Review of Picnic Cat

Basic specs.

The Picnic Cat is a small sailboat designed by the American maritime architect Clark Mills in the late nineties.

Here we would have liked to show you nice photos of the Picnic Cat.
If you have a photo you would like to share: Upload Image

Looking for a new boat? Find a Picnic Cat or similar boat for sale

Hull

The hull is made of fibreglass. Generally, a hull made of fibreglass requires only a minimum of maintenance during the sailing season. And outside the sailing season, just bottom cleaning and perhaps anti-fouling painting once a year - a few hours of work, that's all.

Keel

The Picnic Cat is equipped with a centerboard keel. A centerboard keel is a pivoting lifting keel, allowing to sail both coastal and inland waters.

The boat can sail close to the beach as the draft is just 0.15 - 0.25 meter (0.49 - 0.79 ft) dependent of the load. See immersion rate below.

Sailing characteristics

This section covers widely used rules of thumb to describe the sailing characteristics. Please note that even though the calculations are correct, the interpretation of the results might not be valid for extreme boats.

Stability and Safety

What is Capsize Screening Formula (CSF)?

The capsize screening value for Picnic Cat is 3.26, indicating that this boat would not be accepted to participate in ocean races.

Immersion rate

The immersion rate is defined as the weight required to sink the boat a certain level. The immersion rate for Picnic Cat is about 56 kg/cm, alternatively 317 lbs/inch.
Meaning: if you load 56 kg cargo on the boat then it will sink 1 cm. Alternatively, if you load 317 lbs cargo on the boat it will sink 1 inch.

Sailing statistics

This section is statistical comparison with similar boats of the same category. The basis of the following statistical computations is our unique database with more than 26,000 different boat types and 350,000 data points.

L/B (Length Beam Ratio)

What is L/B (Length Beam Ratio)?

The l/b ratio for Picnic Cat is 2.16.

Compared with other similar sailboats it is more spacy than 85% of all other designs. It seems that the designer has chosen a significantly more spacy hull design.

SA/D (Sail Area Displacement ratio)

SA/D (Sail Area Displacement ratio)
Indicates how fast the boat is in light wind:
- Cruising Boats have ratios 10-15
- Cruiser-Racers have ratios 16-20
- Racers have ratios above 20
- High-Performance Racers have ratios above 24
Sail-area/displacement ratio (SA/D ratio): 27.44

Maintenance

Rig

If you need to renew parts of your running rig and is not quite sure of the dimensions, you may find the estimates computed below useful.

**Guiding dimensions of running rig**
Usage	Length		Diameter
Jib sheet	4.3 m	(14.0 feet)	8 mm	(5/16 inch)
Genoa sheet	4.3 m	(14.0 feet)	8 mm	(5/16 inch)
Mainsheet	10.7 m	(35.0 feet)	8 mm	(5/16 inch)
Spinnaker sheet	9.4 m	(30.8 feet)	8 mm	(5/16 inch)

Boat owner's ideas

This section shown boat owner's changes, improvements, etc. Here you might find inspiration for your boat.

Do you have changes/improvements you would like to share? Upload a photo and describe what to look for.

Finally

We are always looking for new photos. If you can contribute with photos for Picnic Cat it would be a great help.

If you have any comments to the review, improvement suggestions, or the like, feel free to contact us. Criticism helps us to improve.

References

[Ref 1]: ISO 8666 Small craft — Principal data.
[Ref 3]: ISO 12215-5 Small craft — Hull construction and scantlings.