Literature

[C Whitford]

Hi everyone,

Can anyone recommend essential reading and/or useful literature?

I have a long term plan (20 years) to design and build a wooden catamaran large enough for my wife and I to live in.

At this stage have little to no knowledge of how to design the vessel.
I have many years experiance as a bench joiner and am now a structural engineer so I have good knowledge of timber and a reasonable level of techincal understanding.

Literature with units in SI (metric) would be useful.

[Stephen Ditmore]

The book by Lars Larsson & Rolf Eliason is good, but doesn't have much on multihulls:
http://books.boatdesign.net/yacht_de...071353933.html

[Trevlyns]

Chris White's The Cruising Multihull is big on ideas but not so technically orientated. BTW the book Stephen mentioned is called Principles of Yacht Design. With both these books, I've taught myself to design and am currently constructing a proa

[Stephen Ditmore]

You might enjoy these web sites:
http://www.sailingcatamarans.com/
http://www.multihull-maven.com/Cruising_considerations
http://www.multihull-maven.com/Designers/Woods_Designs
http://www.trihulls.com/
http://chief.tridarkaraider.com/

[C Whitford]

Thank you both.

Is there 'codes of practice' that layout design practices and methods? Like British Standards and Eurocodes set out design practices of building construction.

Regards
Charlie

[Stephen Ditmore]

http://www.iso.org/iso/iso_catalogue...m?commid=54258
See particularly 12215 and 12217.
I don't know where one finds the sections most applicable to multihulls (so that's a question for someone else).

Also check out http://www.wumtia.soton.ac.uk/brochu...ntBrochure.pdf

A French composites engineer with a strong multihull track record is Alan Cattelliot:
http://www.k-challenge.org/team.php?...el=id&value=87
He was with Multiplast, but I don't see his name & photo on their website anymore.

You might want to have a look at articles by John Shuttleworth:
http://www.john-shuttleworth.com/Articles.html

And if you want to see the latest in racing cats:
http://www.usaca.info/links/links_files/links2.htm

[C Whitford]

Thats great Stephen, thanks

[Guillermo]

Originally Posted by Stephen Ditmore

I don't know where one finds the sections most applicable to multihulls

ISO 12217-7 is the part devoted to multihulls, but still under development.

http://www.iso.org/iso/iso_catalogue...csnumber=37475

Cheers.