Trimaran help !?

[Guardian]

Hi all I am new here so be gentle But I have designed and but a few boats, just small fresh water flat bottom bass-style boats, But I have always wanted a trimaran. The one from Waterworld finally set the hook and reeled me in sorta speak . I was thinking some thing 60' LAO, and 85' tall, and about 30' wide. I want to use my own plans, but I know nothing on how to building/designing a big ol tri, any help ? any books or boat shops willing to take on an apprentice learner ? ( I live in Sarasota, Fl). I love the whole collapsable mast thing, and the steering handles on the steering column on the boat. Does any one know who made/makes the boat they used for Waterworld trimaran ? I also wanted to equip mine with the automatic ( with a flick of a lever) sail unflurring. Thanks for any help in advanced,

Thanks,

-Mike

[SailDesign]

THe hull was deisgned by Marc van Peteghem and Vincent Lauriot-Prevost, two of the best multihull designers out there.
Most of the rest was Special FX. The actual sailing of the boat was done down below while Kevin Costner played around on the above-deck toys (which were not actually connected to any controls )
Fun concepts. though....

[Guardian]

The controls didn't work ?! Thats so wrong, well now i get to go and design working controls for it. How possible would it be to actually have a collasping main mast and extending sail ? Are they any cross sectoins or dimensional views of the waterworld trimaran ? this is going to be a fun proect....

[SailDesign]

Mike,
You might want to give the designers a buzz.
THeir website is at

http://www.mvpvlp.com/index_flash.html

Steve

[Guardian]

Thanks for the site Steve , I will be sure to check it out. This is going to be fun to design, any books you could suggest for designing trimarans ? or other reference material ?

I will be sure to post progress as this project unfolds,

Thanks
-Mike

[ra1]

I would like to design a trimaran at some point so your project interests me. I come from a modeling background but I have no experience designing boats. Right now I am trying to modify a flying dutchman to a trimaran to get some practical experience on a smaller scale.
I am interested in a collaboration if possible and an update on your design progress.
Thanks,
Radu

[SailDesign]

Guardian,
One of the better ways to begin, as with all design, is to go to a boatyard and study the subject. Where are the masts located on typical multis? Where are the daggerboards/whatever in relation to the mast? Id there a formula you can conceive for mast height vs total beam? Look at section shapes, foil shapes and sizes, rig shapes and sizes, and so on. Then try looking in your local library for books. Most will cover only monhull design, but the principles are the same, and if you have done your "yard-work" properly, you'll be all set.
Enjoy the homework.

Steve

[brian eiland]

Originally Posted by Guardian

Hi all I am new here so be gentle But I have designed and but a few boats, just small fresh water flat bottom bass-style boats, But I have always wanted a trimaran. The one from Waterworld finally set the hook and reeled me in sorta speak . I was thinking some thing 60' LAO, and 85' tall, and about 30' wide. I want to use my own plans, but I know nothing on how to building/designing a big ol tri, any help ? any books or boat shops willing to take on an apprentice learner ? ( I live in Sarasota, Fl). I love the whole collapsable mast thing, and the steering handles on the steering column on the boat. Does any one know who made/makes the boat they used for Waterworld trimaran ? I also wanted to equip mine with the automatic ( with a flick of a lever) sail unflurring. Thanks for any help in advanced,

Thanks,

-Mike

Hi Mike,
I use to come to Sarasota quite often when I dealt with Stiletto catamarans quite a number of years ago. I still have several good friends who live there that I haven't visited in quite a while.

Why don't you have a look at a sailing rig I purpose on my website, a single-masted ketch. This rig would be all roller furling and would work quite well on a Tri. Stay away from collapsable mast at this size vessel.

[Guardian]

I have a marina a few miles from my house, along with Donzi MFG., WellCraft, and Chris Craft with in miles of each other. The hull design shouldn't be to big of a problem, the the whole rigging thing that makes me twitch ! I dont want a conventional "steering wheel" for my boat something a little more exotic. Is there any way to obtain croos sectional views of the Trimaran designed by Marc van Peteghem and Vincent Lauriot-Prevost ? If I had that Then I could go from there , as far a relative location for all the "stuff", a.k.a. the main mast, sponsons, rigging, etc...

