Amaran!
This particular craft seems to be based on an earlier Amaran design that had been developed by Piet Viegers in the early 1980s. The photo of Hans’ Amaran was taken in June 2012.
Cheers,
Paul
Found some more images.
I have many questions, but the most curious one is why is there a paddle mounted on the front hull?
Tink
The Dutch and English amaran pages have different information (not contradicting). On the dutch page it says:
Toen produceerde hij tien amarans, stond met drie op de HIswa, vekocht er negen en ging failliet.
Which means, “he produced 10 amarans, took 3 to the Hlswa, sold 9 and went bankrupt.”
I have many questions, but the most curious one is why is there a paddle mounted on the front hull?
If you are referring to the blue object that can be seen in the photo of the Amaran when it’s moored, then I think that it’s not a paddle, but rather a fender.
... took 3 to the Hlswa ...
The HISWA is a Dutch trade show.
I have many questions, but the most curious one is why is there a paddle mounted on the front hull?
If you are referring to the blue object that can be seen in the photo of the Amaran when it’s moored, then I think that it’s not a paddle, but rather a fender.
There is definitely a paddle tied to the truss over the forward hull in the photo Amaran7.jpg. I guess you could climb down the truss to get to it?
There is definitely a paddle tied to the truss ...
I see it now. That would be a most useful thing to have at hand when the Amaran comes in to dock ... of course, to get to it, the sailor would first need to climb along the girder. Fun!
All of the hulls seem to have been catamaran hulls originally. The front one is different to the pair at the rear.
I’m intrigued by the hull rotation method, having played with many ideas myself in the past which have rotating hulls. I never managed to work out a simple, robust system for steering three hulls. My reason for wanting to steer the hulls independently is usually to be able to rotate a streamlined cabin into the wind to reduce aerodynamic drag.
This boat obviously has some kind of steering system to do that, but what bothers me is that for this design I fail to see the point. It doesn’t increase the stability in any way and the way it rotates would tend to increase rather than decrease the drag of the superstructure, if there was one. So it seems to be a lot of effort to build in a potential structural failure point that serves no obvious purpose. I must be missing something.
Love the bamboo trusses though.
I’m intrigued by the hull rotation method, having played with many ideas myself in the past which have rotating hulls. I never managed to work out a simple, robust system for steering three hulls. My reason for wanting to steer the hulls independently is usually to be able to rotate a streamlined cabin into the wind to reduce aerodynamic drag.
This boat obviously has some kind of steering system to do that, but what bothers me is that for this design I fail to see the point. It doesn’t increase the stability in any way and the way it rotates would tend to increase rather than decrease the drag of the superstructure, if there was one. So it seems to be a lot of effort to build in a potential structural failure point that serves no obvious purpose. I must be missing something.
Love the bamboo trusses though.
Mal,
Pure speculation from my part…
Would the triple steering of the hull allow to increase the lateral stability of the whole thing?
When I look at the same picture 7, and see one hull at the front and 2 at the back, my gut feeling is that is is the worst layout you can come up with 3 hulls in regards to stability. You have no buoyance forward to the leeside, where you need it on a multihull to carry a lot of sail area.
It reminds me of the 3 wheelers ATV that were common in the 80’s for offroad fun and that have been banned since, for obvious reasons; too many death of people being crushed by their vehicle in a tight turn.
See below for what I mean:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Us90.jpg
And if you want to see the flaws of the same architecture for a car; watch this!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QQh56geU0X8
If you steer the 3 hulls, you could orient the whole craft such a way that you do get a hull forward on the leeside…
The question then becomes; why not build it that way in the first place?.... 2 hulls at the front, and one at the rear…
Hmmmm…. Maybe there is something else to it.
Cheers,
Laurent
The illustration shows the amaran in “proa” format, so perhaps that is the intended geometric organization. I’ve also played around with rotating, steerable hulls, but the reason was so I could dispense with rotating the sail. The entire boat would crab a bit sideways, thus aligning the “stationary” rig properly to the wind. However, this boat appears to have normally trimmed sails, which would remove that reason.
Again, a mystery.
This illustration shows what happens when the Amaran tacks. The leeward side of the Amaran is made up of two hulls, arranged in tandem. There’s the single, lead, hull, with one of the rear hulls being aligned up behind it.
At least, that’s what is supposed to happen the theory. The photos show a different reality.
Would the triple steering of the hull allow to increase the lateral stability of the whole thing?
When I look at the same picture 7, and see one hull at the front and 2 at the back, my gut feeling is that is is the worst layout you can come up with 3 hulls in regards to stability. You have no buoyance forward to the leeside, where you need it on a multihull to carry a lot of sail area.
Yes, you are right, if you rotate it to the ‘proa’ position, it probably has more diagonal stability because you are loading up only one hull. When sailing to windward, when you need the most stability, the benefit would be marginal.
Here’s one of my many sketches of rotating hulled craft. This one has four hulls. The sails and superstructure are all one piece and it has force balanced sail configuration. I’m not sure if four hulls would be much good in waves 😊