You are corrert of course.

At this time my main focus is to get the stuff other then the bare hulls as light as possible. Any savings here can directly go into heavier hulls.

I would like to make the hulls out of glass layers and core-matt material. Looked briefly at twinex, but just like rotomolded hulls these are practically out of the reach of homebuilder or even a small company make a small serie of hulls (start-up)

On the other hand, don't underestimate the strenght and dent resistance of 4 mm ply on such short hulls. Especially if covered with a single layer of glass it will be surprisingly abuse resistance. I'm sorry to say that my crew did test that aspect on my F16 with her trapeze hook. Hitting the deck with the hook first will all of her weight and then sliding off with hook scratching at the deck still carrying all her weight. Now she is pretty light 58 kg I think, but still the damage was mostly visual. I now have a 100x5 mm scratch on my decks that you can feel be moving your fingers over it but the true depth is probably only 0.5 mm. The boat is fine beyond that.

It is also my intention to cover the keel line with a strip of aluminium to prevent wear of the hulls being dragged along the beach and stiff. With a V-ed keel this should also protect the hulls against most submerged rocks. In addition I'm looking to make the hulls easily repairable so small holes are hopefully not a serious issue.

And at some time we have to trust the kids not to use the boats as bumper cars. I've seen 8 year olds being exceptionally attentive to optimists overhere. I guess it all comes down to how you raise your kids. Lasers and optimists aren't bullet proof either.

And like I say all though this thread. lets give it a try and see how it works out. There is no point in giving up on something before you really do know whether it will work or not.

Everybody keeps saying this and that won't work, but do we really know that ?


Wouter