McConaghy 60 Catamaran.
This splashy, silver-rendered catamaran does have cool features like boards, and swept bows and rotating mast. And did I hear carbon fiber is involved? How cool is that?
It seems to lack a coherent mission statement though. It seems more like a couple dozen cool features spliced together by a beginner, than by the reputed experienced designers.
It has come to my attention that many of the conclusions that I came to from the pictures are wrong. If so, I stand corrected. For example, I thought from the minimal draft and use of carbon, it would be crazy light, which is good for speed. I understand that at 8.9 tons, its not as light as it looks. I also thought it was surprisingly narrow overall at 8.6m or 28′. It is also true that many of its peers are that narrow. My 60 is wider, though not that much wider at 30′. I will say that in the picture below, beam overall looks to be about 20′. That narrower beam lets them fly a hull very quickly. It could be very fast in even lighter winds. It is supposed to be a cruiser. With carbon beams, why not make it wider and give the extra righting moment and safety. Ok Ok, by being wider one would not fly a hull as easily and could lose a beer-can race. I have also been informed that at 75′ it has a very conservative rig. Isn’t that like having a Shelby Cobra with a Honda Civic engine in it. Why not give it a proper beam and a hotter rig? To match the badass look.
The house front is actually vertical. Even my pickup truck has some slope on the front. It has those trick swoop things on the sides though to make it look sleek; like the pug nosed ferries do to hide the pug.
I wondered if the first green wave (reverse bows do make wetter ride) trapped there would blow the front windows out? I have been informed that it will not.
And near as I could tell from the pictures, a wave boarding from astern had nothing to stop it from surging all the way downstairs, on both sides. I have been informed that it has doors and storm-boards. I have to accept that.
And I noticed no non-skid covered up the shining floor. I have been informed not to trust my eyes; it is non-skid.
Performance cats are expected to have small cabins. This is odd though; its smaller even than it needs to be. With elegant engineering, the beam shear web will be pretty near the mast. So why is all that “outside” there between the cabin front and the mast? Is it a place for the half dozen professional crew to stay? In my opinion a cruising boat should be able to be single-handed or short-handed. Usually that means the strings go aft to the helm, or helms. So why that stadium around the mast? If it were sailing in the Bass Strait like the night I was there, you could not be up there working the strings. Maybe they need a Bass Strait vacation.
Gunboat, it could be argued is ugly, but is a conceptually honest design.
I do read that the developer of this unit is the convicted securities trader Raphael Blot. I expect he forced these cool features together and the guys drafted like he ordered. It could have been so much better.
I find the area of cruiser/racer catamarans a difficult one to reconcile in larger sizes as the trimaran format seems to win out easily in the performance stakes if not accomodation. The Nigel Irens designed trimaran Paradox beat the first Gunboat (The well equipped and campaigned Phaedo with Brian Thompson on board) in by more than 10 hours in the recent Caribbean 600 (it even won on handicap) it also easily defeated the 100′ canting keel monohull Loyal and went within a whisker of taking the race record from the dedicated ORMA 60 racing trimaran Region Guadeloupe.
I think it is a fair comparison since they are all very expensive carbon builds with a focus on performance and some variable level of internal space and cruising amenity. Paradox weighs something in the region of 6-9 tonnes for a 60′ waterline and 50′ beam. I suppose it depends on how much your willing to give up comfort for performance. Paradox is a much more basic boat without a pizza oven but a still comfortable if cosy interior.
Moving onto Trimaran design.
An interesting developement in fast off shore Tris is instead off bowsprits is to have extra hull lenghts and higher bow bouyancy to avoid pitch polling and allowing faster entering into waves.
Article http://www.boatdesign.net/forums/multihulls/multihull-one-design-orma-70-a-32514.html
Your comment would be interesting.
OC
longer usually better with displacement hulls.
Hi Kurt & Tony,
Yes, beauty is definitely in the eye of the beholder. For my part I actually like the exterior styling of this boat better than 90% of the cats around. On the other hand it would look better with the cabin 6″ higher or the hull freeboard 6″ lower. And if the bridge deck clearance isn’t at least a meter it will sail ugly in a seaway regardless of how it looks.
re. water and its tendency to get hard and run downhill, I could recount an amusing tale from a delivery skipper of a certain popular catamaran rendered over Dark and Stormy’s in St. George Bermuda—-.
Gunboats ugly? You think? To my eye Gen I Gunboats look like they were styled in an Iowa cornfield by a farmer who went to see the movie Wind but fell asleep in the middle. And Gen II designs don’t inspire my lust either. But that’s why they make different folks with different sized wallets.
interesting comments by Kurt but I’d like to address a few points
crazy light – max displacement 11,500kgs seems reasonable to me
surprisingly narrow at 8.60M compared to a Gunboat 60 at 8.60M, Outremer 5X at 8.58 Schionning 17M at 8.00 Tag 60 at 8.40 Grainger 60 at 8.60 – I’d be very surprised if it was any wider
fly a hull very quickly – I don’t think so, note that the rig is only 22.9M, very conservative
I prefer cabin to house but the windows are vertical and have been engineered to withstand green water
Wave boarding from astern – with doors closed and stormboard in place, no, that won’t happen
no non skid – actually all floors are coated in non skid
all lines should lead to the cockpit – all sheets and furlers lead to the cockpit but we decided on handling halyards and reefing lines which are all on hooks at the mast, has worked on other boats and we like it that way.
Kurt, you may think a Gunboat is ugly but the style of a boat is a personal choice, same as cars, some people are happy to drive a pick up truck, some people like something more elegant but that doesn’t make their choice wrong.
Tony,
I was basing most of my comments on the pictures. If boat is different that it looks in pictures, I stand corrected and will update. I do see that displacement is listed as 11.5 tons and not 11,500 kg.
Kurt
Hil Kurt,
Just sorting through my rusty memory banks which told me that a Gunboat 60 has a 28′ beam as well. Yup, 28.21 ft. from Gunboat’s brochure. So I guess you’d have to conclude that a Gunboat 60 will roll over at a moment’s notice as well.
The difference with this boat is that somebody has made very generous use of the XY axis control on Photoshop when they were putting together their ad copy. No wonder it looks to be about 20′ wide. And isn’t that profile sexy! Could only be achieved by having about 12″ bridge deck clearance or 5′ headroom in the main salon. But like you said, in a world which is controlled by the financial geniuses, their wish is as God.
Richard,
YOu got me there. Gunboat never felt narrow to me.
Very good and very interesting analysis!