I read the big debate about beams and noticed that you have voted for a rule that forbids glued together boats.

A-class boats that are glued together are CHEAPER to build! Marstrom says that he could save 1000 euros on a boat and make it a couple of kg lighter. It is a complex structure to tranfer the point load from the bolt to the hull.

If you need to replace a hull or beam the glue used in the joint between hull and beam is a bit weaker than the epoxy used for the prepreg so you can remove the beam without destroying the hull or the beam. It is not easy but it can be done.

If you really need to transport the boat easily concider changing the max beam to 2.3 instead.

/håkan

You are not really seriously about the idea that F16 should change the width from 2.5 to 2.3 mtr do you ?

Why ? Why would we give up speed by reducing width only to hope to increase speed by extra stiffness of glued in beams ?

In order to make a change or have something, you must first have a compelling reason to do so. Glueing for the sake of glueing is not going to do it.

With respect to glued in beams (and thus carbon) being cheaper. Despite regular request no-one has been able to show that glued in beams make a platform actually cheaper. However it was possible to show that bolted alu beams were way cheaper than glued in (and thus Carbon) beams. Especially when taking into account the required transport to new owners world wide. The last issue alone made it beyond common commercial sense.

I have the greatest respect for Marstrom but his masts, beams and boats are anything but cheap. I admire the A-cat class but new A-cats are anything but cheap. Hell an new and fully fitted F16 is equal in price or cheaper than a A-cat with only one sail and much less hardware. Maybe he can save 1000 Euro's on his boats by going for glued beams but they probably would still be way more expensive than the others. So what is the point. All builders, including AHPC, have declared that the use of bolted alu beams is way cheaper for them than any alternative. The fact that Stealth is offering their fully rigged carbon masted and halve carbon hulled doublehander for 11.500 Euro's makes a convincing argument. I would like to see Marstrom ever make a boat that costs less than 150 % of that. With or without 1000 Euro saving by glueing in the beams. Hell I've looked at carbon beams for my own boat and found that it would set me back at least 500 Euro's EXTRA ! Are you seriously argueing that hulls can be made 1000 + 500 = 1500 euro's cheaper by use of glued in beams ?

I think one issue I have with your argument is that the glueing itself may reduced cost in building the hulls but the fact that you need the (way) more expensive carbon beams to be able to do this, pretty much all but negates the gains.

Than there are limits as class structure and commercial considerations like getting the boats to the customers world wide. As a matter of fact we can have the same argument to glue in the beams on the Tornado design or the M20 and M18 designs. As far as I know none of these Mastrom produced boats have glued-in beams themselfs. Take a look at the following pictures :

look for the little knobs on the beams that are the heads of the bolts

M18 : http://www.sailcenter.se/images/Batar/M18/ISAF-MARST-SOLO-CLOSE.jpg

M20 : http://www.watersportscheveningen.nl/m20.php#

Why hasn't Marstom done that ?

Hakan, forgive me my directness as I respect your opinions. Still I don't understand what is so difficult to understand about decision to ban permanently fixed beams. Not even marstrom himself used permanently fixed beams in any of his boats expect the A-cats that by luck are just narrow enough to fit inside a sea container and the road limits of each country in the world. So why is it "weird" for the F16 class to rule on this aspect ?

Somehow I expect more from you Hakan, I really did

With kind regards,

Wouter

Wouter, relax!

The Marstrom A-cat has bolted beams today and we where having a discussion with Marstrom what we could do to reduce the price on the a-cat. He said that removing the bolted beam and going for glued beams instead would be a significant price and weight reduction. The increased stiffness would be hard to measure since the current design for the bolts is really good, and expensive....

So for the current Marstrom platform it would reduce the price! By putting a ban on glued beams you could make some designs more expensive!

Reducing beam was not really serious, but it is only 8% beam reduction I was talking about... You would only sacrifice some upwind speed, downwind speed would NOT suffer. But the boat would still be messy to fit into a container....

The F18 guys are actually arguing about the beam of 2.6 meters. You need tilt trailer or knocking the boat apart each time you trailer it or you may run into to trouble. Ok must sailors don't care about the extra width and trailer it anyway, but why having 0.1 meters extra that makes it so difficult.

/håkan

Okay I'm relaxed now !

I agree your post had something of a red flag effect on me.


>>The Marstrom A-cat has bolted beams today and we where having a discussion with Marstrom what we could do to reduce the price on the a-cat. He said that removing the bolted beam and going for glued beams instead would be a significant price and weight reduction. The increased stiffness would be hard to measure since the current design for the bolts is really good, and expensive....

Noted .

>>So for the current Marstrom platform it would reduce the price! By putting a ban on glued beams you could make some designs more expensive!


Well, this is somewhat of a weird swing of looking at things. Current prices will of course not rise because it is discovered now that glueing may be cheaper. That would be weird. Also we are still faced with the issue that current use of Alu beams are a shitload less expensive than the use of carbon beams that would be required if you want to glue in the beams. So you could save money only after you spend teh same amount first in order to be able to safe it.

Well at least the builders currently involved in the F16 class didn't feel that either carbon beams or glued in beams is attractive to them from a cost reduction or production perspective. Now if Marstrom gets into the F16 class and shows us all how it can be done and for less investment than we may have something to talk about. However I trust this to be an idle hope as I fear Goran feels that our minimum weight of 107 kg is too high for our 5 mtr length.


>>Reducing beam was not really serious, but it is only 8% beam reduction I was talking about... You would only sacrifice some upwind speed, downwind speed would NOT suffer. But the boat would still be messy to fit into a container....


8 % indeed but also 3 % less upwind speed in singlehanded mode. Not to mention a more roomy tramp when double handing. It is funny really but that 8% does really make a difference in feel.


>>The F18 guys are actually arguing about the beam of 2.6 meters. You need tilt trailer or knocking the boat apart each time you trailer it or you may run into to trouble. Ok must sailors don't care about the extra width and trailer it anyway, but why having 0.1 meters extra that makes it so difficult.

That is why we are at 2.5 mtr width.

Wouter

Hello Hakan, just wanted to say thanks for posting those mini videos of tacking and wildthing in 20Kts. Great stuff.

Is there any others you've done that can be downloaded?

ps 5 degrees C, you must be nuts!

Phil Palmer