HullShape 1407

New deck&cabin is much smoother and about where I want it regarding shape, hull blending and surface generation type, it is as fair as you could get it in nurbs. Next step is to get working on the hull flair towards the tunnel and shaping the cabin towards the tunnel, hatches etc etc. There will be some styling elements added later on, bow shape as well. And look at ALL that deck space !!! Cats are great !

HullShape 0907

This hull looks a bit better, longer waterline, same displacement with lower draft actually, thanks to the blunt "V" bilge. At 10deg heel the WP looks pretty nice, almost symmetrical. I'm currently struggling with the cabin/deck styling, want it done in a particular way, this is just a rough modelling, will be refined later on.

HullChanges 1

Modified rocker curvature for more waterline, more displacement fore and aft while less draft, tiny adjustments though. The curvature graph of the new rocker is far nicer than the old one, much smoother with less control points of course. The rocker mod came together with a new hull section profile, a blunt V shape, but again smoother and much fair. Learned that it is best to have the transoms wet and powered rig than having reserve buoyancy aft, thus supposed dry transom without drag. More hull evolution to come probably. While foam is still out of the question because of price, I'm considering stressed plywood vs strip plank or partial strip plank with ply. New hull will have smoother and better defined curvature, probably easier to control for stressed ply.

Plywood/Foam

Plywood styling vs foam. Plywood will probably be cheaper and faster, looks butt ugly...but hey - you won't notice that when you're anchored in a very nice lagoon, roasting in the hot sun on the trampoline...
At the moment my guess is that I will be able to build this out of ply and partially strip planked.

PreliminaryStyling

Just to have an ideea on the looks. The hulls will be slightly flaired towards to tunnel, but not too much, just enough to provide a bit more interior space. Hulls will thus be asymetrical.

HullProfile

Rocker curve doesn't look very nice further aft, too tight curvature ?

VolumeDistribution

HullProgress

OAL=8.8m CL-CL=5.0m

Volume Displacement = 0.882169
Center of Buoyancy = 30.4869, 28.5481, -0.118422
Wetted Surface Area = 6.6576
Waterline Length = 8.44902
Maximum Waterline Beam = 0.712711
Water Plane Area = 4.70762
Center of Floatation = 30.5544, 28.5481,0

Unfortunatelly I want the hulls to look in a particular way, so there might be some compromises regarding the hull's performance, will get into that later on.
Currently the WPL/WPB is under 12, I will try to get it closer to 13 so I will put the hulls on a diet, should look ok. There is a lot of volume in the fore area, happy about that. One of the main features of the styling is the integration of the uperstructure/deck to the hull, instead of a classical aproach with a powerfull gunwale and flat deck with a box standing on it as the cabin.
The aim is to blend the freeboard into the cabin/foredeck. Should be better structural-wise, allowing efforts to dissipate across the whole surface of the hull, instead of creating localized efforts at the gunwale/deck/freeboard. Stay close.

TheRig

It is not settled yet, while many elements of the design are clear to me -the rig is something I don't know too much about and don't have experience with many rigs, also needs to be pointed out now - I'm not an experienced sailor nor boat designer. I do know what I would want- that is a Cat rig with a gennaker, but the rig choice will be settled after more study and more advice from friends. My thoughs are: catrig is simple, few harware, easy to handle singlehanded except in strong winds, should be cheap as there is little hardware, just one sail. The cat rig should be more efficient upwind, but hard to reef downwind if the wind picks up fast. It is the most important part of the design and needs to be planned with extra care.

TheSize

Hmmm, aaahh... big ? Well it should be big enough, small enough, wide enough but most importantly it should suit the budget. The bigger the better, but I'm not quite swimming in nicely coloured bank issued notes, so I have to be realistic, which is allready very hard. I have settled on a 8.8m catamaran so far, maybe this will change, but at the moment I consider it to be a bit too much for the (future) budget and a bit too small to be really safe, 8.8m should do ok. What type? Well, it is going to be an open deck (hopefully) fast cruiser with some minimum accomodations. Considering most of time will be spent on the deck the accomodations can be minimum, I can do well without too much comfort, however others don't. Any boat is a compromise between comfort, performance, cost and styling. I'm planning for a way to be able to close up the deck space with a soft canopy like shell, in order to be protected from sun/rain/moderate wind and spray. I want the boat to be as ligth as possible within the budget, strong, practical and to be possible to have it disassembled on rare occasions.

TheBoat

Now we are getting into the interesting stuff. How should a dreamboat be ? Well, it should suit your needs, it must work as a sailing machine, it should be safe and it must be possible to make it real. After sailing cats and monos I don't want to be sailing a leadmine on oceans again, they just suck. So MY dreamboat will be a catamaran, a nice one. Most of the designs out there look like paper wrapped shopping carts on floats, they look like bad designed sofas floating around, like ugly floating caravans or bad looking stereo systems. Ok, not all of them, but most of them, we all perceive design differently so I am sorry if my view on this offended any designer. Probably my biggest mistake on this matter is giving design to much credit as this should be a working sailing machine and not a piece of artwork. Well, lets see if I can make it nice and working, a good challenge, a great challenge for a crazy person, yes that's me.