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As the breaking sea passes under the cat sitting beam to the seas, the force
of the wind and the wave action may even leave the windward hull out of the
water, but the sea then moves to and pushes up on the other hull, forcing
the cat back horizontal but leaving the cat stable in the trough. The
motion is reportedly much quicker than a monohull but more comfortable and
without the pendulum motion of a monohull/keel to help with the roll.
History would seem to indicate that lying ahull in a cat is a safe method to
handle extreme weather and designers/experienced cruisers also recommend
running with the wind using a drogue to control speed or a sea anchor to sit
bow to the wind/seas.
It is also hard to ignore the fact that most cats will float when capsized
and monohulls fill with water and sink.
As cats became popular (1960's and 70's) and, therefore, underwent
development and design experiments, there were some cat designs with narrow
beam and high sail profiles and they weren't as stable as a cruising cat is
today. The arguments usually presented against a multihull (capsize prone,
break up in heavy seas, don't point) come from that development era, but
that development era was successful and most of those arguments are simply
myths today.
Any vessel, driven incorrectly, can sink, but multihulls have proven to be
as safe as a monohull, in all conditions, if sailed correctly.
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