[PUP] EarthRace high speed passagemaker leaving on world tour

[Brian Chiko]

Georgs,

Certainly "comfort, safety, style, and adequate space" are important factors
- but people do use sailboats - and they are well known to lack in comfort
and space (style is likely a personal issue, and "safety" is an open issue.
Obviously there is a significant portion of the market that may sacrifice
some of those for other areas.  In fact, comfort and safety may be enhanced
in these thin trimaran designs - with less time on an ocean crossing, you're
less likely to run into bad weather. With some level of wave piercing, you
have a smoother ride and more comfort.

Also - on the space and style issue - it seems that boat designers are
overcoming this problem by taking the best of the trimaran speed features
and more spaceous monohull designs - here are two designs - one yacht that
has taken the trimaran design - and one military boat that could be the
template for a consumer design that combines the best of both fast trimarans
and more spaceous traditional hull designs:

http://www.eastcoastyachtfinishing.com.au/white_rabbit.html

http://tinyurl.com/l75y7

Why couldn't you have passagemaker designs similar to these boats - but
smaller?

Brian

-----Original Message-----
From: passagemaking-under-power-bounces@lists.samurai.com
[mailto:passagemaking-under-power-bounces@lists.samurai.com] On Behalf Of
Georgs Kolesnikovs
Sent: Wednesday, July 05, 2006 5:13 AM
To: Passagemaking Under Power List
Subject: Re: [PUP] EarthRace high speed passagemaker leaving on world tour

Brian Chiko wrote:
>It seems increasingly that for the best performance/speed/efficiency -
these
>new trimaran designs may be the future of passagemaking.

Personally, with my background in sailing trimarans and interest in 
power cats, I'd love to see power trimarans find a market, but 
performance/speed/efficiency is not the entire equation. There is 
also comfort, safety and style, and adequate space for machinery and 
all the stuff people love to have aboard when voyaging, and lots of 
space for living and relaxing on the dock or at sea.

>Its just leaving New Zealand now on a preliminary fund-raising
>circumnavigation prior to then attempting a world speed record.
>http://www.earthrace.net/view.asp?webpage=69

That is an unbelievable schedule. Will they really get to Hawaii from 
New Zealand in the next 10 days? Will they really transit the Great 
Lakes in October and November?

Don't get me wrong. The Earthrace project is one of the most exciting 
things to appear on the boating scene in years, but . . .