MovieChat Forums > The Thomas Crown Affair (1999) Discussion > catamarans

catamarans

posted 16 years ago by gjb85
3 replies | jump to latest

does anyone know the brands of the two boats

[–] bing-57 15 years ago

and why they are considered "destroyed" if they flip over. I always thought that flipping a sailboat was just an expected hazzard.

--
What Would Jesus Do For A Klondike Bar (WWJDFAKB)?

[–] jbowmore 15 years ago

Regular day-sailer/racing catamarans do flip, and can be righted easily by the crew.

The catamaran in the film is a larger more expensive boat, the mast and/or rigging would likely take damage from going over as shown, and it would not be possible to right a boat of that size without external help. I.E. the boat would be damaged enough to require salvage and repair before racing again.

[–] quaddo 15 years ago

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0155267/trivia
"The catamaran that Thomas Crown is seen racing in Long Island Sound is a D-Type Catamaran. The earliest Class D catamarans were designed and built by individual amateur designers as early as 1963. Richard Karcher, Watchung, NJ built either USD#1 or #2 at the time. His "D" boats were sailed on Barnegat Bay in New Jersey for several years on an experimental basis. Richard also designed and manufactured several other types limited production catamarans at the time, one of which was considered as the official Olympic Class Catamaran and participated in the trial in England. Due to the vast amount of power that this design represented, no "production" versions were ever produced and interest and research into this Class waned. Years later in the 1980s interest in this extremely fast and highly unstable yacht design was revived by California based aeronautical engineers who tried to break inshore multi-hull speed records. Today there are only a handful of them left in the world."

RIP Ian....