{"id":73740,"date":"2022-03-22T13:59:35","date_gmt":"2022-03-22T17:59:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.sailingworld.com\/?p=73740"},"modified":"2023-05-07T00:01:40","modified_gmt":"2023-05-07T04:01:40","slug":"brothers-of-a-cruising-catamaran-rivalry","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sailingworld.com\/racing\/brothers-of-a-cruising-catamaran-rivalry\/","title":{"rendered":"Brothers of A Cruising Catamaran Rivalry"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\n\n\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\"Todd <\/div>\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\n
\n Todd and Greg Slyngstad put their wicked-up cruising cats into the ring at the Caribbean Multihull Challenge.<\/span>\n Laurens Morel<\/span>\n\n\t\t\t\t <\/figcaption>\n <\/section>\n\t\t\n\n\n

Gino Morrelli has a word for them: outliers. He\u2019s referring to the community of sailors drawn to the ever-expanding fleet of high-end, high-performance, hefty-price-tag, no-holds-barred catamarans that he and his design partner, Pete Melvin, have unleashed upon the sailing world. Their eponymous Southern California naval-\u00adarchitecture shop, Morrelli & Melvin, is responsible for the cutting-edge lines of Gunboat and HH production cats, as well as the late Steve Fossett\u2019s globe-girdling PlayStation<\/em> and the twin-hulled AC72 winner of the 2013 America\u2019s Cup<\/a>, Oracle Team USA<\/em>, among many others. These \u201cdogs,\u201d as they say, know cats\u2014and the dudes who sail them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt started with the Gunboats, which were almost like a cult,\u201d Morrelli says. \u201cExclusive. Expensive. The brand attracted uber-wealthy guys that maybe didn\u2019t want to play the normal IOR-type rule of the day. They were outliers in their \u00adprofessional space, where they\u2019d had great success, and in their sailing too.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The world has \u00adcontinued \u00adspinning in the decade or so since Gunboat\u2019s bankruptcy and demise, and cats have evolved exponentially too: far lighter, way cooler, much faster. But the outliers remain. Which brings us to a pair of them aboard a set of high-strung performance cats, whose competitive rivalry did not emerge in the usual way\u2014on the racecourse\u2014but rather under the very same rooftop: introducing the brothers Slyngstad, Greg and Todd.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The fifth of eight siblings raised in the San Francisco Bay area, Greg amassed some serious loot during his stint at Microsoft and invested a chunk of it in his 53-foot all-carbon, Paul Bieker-designed Fujin<\/em>, with a striking profile reminiscent of early Polynesian catamarans. Displacing a meager 7 tons (\u201cHalf the weight of a Gunboat 55,\u201d Greg tells me), Fujin<\/em> has been a consistent presence on the Caribbean circuit for several years now, and it is raced hard and well by a Pacific Northwest posse that includes Olympian and fellow SW<\/em> columnist Jonathan McKee.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Todd\u2019s the youngest \u00admember of the clan, who earned his dough in construction in Silicon Valley. He was bitten hard by the cat bug after racing with Greg aboard Fujin<\/em>, and when he decided to enter the racing fray himself, he commissioned Morrelli to soup up an HH66, which became his Nemo<\/em>\u2014a basic platform was already under construction, all ready to get tricked out with lighter window glass, custom rudders and daggerboards, carbon furniture veneers and so on\u2014with a quite explicit request in the design brief.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cBeating his brother was a very specific goal of Todd\u2019s,\u201d says Morrelli, who had the advantage of having already competed against Fujin<\/em> in the islands aboard another HH66, Nala<\/em>, and then had a good look at the smaller boat\u2019s polars as he got to work. \u201cI think it\u2019s spelled out in the contract!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s fascinating listening to Morrelli speak about the progression of production cats from those early, rather basic Gunboats to a string of M&M 65 custom cats to the HH carbon sculptures now rolling off \u00adproduction lines in China.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe main, big difference is daggerboards,\u201d he says. \u201cAs we started putting in these much deeper boards, my joke in the office is that I blame our evolution on North Sails. As they improved sail cloth and sailmaking, we went from Spectra pinhead mainsails\u2014the old-fashioned, kind of rounded roach things\u2014to fat heads. We have more carbon in the sails now than we used to have in the entire boat. I\u2019m kind of kidding, but that\u2019s really close. The first Gunboats were still fiberglass and Kevlar exterior skins. They weren\u2019t even pure carbon boats when we started because everybody was still a little afraid of building an all\u2011carbon boat.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\"Multihull\" <\/div>\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\n
\n Caribbean Multihull Challenge<\/span>\n Laurns Morel<\/span>\n\n\t\t\t\t <\/figcaption>\n <\/section>\n\t\t\n\n\n

\u201cNobody ever talks about the \u2018damage tolerance\u2019 of carbon anymore. As North improved the sailmaking, the reachers got better, the spinnakers got flatter, the sails got stiffer. And as we started increasing the horsepower in the engine
