New range of Tony Grainger Trimarans

An interesting note posted in Tony Grainger's news section

http://www.rocketfactorytrimarans.com/2014/03/24/raw30-and-airplay-trimarans/

"We have formally instructed Hudsons Yacht and Marine to cease all manufacture of structural components and withhold sales of the RAW30 and other Airplay trimaran yachts, subject to Hudsons putting in place a rigorous quality assurance program to protect the interests of their owners and their own long term reputation as a quality builder. We hope to be able to announce very soon that this instruction has been lifted and that Hudsons are once again producing yachts of the highest standard."

Tony Grainger 24th March 2014

 

whats he smoking?

 

^^ I've no idea what it's about as the prototype RAW30 looks excellent construction wise from what the photos I've seen. Hope it gets resolved quickly though as these boats look great and the performance results have been impressive so far.

 

Tony Grainger has been exploring some foiling ideas of late with his foil assist designs for the Rocket Factory trimarans. There are some postings on his trimaran news section on foil assist and float foils that are interesting.

http://www.rocketfactorytrimarans.com/trimaran-news/

 

Foils for trimarans

Thanks, Corley-I've seen that foil idea someplace else-but don't remember where. Sort of like DSS for multihulls?
The thing is the uptip type "L" foils being used by the GC32 have no parasitic drag, no moving parts(no, wand, no flap) and a refined foil design that allows full flight with excellent altitude control with virtually no foil rake adjustment required. And you get vertical lift and lateralresistance in the same foil , so on a tri no more center daggerboard(unless my system for oversquare tri's works out). The GC32 and Flying Phantom foils are in a whole other world from the pioneers like TNZ. Those guys with the Exocet tri have a lot of potential if their foils are well designed as the GC32. At any rate, the uptip "L" foil is the breakthru foil for cats and tri's, in my opinion, and there will be some really cool tri designs popping up sooner as opposed to later.

 

The Airplay RAW30 will be on display at the International Multihull Boat Show in La Grande Motte from April 23rd to the 27th.

 

The Scoundel 22 and Rascal 25 trimarans will be available as a flat panel kit soon.

http://www.rocketfactorytrimarans.c...r-rocket-factory-22-scoundrel-available-soon/

 

The crew from Prosail Asia were responsible for putting the Airplay RAW30 on display at La Grande Motte, they have written up a nice review of the show and what was on display:

http://pub.lucidpress.com/LaGrandeMotte/

 

An update on the build progress of the soon to be launched "Sports" model of the RAW30 which integrates a rear berth and some cruising comforts.

http://pub.lucidpress.com/GoodSports/

 

"Fuel 30" by Tony Grainger:

click for much better view--

 

Lately there has been some details of a 36' Raw folding trimaran concept added to the site. It seems it would need a wide load permit to be transported by road but the concept is more geared to reduce the amount of space the boat occupies in a marina berth.

http://www.rocketfactorytrimarans.com/rockets/about-rockets/concepts/

 

How do you fold it, due to bouyancy you most likely have to winch the hull in.
Its not a corsair 24

 

It doesn't specify on the link, do you have to winch in the floats on an F39 trimaran? Honest question I'm not sure but it's an obvious comparison.

 

Just Multihulls are the Australian Distributor of the Airplay trimaran range.

http://www.justmultihulls.com.au/

 

With regard to the folding mechanism for the F39 trimaran Ian Farrier states:

"Folding is by using electro-mechanical actuators
and can be done from the cockpit without any need
to detach mast stays."

Presumably, avoiding the need to detach mast stays implies that the geometry is such that the distance between stay end attachments remains constant, or nearly constant, as the floats fold in.

I don't think that all that many of these boats have been launched and they are built by various different builders so I wonder how many of them, if any, actually have such a sophisticated folding system. It sounds complicated, but it would certainly look rather flash to motor towards a narrow marina berth then casually flick a switch to fold up the 12m long trimaran!