[tspeer]

Instead of modifying a Flying Dutchman, you might look for a used beach catamaran and convert that to a trimaran.

The whole point of mulithulls is they allow you to use narrow hulls that have no form stability of their own. This reduces the wave drag and makes up for the extra wetted area of multiple hulls. Starting with a monohull gives you the worst of both worlds. I don't think you'll really learn much about multihulls that way.

With a beach cat, you can use the hulls as trimaran amas and make a new center hull. A 5.5m catamaran with its typical sail rig results in an almost perfect match as a half-scale model of an 11m cruising trimaran. Similar Bruce number, displacement/length, etc.

Or you can use one of the catamaran hulls as the main hull and build new amas for it. Then you'd have something like Frank Bethwaite's HPV (See his book, "High Performance Sailing").

[SailDesign]

Guardian,
You will not be able to get "cross-section" views of the hulls from MVP-VLP. THey are in the business of selling cutting-edge designs, and guard their technology carefully
Hence the "yard-work" suggestion
Steve

[PAR]

Fooling around with an old beach cat or other near spent hull to understand relationships and play with technology could be interesting, but you'll gain much more usable information and ability if you get an education. Mail order, night courses, collage, book after book on the various subjects will go a lot longer towards your goals of penning (mousing?) a design then butting your head against things you don't currently understand.

There are hundreds of books on the subject that will provide you with the tools to develop your designing skills. The same goes for building, styles, techniques, materials, etc.

If you have a load of money and are interested in learning the painful way, then you may stumble onto something meaningful, but more likely you'll learn not to do something "that" way again. I learn hard too, but there's so much for you to absorb that success will be very difficult, just using the "it looks okay" method of engineering, regardless of the observation you perform at the local marinas and boat bone yards. You may have some measure of success, but you'll not understand why, and that's the whole point.

The WaterWorld yacht is a dream, a fantasy for the eyes (or the producers pockets, depending on how you look at it) The grinder steering system seems a lot of energy to toss the helm down. I'd not like surfing down a 40' wave doing near 30 knots in a big blow and have to pump 20 full cranks into that thing, just to keep from broaching. You'd be well worn out before the storm was, then what?

An AC contender tried a kite for down wind work and gave it up for the more typical arrangement, they may work someday, but don't hold your breath waiting.

The roto sail(?) well . . . sure it's possible and I've even seen a few toys that had something similar, but do the stays go up and down with the telescoping mast or do they just unclip when the roto thingie is spinning around the mast?

How about those really stout spreaders. What was the size of those things 4" around? Could have had better control of weight and windage aloft wouldn't you say? Speaking of weight what type of material could you build a telescoping stick out of, that will yank small planes out of the sky, hold up those monster spreaders and the well caged crows nest?

Do you remember the shots of him cutting a line and a weight (rigged aloft) crashed down towards the deck, dragging him up into the rigging at high speed? How much weight does it take to snatch a 200 pound man off a deck and toss him into the rig like a stone? Try this, get your biggest anchors and fasten them to you main halyard and haul it up your stick while underway and see how your boat handles, then release the halyard and see what type of gear would be needed to stop that weight from punching a big old hole in the deck when it got there.

You could build it, but it would sail like a slug, burdened with all that stuff used to make it transform into the various types of boats and rigs.

[SailDesign]

You could build it, but it would sail like a slug, burdened with all that stuff used to make it transform into the various types of boats and rigs.

Actually, you would have to build 2.
One was set up with all the toys looking as though they worked, IIRC, for Kostner to play on, while the other was set up with dummy toys so that they could take shots of it actually sailing reasonably well.
PAR is right, though - special effects are just that. Effects.

