Cruising Multihull Performer

The fast cats are light, and with that light weight comes low wetted surface. Heavy cruising cats are often no faster than the monohull LOA equivalent. John Conser has designed a new 30-footer that bridges the gap between the off-the-beach speedsters and the heavy, cruising "condo cat." This new cat will be built by Sperry Boats in Hulls, Massachusetts.

The Conser 30 is a development of a previous Conser design, the Warrior. Conser built 17 Warriors 25 years ago. This new 30-footer is designed to embody all the performance advantages of the Warrior, but have better accommodations.

The 30 has hulls with enough volume for a head and double berth in the starboard hull, and a small galley and single berth in the port hull. Consider, however, that the beam at the deck of the hull is 48 inches, and the double berth cannot be 48 inches wide due to the tapered hull shape and structure. This is a very narrow double berth.

On the positive side, the head is wonderfully spacious. The "saloon" is the cockpit with its molded-in seats and table. The table covers the housing for the outboard motor.

The D/L of this design is 48. I don't have any drawings that indicate hull shape beyond the simple profile and deck plan. I can tell you that the prismatic coefficient is .599 and that's quite high. The rudder is very high-aspect ratio, and the boat comes with either high-aspect-ratio daggerboards or low-aspect-ratio keels. The rudders are the kick-up type for beachability. Of course, they won't have to kick up very far if you forget to raise the daggerboards first.

The rig uses a rotating carbon fiber spar and a self-tacking jib. The wide beam of cats makes self-tacking headsails work quite well. The mainsail on this design is boomless and I'm less sure about that. What happens when you ease the sheet? Considering the wide beam of the traveler, I suppose you could still get a decent mainsail shape so long as you kept your jibing angles up above 120 degrees. But there's no way of reducing mainsail twist as you can't move the lead forward.

One of the most attractive aspects of this design is that it is trailerable. It is very hard to find a 30-foot trailerable boat that also sails well. The Conser 30 uses a patent-pending system to reduce beam to highway-legal dimensions. The brochure says this can be done by a "small adult." The displacement of 2,471 pounds makes the Conser an easy tow load for most cars. (Yes folks, displacement IS weight). I don't know how this cat folds down, but it sure makes it attractive to those of you who move your boats from lake to lake.