Welcome Captain! Here is more detail than on the home page for why three really is the magic number (+ Scroll down for the best explainer-video we have found) .
Our website menu also introduces the range of boats that are presently in R&D.
1. Monohulls
A large heavy block of (usually) metal is needed as a keel to balance the forces on the sail. The entire structure has to be heavy & strong to hold the keel so they sit low in the water. More force is needed to push water aside & overcome the drag. Everything has to be beefed up. It hardly matters if you shed pounds of luggage, so they’re great for carrying 500 beers on a trip – it makes little difference if your counterweight keel is 5000Kgs. At a typical 8 knots you’ll have plenty of time to drink them.
While they may arguably be the best boat to have in a storm (navigation apps help them to be avoided – their speed will not) they will drive through every wave as demonstrated by great videos with green water crashing over the deck. When the windspeed increases the captain reefs or the boats heel over, spilling the wind from their sails.
As a pleasure craft, many leave locations because of the incessant rolling at anchor.
2. Catamarans
Until the last 10 years catamarans had a bad rep. With understanding of the safe reefing guides for wind and conditions those have been overcome – just be sensible and it will stay right-side up. As the middle-weight of boats, they get their stability from 2 widely separated hulls with the balance preferably maintened in the centre. 12 knots in ideal wind is fairly normal, around 50% more typically than monohulls. We like this video, and all the people in it.
The popularity of catamarans has grown as they provide the largest accomodations when the full hull-spaces are turned over to a wonderful enclosed cabin, often with 2 guest cabins in the other. Without the weight of the keel, most of the hulls are above the waterline giving $m views from en-suite showers.
Being above deck, daily living is much like the best over-water hotel rooms. They are the party boat of choice because the space on deck is a lot like a large open-plan apartment, often with several lounging areas plus all that space between the widely separated hulls.
Having two hulls at anchor and often at passage, items can be left on kitchen counters and be reasonably trusted to stay there (except in more adventurous offshore conditions). At uncomfortable anchorages the roll may be 1/2 or 1/4 the degrees that a monohull rolls
A lot of manufacturers have had structural issues, which show that nothing can beat experience over time, and a willingness to put safety over profit.
3. Trimarans
As catamarans, we have believed for over 10 years that this is the next generation of sailing waiting for the market to appreciate and get excited by. Current designs are becoming more impressive and heads are beginning to turn more this way. Corsair & Neel are both leaders more at the “mass-market” end, with very different offerings , while Corsair’s ‘spin-off’ Rapido & our favourite family-firm Dragonfly produce higher spec trimarans & are ridiculously sexy beasts (the boats Jens, the boats).
Trimarans are the lightwight or featherweight class of boats & more stable than catamarans. When a catamaran is powered enough to lift a hull it is time to use extreme caution. When a trimaran lifts a hull it adds to the excitement – that flying hull weight acts as a free keel held out meters to the windward side of the sails bringing the boat into balance, which means the leeward hull doesn’t have to provide so much lifting force and isn’t pushed into the water so much. The hulls can be much racier than catamarans therefore. Usually these thinner outer hulls (amas) often don’t have any accomodation or it is more restricted, although a few have recently changed this. Neel we mentioned before & Hansteiger (if you own a large company or a small country) are perhaps the best known examples.
They are typically 1.5 – 2 times the width of catamarans, which is why the folding ones (see Corsair) are so popular, otherwise marina fees are enourmous
Our designs have a huge number of innovations which would not be possible without influences from the bridges of Isambard Kingdom Brunel & the teams in past & present Americas Cup & Sail GP competitions to the sheer awesomeness of Christian von Koenigsegg. It would not be possible without supportive relationships from factories or modern-day low-power chips & the work of dozens of experts sharing content on the internet, CAD package developers & CAM makers.
We aren’t ready to reveal too much yet, but combined we think it will bring trimarans into the mainstream and performance cruising world marketplace. It won’t look like the one below 🙂