\u2014the 3Di sails\u2014the boats went a little faster, but it wasn\u2019t until we put bigger daggerboards on \u2019em that they really took off.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Now the brothers have unholstered their respective arms\u2014Fujin<\/em> and Nemo<\/em>\u2014and the time to talk is over. A full season of Caribbean racing will kick it off; at press time, the brothers were scheduled to line up in the fourth running of early February\u2019s St. Maarten Caribbean Multihull Challenge. It will be their \u00adsecond head-to-head battle: In last summer\u2019s \u00admoderate-air, 240\u2011mile Vineyard Race on Long Island Sound and Buzzard\u2019s Bay, Nemo <\/em>was the handy victor, thanks to the combo of a longer waterline and more sail area. So, the conventional wisdom, at least thus far, goes that Fujin <\/em>will require a small gale to take on the younger brother\u2019s bigger vessel.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIn light air up to around 15 knots, as they showed, they\u2019re going to kill us,\u201d Greg admits. Which is why he is very much hoping for the staunch trade winds the Caribbean regularly serves. \u201cYeah, when the wind picks up\u2026\u201d he says, then pauses. \u201cWell, we haven\u2019t had that race yet. But that\u2019s what I\u2019m looking forward to in St. Maarten.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But Todd is also ready for the duel and reckons Nemo <\/em>may be a bit more competitive in windy conditions than his brother realizes. \u201cI think we can still take them up to 18, 19, 20 knots,\u201d he says. \u201cWe have the longer waterline, and when the sea state kicks up in heavier air, I\u2019m not going to get kicked around like Fujin <\/em>does; I\u2019m going to accelerate through that stuff. I mean, it\u2019s all \u00adspeculation on my part, but I think we\u2019ll do well on those 25-plus days. It should be fairly close. I\u2019m anxiously \u00adawaiting to see what happens.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And just what does the (somewhat) neutral observer, Gino Morrelli, reckon?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI think it\u2019s still TBD in a breeze, especially on a reach,\u201d he says. \u201cThey\u2019ll drive the living s\u2014 out of Fujin<\/em>. I\u2019ve seen it. I mean, they drive that boat completely underwater. And Nemo<\/em>, being a taller rig, higher center of gravity, it\u2019s definitely got the advantage in the medium and the light air. Once you start reefing, I think Fujin<\/em>, because of its beam and its lower center of gravity, well, it\u2019ll come down to who can keep their foot on the floor the longest.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While the final outcomes in the regattas to come remain uncertain, on one matter there is no doubt, none whatsoever: One bro is going to teach the other one a lesson.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Todd and Gregy Slyngstad go head-to-head in their respective high-performance cruising catamarans.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":73741,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"BS_author_type":"BS_author_is_guest","BS_guest_author_name":"Herb McCormick","BS_guest_author_url":"","hydra_display_date":"","hydra_display_updated":false,"_yoast_wpseo_primary_category":"159","_yoast_wpseo_metadesc":"Todd and Gregy Slyngstad have two very different performance cruising catamarans and put them to the test on the Caribbean racing circuit to see whose yacht is faster.","_yoast_wpseo_title":"","_yoast_wpseo_meta-robots-noindex":"","arc_story_id":"","arc_website_url":"","custom_permalink":"","arc_subtype":"","arc_exclude_from_feeds":false,"sponsored":false,"sponsored_label":"Sponsored Content","sponsored_display_label":false,"sponsored_image":false,"post_right_rail":true,"post_right_rail_ad_1":true,"post_right_rail_ad_2":true,"post_right_rail_ad_3":false,"post_right_rail_ad_4":false,"post_right_rail_recirc":true,"fixed_anchor_ad":true,"post_top_ad":true,"post_off_ramp":true,"post_taboola":false,"labels":false,"apple_news_api_created_at":"","apple_news_api_id":"","apple_news_api_modified_at":"","apple_news_api_revision":"","apple_news_api_share_url":"","apple_news_coverimage":0,"apple_news_coverimage_caption":"","apple_news_is_hidden":false,"apple_news_is_paid":false,"apple_news_is_preview":false,"apple_news_is_sponsored":false,"apple_news_maturity_rating":"","apple_news_metadata":"\"\"","apple_news_pullquote":"","apple_news_pullquote_position":"","apple_news_slug":"","apple_news_sections":"\"\"","apple_news_suppress_video_url":false,"apple_news_use_image_component":false,"footnotes":"","ad_settings_ads_on_this_page":true,"ad_settings_automatic_ad_injection_into_the_content":true,"ad_targeting":"","sponsored_url":"","social_share":true},"categories":[159],"tags":[305,2824],"class_list":["post-73740","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-racing","tag-catamaran","tag-print-spring-2022"],"acf":[],"apple_news_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sailingworld.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73740","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sailingworld.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sailingworld.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sailingworld.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sailingworld.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=73740"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.sailingworld.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73740\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sailingworld.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/73741"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sailingworld.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=73740"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sailingworld.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=73740"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sailingworld.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=73740"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}