Patent ID: 7628115

Claim:
A catamaran sailboat that is comprised of two hulls, each of said hulls having a buoyancy section, a deck that is located upon said hulls, and a plurality of pivotally interconnected panel sets including a subset of pivotally interconnected panel sets that support a mast and rigging loads of said sailboat, where the pivotally interconnected panels of at least one of the said panel sets that support the mast and rigging loads are arranged so that their inner edges are located above a plane on which outer edges of said panel sets lie, and where a pivotally interconnecting panel set consisting of two rotating compression struts that rotate about their respective outer edges are joined along their inner edges substantially close to a centerline of said sailboat, and where an innermost edge of each pivotally interconnected panel is located above a plane of the outer edges of said panels in both a laterally extended position and a laterally retracted position of said sailboat.