Interview with Daniel Henderson of Sea Sure about new products at METS
by Mark Jardine 1 Dec 2015 12:05 GMT
1 December 2015
Sea Sure double tiller extension joint © Mark Jardine
We spoke to Daniel Henderson at Sea Sure about the new products they had on show at the METS Marine Equipment Trade Show in Amsterdam.
Mark Jardine: Dan, can you first of all tell me about these tiller extensions?
Daniel Henderson: We've seen a space in the market where the current tiller extension joints are only really designed for tiller extensions up to about 1.5 metres. Above that the joints are a bit too flexible, so we've got a new range where the joint is much stiffer and we're utilising the joint we're currently making for Nacra, for the Nacra 17 to connect their tiller bars, as one of the new joints. It has a 4mm Dyneema® rope core so that in the event of any failure you're not going to lose anything.
We have the option for a double extension and a single and they look very different to conventional universal joints. The double runs directly across the top of the tiller and it allows the helm of a 49er, RS800, or any other twin tiller dinghy, to go between the sides of the boat without dropping one extension on one side and picking up the other, you can run your hand directly across the whole unit, meaning that you can control the boat much better through manoeuvres.
It also has a very neat releasable clip which goes straight onto the extension which you can pull off, whereas current systems can be a nightmare if you have cold hands. It also means that if you have any failure of a tiller extension or snap one, it's very easy and quick to replace and get back out on the water.
MJ: What's the thinking with the single version and having the tiller extension come directly off the end of the tiller?
DH: Our thoughts came a little bit from the Moth where they have the same system, but they use the tiller extension to adjust the pitch of the rudder. The way that it works quite nicely for us is, and I've tried this on the Musto Skiff where we have a 2.5 metre tiller extension, where the joint is stiff enough that when you let go of it all the tiller wants to do is end up next to your leg rather than flying out the back of the boat, so it's much easier to maintain control of it.
MJ: So you can maintain direction while having both hands to do a task?
DH: Exactly that, and it has exactly the same releasing system where you pull the clip off and you can replace or change the extension in a few seconds.
MJ: Let's move onto the next product you have here. I understand you've developed a new dinghy roller-furler?
DH: Yes, we've designed a new furler. We've taken our current central column from our drum furler, which is C&C milled in-house out of 316 stainless steel, and put a new casing on it so that we've got a continuous line furler. The advantage of that is we can maintain a one-tonne breaking load whereas quite a lot of the units that are out there made fully of plastic have much lower breaking loads. It also has 316 stainless bearings so it has a high working load. We've designed it to be used with 4mm rope and the package comes complete with a 4mm Dyneema® pre-spliced rope so it's pretty much plug and play.
MJ: I notice that 3D printing was used in the development of this.
DH: Yes, we pretty much bought the 3D printer specifically for developing this product. We probably spent six months on it to begin with and we didn't even have a sample we thought worthy of showing anyone, so we invested in the 3D printer and very, very quickly had a unit that we were able to show people and test, it was that strong. A lot of development has gone into this, it's probably the 20th version that we're going to make the tooling with, and hopefully this will really take off in the market.
MJ: And lastly I can see a quintuple metal block set. Can you tell me a bit about that?
DH: Yes. Again, we wanted to join the market and bring something new to it. We know are strengths are building high quality products and we felt that we could add something. So we've developed a full range from singles up to quintuples, completely 316 stainless manufactured. We have two different ranges; one with the standard stainless colour with stainless ball bearings and a black version, where we use a titanium coating that's put on at very high temperatures which means even if you scratch the surface it'll still be black underneath, and that range also incorporates ceramic ball bearings. The ceramic balls last around four times longer than a normal stainless ball, they're also 4 times harder which means there's no crushing involved and means they're really well suited to high loading blocks.
MJ: So this is designed for kicker cascade systems and the like?
DH: Exactly that. Some of the guys in the Moths are now using 54:1 cascades, which for such a small boat is a huge amount of tension, so the guys were blowing up blocks left, right and centre. We saw that and thought that we could bring something, and that's where we've gone with it.
MJ: Dan, many thanks for your time and very interesting to see the new Sea Sure products.
DH: Thanks Mark.
www.sea-sure.co.uk