Steve

[s v ugly sister]

Two boats were built for the movie by Jeanneau - Lagoon in france - one was the sailing version - and the second was used as the "transformer" version - these were off-the-shelf ORMA 60' trimaran racing machines with a 45' beam - the sailing version cost $910,000. f.o.b France & the transformer version cost $810,000. f.o.b. france - the hulls - connectives etc were flown to Hawaii & assembled by a French crew of technicians - & handed over to Universal for the Ugly-fication process & installation of the working & non-working props - (eg. the telescoping boom actually worked on the transformer version - while the sailing version boom is covered with sheet metal to make it look like it is a fully extended telescoping boom) - the sailing version was operated below decks in two compartments - various sheets - halyards - topping lifts etc were operated by either 2 Lewmar handcrank #66 selftailers behind line clutches - or - 2 Harken horizontal alloy electric #74.2 monsters - standing rigging was 25mm & 30mm 1x19 316ss wire with monster turnbuckles - steering was below decks forward of the mast & hydraulic - the steering pedestal that Costner operated in the cockpit area had a hydraulic pump that was plumbed into the below deck hydraulic steering lines - I think that the neatest prop was the slicer bob-stay - the hulls were constructed of divynl closed cell core with facings of glass & carbon fiber with epoxy resin vacuum bagged - lots of epoxy/micro balloon type fairing was used on all hulls - the connectives are constructed of carbon fiber / epoxy - an upper & lower "Plate" box beam structure with thin sides - the curvature to the connectives is foam/glass/epoxy sandwitch streamlining - dagger board is aft of the forward connective - for the movie the case was stubbed off & didn't go thru deck as it would have gotten in the way of below decks line handling - the aluminum stick with rotating base measures 75 feet & was garbaged-up with heavy props & a masthead over the real masthead - the massive spreaders don't do anything for me & will be removed - the whole mast system was a weight-aloft nightmare - the diesel was a volvo 4 cyl 48 hp freshwater cooled with maxi sail drive - the boat was sailed for about 5 1/2 months for the movie & the diesel hour meter shows 720 hours - - Universal shipped the sailing version to Orlando & placed it in the WATERWORLD show for about 6 years - - the boat has been pretty well beat up & was not maintained - - I bought the boat with some of the props fron King Kona Productions (Universal) in March of 2004 - will be repairing the boat & rig & using it for cruising once its done - My son & I will be getting the boat back together - we both have experience building & cruising trimarans - - - named it UGLY SISTER as it is the uglyest sister ship of this design - - - Dale Miami

[sharpii2]

Originally Posted by Guardian

Hi all I am new here so be gentle But I have designed and but a few boats, just small fresh water flat bottom bass-style boats, But I have always wanted a trimaran. The one from Waterworld finally set the hook and reeled me in sorta speak . I was thinking some thing 60' LAO, and 85' tall, and about 30' wide. I want to use my own plans, but I know nothing on how to building/designing a big ol tri, any help ? any books or boat shops willing to take on an apprentice learner ? ( I live in Sarasota, Fl). I love the whole collapsable mast thing, and the steering handles on the steering column on the boat. Does any one know who made/makes the boat they used for Waterworld trimaran ? I also wanted to equip mine with the automatic ( with a flick of a lever) sail unflurring. Thanks for any help in advanced,

Thanks,

-Mike

Hi
Thomas Firth Jones has the best, most succinct rules of trimaran design. They are in his book BOATS TO GO formerly titled LOW RESISTANCE BOATS by International Marine Publishing (use your search engine). Once you read his chapters on multi hull in general, and trimaran in particular, you will probably find that: A.) Your 30ft beam is too narrow (40-50ft beam is more likely), and B.) Weight is the number one enemy of trimaran design. For this reason, anything that adds wieght and/or complexity is to be avoided like the plague.
The magic you see in hollywood is just that. A telescoping mast would wiegh many times more than a standard aluminum extrusion. The main reason being that it would probably be filled with hydraulic fluid. It possibly could be filled with pressurized air, but then you would need an air compresser running constantly to keep it extended. and the stays and shrouds would be all over the place (like downed powerlines) just waiting for the unwarry to snag and trip on, when the mast was retracted.
The sail furling technology does exist. It adds weight, cost, and complexity. However, if you have a big enough wallet, it may be possible. This is because of the large size of boat you are cosidering. A sixty footer could have (according to Thom's calculations) a displacement of up to 32,000 lbs. For average cruising needs, you would probably need a small fraction of that for stores. The rest of the displacement (that not taken up by hull and connecter structure) could be used for all theses gizmos. The boat you would end up with would be nowhere near as fast as the one in "Water World", but it would probably be able to reach speeds of around 17 knots (about as fast as a simularly long high performance cruising monohull).
All in all, it would be a very interesting boat.
Please read Thom's book and leaern the bare bone basics.
sharpii