M-Hull, M hull, M Ship

[D'ARTOIS]

If you want to enter the military & ordnance market you are faced with all the nightmares you can dream of.
Even if you land a contract, specifically from US agencies, the question may arise: "how do we get paid and when?"
We were some time ago involved in a new low-cost but highly efficient project that almost died because of the non-availability of money. High rank officers in Navy & Coastguard like to see large surface vessels with a lot of armament and other gadgets, some necessary some not.
The efficiency topic is not very wellcome in whatever navy/coastguard.
Specifically when politicians are mixing themselves in deals and contracts - every shipyard producing navy- and other governmental craft are dealing with this problem but there is very little they can do next to loosing their business.
If you come with a crazy, dollarcrushing, non-executable project, you might find some willing ear. Like the proposed M-Ship. Where is it good for? Multihulls - powered ones - are only good on flat waters. Any naval archtect with pravctical experience can tell you that. Yoy know it, I know it, but countless bureaucrats inventing new ideas are easily attracted to step in traps of development companies, who found the gates open when they were accompanied by well-informed politicians. In our office there is a small sign that says: the difference between an admiral and a boy is the price of his toy....

[brian eiland]

Originally Posted by D'ARTOIS

Multihulls - powered ones - are only good on flat waters. Any naval archtect with pravctical experience can tell you that.

I think the fellows at INCAT, and quite a few others might have quite a disagreement with you on that subject.

In our office there is a small sign that says: the difference between an admiral and a boy is the price of his toy....

.....but not much disagreement on that sign

[D'ARTOIS]

Ask the people from the Seacat, when it blows a bit......

[Ilan Voyager]

Originally Posted by D'ARTOIS

Ask the people from the Seacat, when it blows a bit......

Of what Seacat are talking about? the Incat built ferry or the small pleasure power cat?

[D'ARTOIS]

The ferry between the UK and France an HvH-Dover. After seastate 6 it's over.
But that might be the result of the design. My criticism has nothing to do with the sailing multhulls, they have proved themself multiple times, my remarks were mostly pointed at selling the Government useless hardware that looks principally good but fails at the hard test. And I failed to take in account that we are used to notrhern-atlantic circumstances where a high powered multihull doesn't particularly excel.
We have tried once to power up an offshore 1 cat hull at 25 knots of wind outside IJmuiden on the North Sea.
We couldn'get up to 40 knots and hit a wave that broke almost one engine of it's foundation, from that day on I had very little sympathy for powered cathulls.
A fact is that in offshore racing the teams had mostly a cat for flat water and a monohulle for windy conditions.
Different is the tri-configuration. Irens designed once a beautiful fast powertri
that could go under all circumstances..
Groupe Fino designde lately certain tri configurations that can go in safety at high speed.
Now they wpould like to try if they can find a market for their wavepiercer application in commercial shipping, that means not in passenger traffic but in ro-ro traffic. If it comes to realisation of that prospect, we might supply the gasturbines.
This is more or less what I had in mind when I saw the M-hull with the large cavitational area......