All About Cats

A catamaran (according to Webster’s) is “any vessel with twin hulls side by side”. The word itself is derived from Tamil, the language of the Malabar coast of India. The original catamaran was made of two logs tied together and thus, in Tamil, kattu, to tie, and maram, a tree.

But the year of the modern catamaran was 1961, says Edward F. Cotter in Sailing and Racing Catamarans. In that year the craft came into their own —with the first International Challenge Series in which an English team beat an American in Long Island Sound.

Cotter’s book, which is packed with pictures and diagrams, will tell any would-be or existing owners everything they need to know about these twin-hulled craft—everything from how to sail and race them to living on the luxury type which appears to be as roomy as a suburban cottage.

Commander Cotter is a career officer in the US Coast Guard; during the war he was captain of a subchaser in the Atlantic. Off duty he has been a yachtsman all his life and first became in terested in catamarans in 1959.

(Sailing And Racing Catamar

ANS. Published by Hodder & Stoughton. 53/-).

Trimarans, such as the "Trinui" photo graphed in Nukualofa last year, are an extension of the original catamarans de scribed below.