I worked on this cargo cat for the Caribbean over the winter. It is designed to be rock bottom inexpensive to build. It will be built using a developed plywood half hull mold. Instead of core it will be solid skin with triaxial stringers. Internals and connectives are epoxy/plywood.
At first glance it may look similar to the powercat 89 but except for the reverse bows, nothing is similar. Instead of flare it merely has a spray deflector.
I finally wanted to render it and Monday I will get back to plotting out everybodys plans.
At CSR today I saw this new Bieker proa of maybe 22′? It is plywood/epoxy which will make Kelsall froth, probably. Looked like it was 3mm or 4mm thick hull. Kind of a rounded chine probably.
Odd I thought in two ways. It has a big bow overhang and the cabin/cockpit is right at the transom. Designed like it’s a retro unit. It will surely pitch in waves and will surely drag transom. Odd. The upgrade to my power proa will have reverse bows, be of developed ply, and will have lots of hull aft of the cockpit and beams. Find the teachable moment.
For me it really starts about a minute in and in the water closer to 4 minutes. It seems to sit nicely on the water. And notice that there are no straps so he must have used lifting plates. Nice. There will be more soon.
I typically use System 3 Silvertip epoxy. Especially when the temperature is down I find it a little hard to get it to lie down for final flow coat. In contrast, Fiberlay epoxy is much thinner and will lie flat for the flowcoat. One could use both types or thin the thick epoxy. Kern at Sys 3 tells me that the Silvertip can be thinned up to 20% with lacquer thinner. Provided the surface is not porous.
I have not tried to, but I wonder if the much thinner Fiberlay epoxy might flow out from the near vertical surfaces of a CM bagging? Solution to that would be adding cabosil. Or use the other epoxy.
Finally. Unlike the earlier 3 Meter, it will be able to exceed its hull speed. The 3 Meter main hull was so fat that it could not exceed its hull speed of 4.23 knots. I recall Marples always called it speedy. When I looked at that, I came up with the 12′ tri which could go much faster than hull speed. I will never forget a wonderful afternoon zipping around on Roger Strube’s beautiful customized 12.
