Saturday 24 March 2018

Another dreamboat designer


Kurt Hughes must be a legendary designer and I never heard of him until I saw one of his creations for sale. I have become convinced that the mono-hull sailboat makes little sense, that the catamaran is slightly compromised in safety, that the true evolution of sail is trimaran.



The biggest problem with Trimarans is a comparative lack of space. The Neel 51 throws away at least 10 knots of speed to make a hybrid Cat Tri. The Hughes design above retains most of the 20 knot potential using wings to put in 4 berths.
Consider the state of the art Clipper 60 in alu. It weighs 18 metric tons and has 3 berths. It will cruise at around 12 knots. The Tri 60 (Kurt give names to your designs) weighs in around 7 tons. Both boats could be made lighter in Carbon Fiber but the tri advantage remains.

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