscape and portrait painter.
WindRider LLC is a United States manufacturer of sailing dinghy and trimaran sailboats.
The WindRider 10 is a trimaran sailboat manufactured by WindRider LLC, designed by Mark Balogh and WindRider LLC and introduced in 2002. Production had ended by 2020.
Ed Horstman is an American naval architect and multihull sailboat designer. He was born in Kalispell, Montana. He made his way from Montana to California via the U.S. Air Force where was trained as a helicopter mechanic before serving 4 years in Korea. After the war on the GI Bill Ed attended the Northrop Institute of Technology where, he earned a bachelor of science degree in Aeronautical Engineering. He then worked for aviation giants like Boeing, Douglas Aircraft, and North American Aircraft where he did wind tunnel tests for the XB-70 supersonic bomber. Horstman designed his first trimaran after seeing an ad clipping for Piver trimarans. Ed wrote to Piver requesting information on his 35' trimaran, but never received an answer, so a friend, said, "You're an engineer, why don't you design one." Before starting, Ed took two courses on hydrodynamics from the University of Southern California before building a scale model out of foam with removable amas to determine the maximum beam and buoyancy. The model did not have a movable rudder, and when a gust of wind hit the model hard and it turned into the wind, he knew he got the design right. When he could not find a mathematical model to predict the stress on the beams, he again built models of the beams and put them through a battery of stress tests until he was satisfied that his scantlings were strong enough. Ed started the construction of his first trimaran, a 40 footer with $600 that he borrowed from his grandmother in 1961.
Other West Coast designers were strongly influenced by Piver, yet went divergent ways. Ed Horstman employed Boeing technology to create immense flush-deckers with accommodation in all three hulls—the dreadnaught class of trimarans.
Jay Kantola was an American naval architect who is most known for his work designing multihull sailboats. He began designing multihulls in the 1960's. Kantola was an early proponent of a vessel construction technique called cold molding and cored construction. Cold molding involves bending strips of wood at room temperature to form a desired shape. The shape is then retained by gluing the wood together using epoxy. When the shaped construction is coated with layers of fiberglass saturated with epoxy, the final construct is termed a cored or composite construction. Kantola was one of several designers that worked closely with Meade Gougeon, Joel Gougeon, and Jan Gougeon. These brothers are collectively known as the Gougeon brothers. They also designed vessels and founded a line of epoxy products called West System.
The Searunner 31 is a trimaran sailboat designed by Jim Brown in the 1960s. It is the most popular boat in the Searunner series, which includes models from 25 ft (7.6 m)—40 ft (12 m).
Trifle is a 42 ft (13 m) trimaran sailboat designed by Derek Kelsall and produced in 1966 as a further development of his first trimaran Toria. Featuring a full roach main and small jib, the vessel took part in the 1967 Crystal Trophy race in the English Channel. At the time, it was considered one of the fastest ocean-going multihulls in the world.
Constant Camber 32 is a 32 ft (9.8 m) high performance day-racing / fast cruiser sloop trimaran sailboat designed in the 1970s for protected water and featuring berths for two adults.
Constant Camber 3M is a 10 ft (3.0 m) cat-rigged solo harbor racer/trainer trimaran sailboat designed in the 1980s by John Marples.
The WindRider 17 is a small trimaran sailboat with foot pedal steering, for up to four people. It was designed by well known multihull sailboat designer Jim Brown and launched by WindRider LLC in 2002. Production had ended by 2020.
The F-31 Sport Cruiser is a family of American trailerable trimaran sailboats that was designed by New Zealander Ian Farrier and first built in 1991.
