I spent considerable time at the Miami Boat Show in February looking at a new multihull offering built in South Africa--the Wildcat 350. It certainly is an attractive looking boat with many pleasing aesthetic features.
         Personally, I could see it with a smaller cabin, stripped out interior, and outboard power as a reasonable Class 3 racer/cruiser or sport boat. Being offered as a solid Class 5 cruiser, I must take issue with many features I consider unsafe, or at the least, inconvenient.
         Boats, unlike automobiles or airplanes, are largely operated from outside the vessel. Automobiles and airplanes benefit from streamlining mostly because they move at high speeds. Sport boats and racers acquire minimal benefits from streamlining because their design intent is to forgo any compromise that might interfere with maximizing potential top speed. Cruising boats are not like that. There is precious little to gain from streamlining at cruising sailboat speeds but lots of safety and utility to lose.
         Any cruising vessel must be so configured that you can easily and safely reach any part of the topsides or deck area of the vessel. This is necessary for the obvious routine reasons of docking and anchoring. This is especially poignant for cruising couples who seldom have the advantage of the local football team to manhandle the boat around docks or to rush forward on a slippery rounded deck with no handholds to toss or receive a dock line.

Decks First, the decks on the Wildcat 350 are extremely rounded, giving no flat area anywhere upon which a person may sunbathe on a towel. Perfect for the racer to reduce windage and cut down on weight; deadly for the less agile trying to dock the boat.
         Continuing around the deck, I noted that the stern deck quarters are so severely sloped both downward and outward as to not only be potentially dangerous but making it difficult to get on and off the boat safely.
         Even in the benign conditions of the boat show, it was necessary to put mats down to keep people from slipping as they clambered up from the dock across the sloping decks and into the cockpit. That area also loses any usefulness as deck area. I always ask potential purchasers of cruising boats to visualize the routine of handing up groceries from the dinghy, or even a low dock for that matter, during a rain.
         There is yet another aspect to this severe slope and that is the impossibility of putting anything on deck, even temporarily. One of my clients, buying a Crowther-designed Offshore 44 with very much the same characteristics, finally sold it after complaining bitterly that his children's toys kept sliding off the boat and getting lost.
         I'd suggest that anyone handing up mask and snorkel, flippers, or your day's catch had better not lay it on that deck. Going farther around the deck, I noted there was no toe rail. On many boats the toe rail is molded into the deck--on some it is an extrusion, and on others it is a decorative wooden rail, but it is there. A toe rail is an important safety and convenience feature that should be on all cruising boats, with rare exceptions.