I can now understand what people like about cats and what accounts for their increasing popularity. I also know I don’t want one.

Let’s consider the good things first. Cats clearly take the blue ribbon for spaciousness. You won’t find a 34-foot mono hull sailboat that offers the space, both on deck and below, that the Gemini 105 provides. And remember that the Gemini, unlike many other cats, was purposely designed with a narrow 14-foot beam so it could fit into most standard marina slips. Cat designers less concerned about where the owners of their boats will berth them can offer even more space through wider beams.

Cats win on draft, too. Since they aren’t dependent on heavy lead keel for stability, cats can use dagger boards that can be raised to minimize draft in shallow water. The Gemini was very impressive in this case since its rudders also kick up for passage through shallow water (the stern drive unit swivels to provide steering even if the rudders aren’t in the water).

All told, the Gemini can move through waters a mere 18 inches deep. That draft was one reason we took the back route from Marathon to Miami. We never touched bottom on that route, even with the dagger boards all the way down, but I noticed a lot of very attractive potential anchorages outside the waterway that would only be accessible with a draft of two or three feet, perfect for the cat.

It isn’t clear which kind of boat wins on efficiency. Cats would appear to have the upper hand since they usually lighter than keelboats of the same length and thus can be driven by less sail area or by a smaller engine. Certainly that was true for the Gemini, but then again with its center-mounted engine and drive train it had only one engine. Many cats wind up with an engine in each hull, which adds both weight and complexity. Certainly the cats will perform better in very light air, but that may well be offset by a keelboat’s ability to push harder in stiff breezes.

Then there’s docking. The Gemini was skinny enough to go into a marina slip intended for a mono hull, so the docking fees are no different. Broader-beamed cats that take up two slips or that can only be accommodated by big ship slips or face docks incur higher expenses. All in all, I’ll call it a tossup for efficiency.

Stability, surprisingly, is a clear win for keelboats, at least in my opinion. That might come as a surprise to people drawn to cats by the fact that they rely on form stability (i.e., that big square package stays upright and flat) rather than the weight of a keel to offset the wind’s force on the sails.

It’s true that the Gemini heeled very little, even with 20 knot winds on the beam. On Galaxie, our 46-foot ketch, we would probably have been heeling about 12 degrees under those same circumstances. But it was going into strong winds that revealed the weakness of the cat. Not only was the motion unpredictable as waves caught each hull at different times, but the waves passing beneath the boat set up a brutal hammering on the flat deck between the hulls.

I know the dictum that “Gentlemen never sail to weather,” but sometimes you gotta go where you gotta go and that’s upwind. Believe me, I can sleep a lot better at a 15-degree heel, with my trusty mono hull slicing effortlessly through the waves, than I can with a flat cat beating itself and me to death. Heeling clearly keeps people away from mono hull sailboats, but once you get accustomed to it, it’s just part of sailing.

I know my scorecard seems to favor cats. Like I said at the outset, there’s a lot that is appealing about them. But given all that, I don’t have any intention of trading Galaxie for a catamaran.