Downwind Sailing on a Cruising Catamaran

Although sailing downwind in the trades in a cruising boat has its challenges, it is a relatively pleasant and fairly easy experience on a catamaran.

There is a more-or-less continuous flow of air across the Atlantic called the trade winds. Because the Earth is warmer at the equator and colder at the poles, and because of Earth’s rotation, this flow is generally westerly (from the west) near the poles and easterly nearer the equator.

Every season there is a migration of cruising boats that follow the trades when the trade winds are steady. One such migration is from the Mediterranean to the Caribbean across the Atlantic Ocean in November / December every year from east to west. It is the same downwind route that we took when we sailed our own boat back from France to the Caribbean in November 2019.

Although sailing downwind in the trades in a cruising boat has its challenges, it is a relatively pleasant and fairly easy experience on a catamaran. Assuming that your catamaran is a regular production cat like a Leopard, Bali or Lagoon, well equipped with cruising gear, you’ll perform much the same way as an equivalent monohull with either a conventional symmetrical spinnaker or asymmetric sail. Like on monohulls, you will pretty much sail to hull speed provided your catamaran is not overloaded. Performance cats are a different animal of course.