Besides resembling a waterborne sleigh, or a canoe with training wheels, where do multihulls belong in the human scheme of things? In the Stone Age, they helped us populate the planet’s largest space. In the Space Age, they may watch us depopulate the planet, but since 1947, they’ve sure helped us have a good time. They seem to be the zenith, the culmination of a host of waterborne devices that have all combined to give us a less defensive – a more buoyant – relationship with the sea. For example:

• In the 1700s, European explorers saw Hawaiians riding waves on big planks at Waikiki. Believing that big waves were to be defended against, the explorers were perplexed to see the locals “actually playing in the surf.” But then, it took 200 years for surfing to go global.

• Meanwhile, the Aleuts invited all upstanding bipeds to be seated in kayaks. In that relaxing posture, we explored the littoral zone, that vast, untrammeled region where the water seems to couple with the land. There, we became intimate with nature. It felt so good that kayaks turned from symbols of identity to products of commodity.

• During WWII in France, watersports went under. Jacque Cousteau and his friend Emile Gagnan developed the demand regulator. Together with dynamite and bottles of air, it allowed them to conduct underwater demolition without detection by the Nazis, so now we have the aqualung. It gives anyone a good glimpse of the underwater world, which has shown itself to be enticing and tolerant — even of we two-tailed, one-eyed, always bubble-blowing “fish.”

• In the mid-1940s (and the mid-Pacific), American GIs watched native outrigger canoes sail across atoll lagoons at motorboat speeds. A conscientious objector named Woody Brown, who was assigned to a survey squad on Christmas Island, saw such a sailing outrigger overhaul a naval launch, and said, “No white man’s sailboat can do that! When I get home, I’m gonna build me one.” He did, but it was built more like a wooden aircraft than a wooden boat (he just happened to be a glider designer/builder/pilot. His boat, the 38’ MANU KAI, bore scant resemblance to the outriggers, but it was the first truly modern multihull… A distinct, new genus of watercraft.

• By the early 1960s, modern multihulls were crossing — not just lagoons, but also oceans, and not just with regularity — alacrity. Multihull sailing became known as being far too much fun not to be doing it. We’re doing it more and more; racing, cruising, chartering and ferrying. Indeed, the major fiscal success for multihulls has been in their commercial operations. It’s all a newfound frame of mind toward the sea.

Of course, surfboards now are hybridized for use with paddle/poles, camping chairs, sails, kites, wings and hydrofoils. SCUBA gear now uses blended gasses for going very deep, and kayaks have evolved for paddling, pedaling, fishing, surfing and shooting wild rivers.

As for multihulls, they now range in length from ten feet to over ten times ten. Some are duplex condos with flying bridges, others have hybrid wings, and hydrofoils. Some can sail at speeds of over 50 knots, and are known to circumnavigate the world single-handed and non-stop, in roughly 50 days.

But that’s not all! Speaking strictly for myself, I think some modern multihulls, both cats and tris of the mature, “fast-cruising” variety, can constitute the ultimate offshore watercraft. Best known for speed and spaciousness (although not necessarily in the same boat), I think their unprecedented practicality stems from another combination: It’s that rarest melding of splendid seakeeping properties together with shallow draft.

No other configuration combines those usually-conflicting capabilities more effectively than the seafaring multihull. Of course they are expensive; at least two hulls to build, perhaps two rudders, two engines and two centerboards. Furthermore – because of their narrow hulls – they are not good load carriers. Even the larger multihulls are vulnerable to overloading, and so suggest a back-packing instead of a pack-ratting, philosophy.

Nevertheless, it is that same philosophy which is most consistent with the modern sailor’s newfound state of mind. A less defensive, more buoyant, — even playful — attitude… finally a copacetic, human relationship with the sea.

No, it did not happen by itself; it took the likes of surfboards, SCUBA gear, kayaks and even water bikes to “mutate” we air-breathing terrestrials into creatures of The Water Planet. And in the process, we, typically, may have overdone it. Gone may be the old seafaring sensation that the ocean is “out to get you,” but that – at least at times – can make us feel invincible.

Multihulls especially can entice the happy greenhorn into that isolated realm where things can go wrong. And so, oh playful waterman, when things get giddy way offshore, please recall the words of my old mentor Fred McKenzie, the Bahamian bosun in the great steel schooner named JANEEN. One quiet day when Freddy was at the helm, I crept overboard from the bobstay, let the ship sail by, grabbed our knotted overboard line dangling from the stern, and quietly climbed aboard. Dripping wet, I flung water from my hands onto his back and hollered “BOO!” He whirled to face me, took a long breath and – realizing how I had gotten there – he calmly said, “Mistah Jim, you be playin’ wid de ocean, but it doan know – doan even cayah – you dayah.”