Jake ! go to :
http://www.tek-kat.co.uk/
Big, wide, carbon everything,
Ohh no, not another "lets make everything from carbon and we'll win for certain this time" design.
Welcome to the long list of predecessors
Marstrom M18
CFR 20
Ventilo 20 "with some fancy name that I forgot already"
Marstrom M20 (twice, second time 20 kg heavier so it would stay in one piece)
Hobie Fox special edition (found its grave at Texel 2005 if I remember correctly)
Eagle 20 (about a dozen different versions of this design have been launched already)
M20 GTI (second generation M20 but now with a sloop rig instead of just a mainsail)
Volvo Extreme 20
Wasn't there also an all carbon Tornado sailing the USA somewhere ?
And this is only the listing of all the beach cats of 20 foot length.
Basically this boat will suffer the same problems as all it predecessors above.
-1- stay in one piece long enough to finish a series of races.
-2- stay ahead of the lead F18 that is only a quarter of the purchase costs.
-3- stay on the legal side of the law during road transportation.
-4- accepting the fact that the lightest doublehanded racing catamaran will still be another design.
-5- accepting the fact that a hacksaw or very big purse is not included as standard to allow international shipping by sea container.
Added to this is the fact that its "mathematically perfect" lines have been designed by a monohull (dinghy) designer whose call to fame is the RS300 and RS600 dinghy as well as his participation in the invictus C-class catamaran. If I remember correctly none of these boats made a hit world wide.
Sorry, we've all been down this road too often before.
We already know that the doorway to higher performance lays not in the choice for carbon as the building material but in aerodynamic improvements in the rig as well as hydrodynamic improvements in hull shapes and foils. Most of these breakthroughs have already been achieved and all of these can be attained while using different (much cheaper) materials. To make things worse many cheaper designs have already incorporated these features in their designs. There are no easy wins anymore when designing a new catamaran. The F18 class and its spin-offs like the new Tornado and F16 boats have develloped to far to allow easy wins.
Wouter
