The French love all things historical and nautical, so it makes perfect sense that they have become the curators of the first Atlantic proa in the world: the “giant killer” CHEERS. Today, he is kept in Port Saint Louis by Vincent Besin and the French government, which has declared him a “monument historique”, one of less than 100 small craft, and the only multihull. CHEERS was relaunched last week, at a ceremony that included his…
Bamboo is a material with excellent engineering qualities that has so far been useful to boatbuilders mainly as a source for spars. In this article, Richard Emmet proposes processing bamboo for marine plywood.
I held a sample of interior grade bamboo ply in my hand and it took less than two seconds to decide that I could build boats out of this stuff. I could not believe how light it was! And it felt about as stiff as steel. Of course…
Back to the Future. A collaboration with Jim Shanahan.
Tepukai are singularly amazing proas from the Santa Cruz Islands that take the usual South Pacific parsimony with building materials to the nth degree. The boats stretch out over the water’s surface like a gigantic water spider, covering the most area with the minimum mass. Tepukai employ slender, submersible wave-piercing hulls, centrally located mass for low pitching moments,…
The Jan/Feb 2008 issue of Multihulls World includes a boat test of the Edel 4XCat 33 from ADN, which I happen to like quite a lot. The ADN design team is seeking that sweet spot between performance daysailer and luxury cruiser - a performance cruiser. It’s a niche currently dominated by folding trimarans and its nice to see this creative catamaran version.
The two hulls and bridgedeck nacelle are three separate modules…
The third (and hopefully final) iteration of Samwise the micro-cruising proa.
Some fairly dramatic changes since Samwise Part 2 (Part 1 is here). The biggest change is that Sam is now a balls out Atlantic proa - rig placed in the windward hull. No faux Pacific, “weight to windward” sham, an Atlantic proa is Sam I am.
LOA: 20’
BOA: 8’ - 12’
Windward hull beam: 2’-10”
SA: 180 sq. ft.
Mast height: 16’-2”
Rig height: 19’
Placing the…
Via the Boat Design Forum: Tornado sailors, Steve Lohmayer and Jamie Livingston, going under the team name of Lumpy and Bumpy, have won the annual Watertribe Everglades Challenge in a record time of just under 36 hours.
The Everglades Challenge is a 300+ mile adventure racing event that runs from Tampa Bay’s Ft. DeSoto beach to Key Largo. The previous record for the event was set last year with a time of two days, 8 hours, 56 minutes…
Harmen Hielkema has joined the blogosphere at Canoes of Oceania. Harmen designs and builds proas in New Zealand with an artistic eye and an appreciation for prior native art. From his blog:
Every culture with very few exceptions, somewhere in its past has some connection with the sea and a technology for moving or sailing on it. The sailboat was the first machine to give men freedom of motion without harnessing muscle power. Few of us…
There and back again, again.
I fleshed out a few scale drawings of Samwise last week. In keeping with the minimalist theme, I’m doing the minimum of calculations. As you can see, proportions have altered a bit - but form follows function. The goal was to make the hull sides from straight ripped ply - 2’ wide - easy as pie. The straight ply goal meant the crossbeams buried in the hulls had to go, so now they’re lashed or bolted to the…
Nicholas Schneider sent in some results of his crab claw rig experiments. Thanks Nic!
These are qualitative studies of slender foils and leading edge vortices for sailing craft. The results of these experiments, suffering from improvised input and variable conditions were good enough to inspire further work but produced more questions than answers.
Description of rigs in drawings:
A. Original Sunfish rig, large camber, high…
Samwise is a minimalist cruising proa, which is really the only kind of proa there should be, IMHO. The only thing not minimal is the performance - the proa’s raison d’etre. The basic idea is reliable and cozy camp cruising in the Pacific NW - where the water is generally frigid and the air is generally tolerable.
Sam’s godfathers include Matt Layden’s Paradox and Rob Denney’s Harry, while a host of uncles include Phil Bolger, Peter…
