New Designs

Whale Watching Capsize Thoughts

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Everybody remembers the whale watching boat that sank and capsized late last October off of Vancouver Island. 5 dead and one missing.
It did occur to me that there was a catamaran of about the same size that got unexpected seawater ingress this year also.
If that alum mono whale tour boat had been the same length Holo Holo, those dead passengers would still be alive. I ran this premise past a former captain of the Holo.  He agreed.
The latest thinking is that the tin mono had too many people on the top deck and that made it roll over in a bigish wave. On a cat like Holo the entire passenger list could have gone on one rail and not affected anything.
I am wondering what kind of irrational hoops the USCG will hit my guys with now.  Lower picture is Holo with seawater flowing in and out after it was stolen and run onto a reef.  I have pictures of the repair process and will post soon.

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8-6-holoholo-5-marcie

New Designs

Holiday Discount and Updates

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Is there any interest this year in the 20% holiday discount I have done for the last several years?  Let me know.  Maybe instead of changing the website I just put a note for a discount.

I have at least a dozen stories for here.  Been too many deadlines that I have been keeping up with.  Maybe I can get to these stories Friday.

New Designs

Million Dollar Room

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I just spotted one of my cat designs on HGTV show Million Dollar Rooms a couple of weeks ago.  It was an 85′ unit that the developer wouldn’t pay any more than $3K for the design of.  It was a spare design of course.   I didn’t want to leave him in lurch, but it was not a real design fee.

Next contact was when Charlie Munger bought it and dropped by to find out what he had just bought. Over the years I have met various people who worked on it, including naval architects in expensive offices.
Ironic that it is a million dollar room, but the proper design of the fundamentals was thought to be too expensive to be funded properly.

I could not find a link nor a picture.

Multihull Racing, New Designs

More Stuff Done Wrong?

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An ama bow broke off during the race.  70′ trimaran? Clearly the only time we get to see inside.  Most of us.  Picture below.

Its time again for speculative forensics.   One would assume that if they going to spend a couple of million on it, everything would be perfectly engineered.  I learned long ago that just because they are famous or expensive, it doesn’t mean it was done right.

And again, I can only go off of what I can see here.  If anyone knows any of it first hand, let me know.

First it sure looks like a carbon fiber keel and a carbon fiber band running down each side just above the stringer.  Rule of mixtures error if so.  If you use carbon for global loads, there better be enough of it to do the whole job. Regulars here already know that the stretch to failure of carbon is around 1%.  The other fabrics have much more stretch.  So the carbon would have to fail before the other kinds would begin to help much.

I would not have used a stringer.  They increase the panel aspect ratio, which is weaker.  The closer to 1:1 a panel can be, the better.

That core looks really thin to me.  It looks like 12mm but am sure it couldn’t be that thin.  I would have had no less than 25 mm and maybe even 40mm thick.  I forget what colors of core denote what density.  Maybe someone has it handy.

Finally, that hull skin fabric sure looks like e-glass, or more likely Kevlar.  Dude.  That has already been covered.

They could have called me.

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New Designs

I see the New Stiletto is Out

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I see they went ahead and came up with one.  It could have been so much better.  I recall the design brief called for something besides cross tubes, but they did that anyway.  They sure should have looked into Rafi’s Cat2Fold system.

One of the biggest faults of the original I thought was that it had berths, one per side, that were some 13′ long and about 2′ wide, or close to that. That always seemed useless to me.  I offered them flared hulls with enough inside room to sleep two, the right way.  What I see is a wide transom that gets wider fast above the waterline.  That will promote pitching in waves.  Maybe it was not intended for waves.

I see it  has a prod to  hold up the bow net.  That is easier to break down, but once the mast is down,  you have nothing holding the lot up.

They did do a belly pan instead of tramp between the hulls.  I don’t see how they will origami it, if they will.  Again, Rafi worked out a way to fold those up, and in carbon, they’re not too heavy.

I thought mine looked friendlier also.  I don’t see any designer’s name mentioned in the advertising, so I’m guessing the whole call for designs thing was actually a call for ideas, like I suspected.  (Normally I can edit image size.  Word press changed without me knowing it and no longer will allow resizing photos.  I will have to look into that.)

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the design they settled on
stiletto-x-series-view-10-890x350
those look like cross tubes to me
stilettol11PSP2
I sent them this. Wide enough for two double berths, and real windows.
New Designs

45 Bridgedeck Cat Update

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I finally got a chance to update my long running and very popular 45′ cat model.
I wanted to keep the look and feel, and amenity similar, but add much more.
Notice the reverse bows to dampen pitch in waves, and the spray deflector that slides back into hull flare.  The hull flare is the best way to get gobs of room inside the hulls and still have a skinny waterplane so it can be fast.

It has about the same layout options inside, but a suncover over the cockpit and added transom steps for easy water access.

I  have chosen to allow the builder to make his own parts as much as possible.  The bowtube is composite, as is the compression tube, chainplates, mast and boom.  I will create an exploded view of the components as a flat panel assembly probably this November, along with the study plans.

I will offer this design once there are study plans, for the same price as the present model.  Once the set is done or nearly done, it will be available at a competitive price for the plans.

Mast can be fixed or rotating.

psp3b
an early version
psp12b
a later version
psp13
later version at night