Video of the week

Are there any estimates of the UFO's all-round speed when not foiling, and will it race as a cat in mixed fleets? Despite the Vortex oddity, the UFO seems to be essentially as much a cat as an Yvonne (the first real beach cat class) or Hobie Bravo. One assumes that a boat with two hulls doesn't become a foiler just by having in-line foils, in the same way that cat or tri that is normally sailed only on the main hull isn't classed as a mono.

Edited by Chris 249 - 03 Nov 16 at 2:25am

Rupertson had a playmobile catamaran, and it crossed my mind when I saw the UFO, but I thought it, and the UFO, look great in a functional sort of way.

How strong is the join when coming alongside too fast?

 Actually the seams are pretty small, about 50% of what used to be necessary when we glued boats together with polyester bog. Modern glues are really good and we took about 3 kg of weight out of the project by using this simple minimalist bond line. It isn't because we don't know any better.
I haven't discovered a way to do flush glue joints on production GRP parts like this that don't involve significant patching and rework.  Maybe we just aren't smart enough, but I have tried lots of different techniques with different styles of tooling and none of them has actually been worth the trouble. Given that this is all well clear of the water moist of the time when it matters, it seemed to us that using the obvious most reliable technique was the right call.
Nothing is easier than building an expensive boat.
SHC
 

Originally posted by getafix the look of it is way way too close to white goods

Think all I can do is to repeat my SA post:

Its probably inevitable that if you shave every last dollar off the cost there's a tendency to look as if you've been shaving dollars off the cost. But its just like weight saving: you don't need to compromise on it very much before you find you've compromised it completely.

There's certainly a place for immaculate super elegant boutique craft, and the Clarks have built plenty of them. However that place represents maybe about three boats a year and does exactly nothing to grow the sport. Even more so now that western society is tending to split into an executive class with loads of resources (who would tend to run status filled leadmines) and the vast body of people who can barely afford a boat at all.


Edited by JimC - 30 Oct 16 at 8:28pm