What is your fuel consumption

If you want to move a 45 ft boat 1,000 miles it costs a fortune and can not be done in two days for triple that.

That is only partly true. In July 2019 a 40 foot Intrepid catamaran with four 400 hp Mercury racing engines left Orange Beach at 3AM and arrived to eat lunch at about 2 PM in the keys. That took 700 gallons of fuel for 600 miles a little over 0.8 miles per gallon.--and the cost would be about $2800. The boat averaged slightly over 50 mph on that leg despite headwinds and a thunder storm with 25 knot headwinds . The second leg that day was to Port San Lucie, and the speed was kicked up to 78.9 mph at wide open throttle! (with a little poorer fuel mileage) on The Atlantic side of Florida. They arrived in time for dinner. The boat only had two people aboard, but all of the gear for 12 in the family for a week in the Bahamas. The rest of the family rode in the boat to the Abacos. The first day was 733 miles. At that rate, you could do the "loop", in just over a week!
 
Donald Tyson":12gn384t said:
Interesting stats.
Do you like the 24 cat?

I really do. Lots of room and comforts inside and out, very stable, speed and ride is amazing in the 1-3ft stuff I might typically see on a summer outing. Less great in large head seas but that’s a universal boating experience.

I should also add my dad’s 26’ Pro Angler walkaround with single 200hp, gets low to mid 2mpg at low 20’s mph. I think it would probably do marginally better faster than this but he liked the slower pace.
 
So in My 24' Carolina Skiff you just slow down and you can uncomfortably slog through anything. If a Cat gets in too big of waves do you do the same...just slow it way back and slog it out?
 
A lot depends on the peroid of the waves, as well as the height. An 8 foot swell at a peroid of30 seconds is an up and down ride, but does not slow you down.

The cat excels in short steep chop up to about 2 1/2 feet. We had 3' chop in our bay from "northers" up to 50 mph of breeze--where it is about 12 miles from the ICW to our house. In that case with a very sort period--lets say 8 seconds, we would go faster to be sure to have kept as much of an air cushion as possible. We crank the speed up to about 35 mph and get on top of the waves--so in that situation faster is better.
The Tom Cat does not have enough tunnel clearance. My Caracal cat has about 6" of tunnel clearance at rest, and it does not close the tunnel. Thus it rides as well or sometimes better than the longer Tom Cat 255.

The Tom Cat does not do well at slow speeds into chop--lots of "slam" and spray flying...
 
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