(Richard W.): Striderman was actually a boat I had in 1992. It was built by Palamos Boatbuild in, I guess 1985/86. I bought it second hand and sold it in 1993. Palamos stopped trading in 1989.
...copied from sailingcatamarans.com ...
Five years later we bought a pair of used Strider hulls and re-rigged it with a smaller "F1" rig, the same size as the big rig Strider Club (Shadow). We called the boat Striderman and raced it in 1992 in the UK multihull championships.
We finished third overall (despite the fact that my crew had never sailed a catamaran before, nor used a spinnaker) Fourth overall was Rodney Pattinson who had one two gold and one silver Olympic medals and was sailing a F24. We beat him over the line in every race except one.
The standard Strider has dinghy style kick up rudders, but when we built Striderman we used the kick up semibalanced rudders that we also use on our bigger designs (Sagitta, Eclipse, Banshee etc). This rudder design gives more positive steering, but is not possible to steer with the rudders in the up position. Drawings are available on request.
This photo was taken as we sailed through the lee of a Dragonfly trimaran, who's owner later told us he was sailing at 18 knots. Note the lack of spray
About performace (H.I.): best upwind 14 knot gps with f1 rig unreefed, Downwind around 20 knots. With the new rig : main+ jib 32m2 it is no longer a f1 but a turbo. I sail on the westcoast of Sweden most costal and open sea over to Denmark (Kattegatt). This boat are fantastic downwind in open sea, no nosediving.
