Nacra Sailing

NACRA

NACRA is the brand name of a popular line of small catamarans, a type of boat that is sometimes referred to as a beachcat, that have been produced since 1975. It was for many years one of the chief competitors of Hobie Cat, the industry leader in beach cats. NACRA is an acronym that stands for North American Catamaran Racing Association, and the brand has always been primarily focused on high performance racing catamarans. The company was founded in Santa Barbara, California. The company has gone through several ownership and name changes over the years, and acquired the competing Prindle brand in 1988. At that time the company operated under the name "Performance Catamarans" and relocated to Santa Ana, California. They continued to produce both NACRA and Prindle brand boats for some years. In 2007 the company was acquired by a group in the Neatherlands and today operates as Nacra Sailing. An Australian based licensee of NACRA has operated as NACRA Australasia since 1985 and also builds NACRA branded boats.

NACRA History

NACRA was founded by sailboat designer Tom Roland who had previously designed the Alpha Cat, an 18 foot beach cat, in 1970. In 1975 he launched the new company with the NACRA 5.2, a 17 foot beach cat, which was a very modern design that featured plumb bows, daggerboards, and a highly tunable sail plan with a fully battened loose-footed main sail. Many of the design elements of this first book were carried over to the later designs, including those commissioned by other designers later in the firms existence, as well as becoming common on other performance oriented catamarans. NACRA also has offered more recreational designs that forgo daggerboards and have the advantage of simplicity and easier beaching without risk of snapping protruding dagger boards.

One of Roland's goals in starting NACRA was to build a professional match racing league using much larger one-desgin catamarans. This boat, the NACRA 36 is essentially a scaled up NACRA beach cat, with double the LOA of the typical 18 foot beach cat of the era. The NACRA name was meant to serve for both the boat Roland manufactured and the new racing league, thus the name North American Catamaran Racing Association. While 10 NACRA 36s were eventually constructed the racing league never took off, and the company soon focused on the design and construction of a series of small catamarans, most of which were designed for racing.

NACRA continued to evolve their designs in the 1980s with the NACRA 5.8 being particularly successful as a racer. In 1985 NACRA licensed a company to build boats for the Australian market, and subsequently they designed some boats bearing the NACRA name that were sold in Australia and SE Asia, particularly to beach resorts. NACRA Australasia continues to offer both European sourced NACRAs as well at their own NACRA Australasia designs under the NACRA name.

Prindle boats were originally designed by Geoff Prindle and manufactured by Surfglas Inc. beginning with the Prindle 16 in 1971. The company was sold a number of times in 1980s including to Lear SIegler and eventually ended up as a brand of Performance Catamarans along with the NACRA brand. The Prindle brand today is owned by NACRA Sailing, but currently no boats are produced under that name.

In the late 1980s interest in longer distance offshore catamaran racing and rallies increased, much of it based on the publicity of the Worrell 1000 race along the Florida and Virginia coast. Rules changes made by the race organizers allowed larger and faster boats to complete in this event beginning in 1985 and NACRA introduced the 20 foot NACRA 6.0 in response in 1988. These racers were among the first to begin experimenting with using asymmetrical spinnakers flying from bowsprit on beach cats. These have become ubiquitous on racing beach cats in the intervening years. NACRA was a dominant brand in the races, which ran intermittently from the mid 1980s until 1995. When the race resumed in 2000 it was a one design race using the NACRA Inter 20.

The 1990s saw the beginning of the Formula 18 class, an attempt to create a simple formula that allowed manufacturers to design boats that could compete head-to-head. NACRA was an early entrant into the Formula 18 class, with the NACRA F18. Formula 18 boats are limited to 18 ft. length and 8.5 ft. width and have a maximum permissible sail area. Use of exotic materials such as carbon fiber is restricted in an effort to keep boats affordable. The class was quickly recognized by the ISAF F18 ushered in an era of exiting racing featuring boats from multiple builders, including the continuing rivalry between Hobie's Tiger and later Wildcat designs and NACRA's series of F18 racers, including the current F18 Infusion Mk2. The success of Formula 18 led to the creation of the similar Formula 16 class in 2001, for slightly smaller boats better suited to lighter weight crews and single handing.

NACRA Sailing entered and won the design competition for a new Olympic racing catamaran to replace the Tornado in the 2016, where the format of the event would change from two man crews to a one woman and one man crew, dubbed the "mixed multihull" event by the organizers. The resulting boat the NACRA 17 was used successfully in the 2016 games and let the ISAF to hold a competition for a new youth catamaran, for use in ISAF youth sailing championships. NACRA Sailing again submitted the winning design, the NACRA 15, which has been adopted and is now in production and use worldwide.

A trend begun in the A Cat formula racing of adding hydrofoil rudders and daggerboards to high-performance beachcats to achieve hydrofoiling has been extended to several of the newer NACRA designs with optional foiling boards and rudders. NACRA fully updated their flagship NACRA Carbon 20 to the NACRA Carbon 20 FCS (Flight Control System) as one of the first full production hydrofoiling catamarans from a major maker. Speeds approaching 30 knots have been reported. The Carbon 20 has been very well received by reviewers.

Current and notable past models

Model	Length	Beam	Weight	Intro Year	Current	Race Crew	Description	Designer
NACRA 5.2	17'	8'	350 lbs	1975	no	2	distinctive plumb bow	Tom Roland
NACRA 36	36.75'	16'		1975	no	3+	only 10 built	Tom Roland
NACRA 18 Square	18'	11'		1979	no	1	distinctive 11 foot beam, uni rig	Tom Roland
NACRA 5.5 Sloop	18'	11'		1984	no	2	same hulls as 18 Square	Tom Roland
NACRA 5.0	16.4	8.'		1985	no	2	boardless, boomless main
NACRA 5.7	18.5	8.'			no	2	boardless, boomless main
NACRA 5.8	19'	8.5'		1982	no	2	large 1 design fleet in Australia	Roy Seaman
NACRA 6.0	20'	8.5'		1988	no	2	designed for Worrell 1000	Roy Seaman
NACRA F17	17'	8'			no	1
NACRA Inter20	20'	8.5'			no	2	Worrell 1000 one-design, 2001
NACRA F18 Infusion	18'	8.5'			yes	2	Formula 18	Morrelli & Melvin
NACRA 16	16'	8.5'			yes	1 or 2	Formula 16	Morrelli & Melvin
NACRA 17	17'	8.2'			yes	2	Olympic Mixed Multihull from 2016	Morrelli & Melvin
NACRA 15	15'	7.7'			yes	2	ISAF Youth Multihull from 2016
NACRA F20 Carbon FCS	20.3'	10.5'	357 lbs		yes	2	foiling design, Formula 20	Morrelli & Melvin
NACRA 460	14.8'	7.7'		2004	yes	na	recreational, no boards, three sail plans
NACRA 500	16.4'	8'		1998	yes	na	recreational, no boards, three sail plans
NACRA 570	18.5'	8'		1998	yes	na	recreational, no boards, three sail plans