Hi there,
as Dynautic's first customer for the Blade i may add some comments here:
The orange Blade is made of plywood, i had a test sail on it. Like many others who tried the Blade i was very impressed about the Cat and placed my order.
First Dynautic intended to make the hulls in plywood carbon, for maximum stiffness and dent resistance. This was the main difference at that time to the other builder, Vectorworks.
But as there was no experience with this composite structure, Phill the Blade designer convinced Dynautic to build the first hulls with foam core for reliability reasons.
Now a high-density foam core is used, with pre preg carbon layers. Denting is also no issue, i saw someone hammering on the composite with no effect on the surface.
For the rudders there are some options now. The orange plywood Blade had a AHPC rudder system, which pros and cons are well known.
I decided for another one, made by a local supplier to me, shake design in Hamburg/Germany. Supports regional business, and spare parts mustn't shipped around halve the earth to me. On their website you can see an A-Cat rudder, similar to the F16 system which is now in design process. The head will be stronger with the tiller fixed to both sides of the rudderblade. The rudder will get a 20% larger surface compared to A-Cat and is then also used for F18ht. The stern at the Blade is higher with more volume compared to A-Cat or F18, so we chose the F18ht type that spinout problems shouldn't occur with this setup.
see:http://www.catsailor.com/bb_files/94003-F18ht-1.pdf
Now the moulds for the rudder are 3D-modelled and then CNC milled. At beginning of march my rudders will be available, hopefully together with the gray carbon Blade you can see on the Dynautic website.
links:
www.dynautic.comwww.shakedesign.de/rudder.htmHolger
