RS Cat

That's fine for commercial operators who write things off over a few seasons, but the private buyer might be better served buying a slightly more expensive hull that will still have some residual value after 10 years or whatever.

The hull moulding is not that big a proportion of the cost of a modern dinghy.

 

People might be relaxed about dragging a roto-boat up the beach, because it doesn't look any different afterwards, not having a high gloss surface etc.

But when it's a few years into UV degradaton and a stone goes through it, it's not an amateur repair job like simple GRP. I've seen a few canoes junked for holes that would be an evening with £5 worth of materials for me to fix if they were GRP.

 

I've nothing against cats, but isn't there already a vast array of makes and models to choose from? What's actually new here?

 

RS are selling them...

For getting costs down though we've done a lot of work on low temperature curing room temperature stable thermosetting resins for prepreg- these are resins that will happily sure at 80°C (so moulds can be cheap) with a few weeks of shop life (so less freezer storage required)- our primary product now is M79. However, as we're not Gurit (who don't have a resin system that quite matches this) we don't do the low gsm fabrics/UDs that boat building requires; all our industrial output goes on high volume stuff for wind turbines. Boat building's too tiny a market for us to get involved in.

+1 and +1 to iTick too!!!!

For the record all the Cats at Nonsuch Bay are GRP Hobies. Caribbean resorts on the leeward side of the islands get away with rotomold versions... fit for purpose for drifting around in a wind shadow where most of the time they need to be sailed by a novice. For a resort on the windward side where the Trade Winds are 12 to 20 knots day in day out for most of the year, and guests have made the trip specifically for the sailing we assume that only a GRP cat is up to the job in terms of stiffness.

Slightly different when it comes to dinghies which perform adequately in the stronger conditions.

We'll be very interested to see if the RS Cat has the right ingredients. If its stiff enough and user friendly, it might be a serious option for lightweight crews..... Like other RS rotomolds it certainly looks a lot more serious than just a toy.