s on Lake Tahoe for 24 years now. Still a beautiful boat on a beautiful lake. And it is the boat that changed the way that the USCG certifies cats. It makes me tired to read all the structural calculations I had to do to convince the coasties that plywood/epoxy was not bogus.
See http://www.awsincline.com/sierra-cloud-catamaran
Usually this week of an even year I would fly to the Marine Applications of Composite Materials conference in Melbourne, FL. All the best and latest in marine composites was there. Just about any question you could think of to do with composites was examined there. Things like comparing cores, resins, and various fabrics. Things like impact comparisons, of all the previous list. Comparing the various composite joins. Even my paper on comparing w
ing masts, one with a center spline to one with only bulkheads. Reichard was big on composites testing. Despite what Kelsall says, I say testing is the best way to sort out complex composite issues, with the number of variables controlled, so the issue can be isolated for study. I met great people there. I only ever saw one other present multihull designer there (my friend Roger Hatfield). I'm sorry to see these valuable conferences stop.
Many have called the swept back X bows or America’s Cup Bows simply a fashion. I say they have real advantages. The argument against says that you lose buoyancy as the hull buries. That is true, but you also lose drag. It becomes more wave piercer. And at the moment you lose a few hundred pounds of displacement, you are actively participating in hundreds of thousands of foot pounds of a verb. A few hundred pounds are irrelevant. Now check this out. A link sent to me by Owen Myers. The military often has a big enough budget to research things. See http://www.militaryphotos.net/forums/showthread.php?152989-Xbow-Sea-Axe-A-future-in-the-Military-Design
The fix was the Inbox Repair Tool. It simply made every past email vanish. Only yesterday and the weekend were not backed up yet. If you sent me one then, please send again. There were a lot of them.
I just got some nice pics from my friend Luis in Brazil. We collaborated on this 46' powercat. He builds them. Looks pretty nice to me. Its not sinking; that's a wave.
And its impossible to miss the Fury catamarans in Key West.
I have mixed feelings about Fury Charters in Key West. They are the biggest operation there. I visited the boats and they look very well maintained. They run at least 4 of my 65' , 149 passenger cats. My issue is that they bought one set of plans and bootlegged the rest of the boats. It wasn't money issue. Peter
My final visit on the road trip was the Blue Q in Key West. This 42' daycharter cat was the first boat in a box. It was built in Arkansas and trucked to the panhandle where it was assembled and launched. Capt. Steve reminded me that the boat was 20 years old. Like the other cats, it looked new. See http://bluqkeywest.com/