I have 1000's of nautical miles of blue water under my keel. A friend and I are looking to buy a sailboat. I want a mono-hull as that has been 99% of my sailing experience. My friend who has zero sailing experience is enamoured with catamarans.

There are good and bad to both. We're looking at something in the 50 foot range. There are lots of choices out there in the $200,000 +/- range. It's a buyer's market.

Are there any folks here who have sailing experience on cats? Do you prefer them over mono hulls? Why? 

I grew up in Vancouver Island in a town with a lot of fishing boats. I have been contemplating retiring on a sailboat off the west coast of Canada, mooring rentfree in a bay. In high school I had a pic of a sailboat on the inside of my locker door. Heck, after 9/11, I considered becoming a helicopter navigator in the reserves.

As a teacher, we are to ask our students: What is your dream? What do you want to be when you grow up? Basically, banally, what job do you want? When I was young I wanted to be a vet, pilot, detective, scientist   and sailor.

The ocean calls. That's why going to the beach is so popular. I'd drop everything to join an expedition across the Pacific Ocean.

Yeah, all my multi-hull experience is on small Hobie cats, and that's not much. I spent a few years as a yacht delivery skipper sailing boats basically back and forth from Toronto to the BVI's. Occasionally from island to island down there and across Lake Ontario. I had a gig for one season sailing True North 1 in Ste. Maarten. That was fun. We would take a load of cruise ship passengers out and race Stars and Stripes which also had a load of cruise shippers.

I'd instantly liquidate to live on a boat. My wife gets car sick driving to the mall. It's sad.

My first delivery was in 1988, Toronto to Tortola. We'd sail across the Lake, into the New York ditch, down through the inter-coastal waterway to Beaufort, NC. Provision up and head out to Bermuda then due south to Capoon Bay and the Bomba Shack. One of the crew with us on that first delivery hopped off and never left. He's still in the BVI's. We spoke recently. Now he, is living the dream!