The Future of Formula 40 Trimarans

Discussion in 'Multihulls' started by Skip JayR, Sep 8, 2015.

  1. Doug Lord
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    Doug Lord Flight Ready

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    I don't know, Brian. I'll see what I can find out.

    UPDATE- http://trimarancool.blogspot.com/2009/10/adrenalin-is-pumping-again.html She raced until she won so many times that the rule was changed so only cats could race in Formula 40!!
     
  2. rogerf
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    rogerf Junior Member

  3. Corley
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    Corley epoxy coated

    That's the advantage of a relatively small trimaran even if square sure a 40' beam is pretty wide but not wildly larger than many larger cats out there. I plan to keep mine on a protected double ended mooring during the season and hauled out for winter on a trolley. It's pretty shallow on the mooring so our rudder will be retractable so we can take the ground when needed.

    An ORMA60 is a far greater logistical challenge to manage. A folding 40' trimaran isn't that hard to imagine afterall there is already the Farrier F39 which will fold even if not down to trailerable width. An F39 is somewhat of a heavier and bulkier trimaran than a skinny F40 though.
     
  4. Stumble
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    Stumble Senior Member

    I could pretty easily see a container-able 40' Tri class being very successful. Big enough to excite the crowd, small enough to contain the budget. The major limitations I see however would be that cost needs to play a part in the class.

    1) To build a tri this size you almost have to use carbon fiber, but a restriction on UHM-CF would be in order.

    2) The cost of titanium is coming down pretty quickly, but restricting to G2 or G5 would prevent the arms race into aerospace alloys that are still insanely expensive.

    3) The ability to pack them into shipping containers makes moving and storing them cheap and easy. Without this the boats are too small to want to travel around the world on their hulls.

    4) The problem with making them demountable is that it encourages modularity. So for a bouy race you could bolt on one set of floats, then switch to another for ocean racings. Or swap them based on forecaster weather conditions. So one set of floats per main hull a year, unless there is damage.


    Finally there is a real threat from a 40' Cat class. As Cats move to ocean foiling it becomes harder and harder to see the advantage of the Tri. Think of the Gunboat G4 for instance. A ocean spanning 40' foiling Cat is now within reach of someone with a $1 million budget. How far are big trio's from being able to make the same claim.
     
  5. Corley
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    Corley epoxy coated

    Lets see some real results from the Gunboat G4 before getting too excited about foiling ocean going cats. It has reasonable performance but isn't really that impressive compared to dedicated racing boats. Remember they targeted F40 type performance so we are not really seeing a new benchmark and on some angles the boat is really quite slow. A dedicated and lightweight F40 type trimaran would be much faster overall.
     
  6. Skip JayR
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    Skip JayR Tri Enthusiast

    The Radicality concept of Trimaran Adrenaline...

    The plans had been realized in 1988 by Frére Gougeon building the boat with the West System (what else :) ) ...

    ... and the boat started as U2 to race in Europe from April till August 1988 during a Grand Prix series in Brest (2nd), Plymouth (1st), Boulogne (2nd), GP Torbole (4th), Marseille (6th) and Séte (4th)...

    ... and ended its European acitvities in October with the "Voiles et Voiliers".

    [​IMG]

    In same year it took part in the European "Challenge F40" and was placed 5th position overall.

    The boat got big media interests in French print press with some spectacularly "nose diving" pictures... and might have inspired heavily the French designers...

    Following year in 1989 the boat was to be expected for 7 events within the Euorpean circuit.

    Winning 1909 in Miami Beach as consequence Adrenaline was excluded from US circuit F40 which was reserved solely for Catamarans.

    Provocatively question:
    Was this exclusion already the beginning of the end of F40 Trimarans ? Did the radicality of Tri Adrenaline had a negative side effect, a kind of death blow ?? E.g. as reaction the French turned away and started to build their own world of Trimarans to have an own identity.

    [​IMG]

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    [​IMG]

    [​IMG]

    [​IMG]
     
  7. Skip JayR
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    Skip JayR Tri Enthusiast

    you have been quicker than me, rogerf.

    It is on my to-do-list, and I wanted present here a kind of summary and some critical questions derivating from Tony's analysis. As it does not make sense, we throw here around with tons of links, othewise we end again in nothing without any constructively results.

    I appreciate it, that one of the bigger designers - who has an excellent image for his speedy winner boats in "down under" - has some similarly thoughts as I had, and why I setup this thread.
     
  8. Skip JayR
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    Skip JayR Tri Enthusiast

    Clearly I dont want talk here about in the same way as what I have seen 20 years ago as nonsense as a very confusing mix... which only will provoke conflicts and new problems.

    It was a very foolishness of the activists that time (since 1985/1986 till 2001-2002)... and same it would be very foolish nowadays to think, that Formula 40 Catamaran can be compared with Formula 40 Trimaran. - It would be like comparing "apples" with "pears". No, it does not make sense, and its not possible to compare cats with tris. Two different worlds of boats.

    This thread is for F40 Tris = Formula 40 Trimarans.

    I dont care about Catamarans. Shall the cat sailors think on their own about the future of catamarans :) ... and may they be happy with their own foiling two-hull boats. For professoinal sailors its something different, they sail, what the sponsor pays them... and they jump around on Cat trampolins or Trimaran Trampolins because they have a living from like Frank Cammas (Groupama Sailing Team) is doing.

    I have watched the "Little America's Cup" last weekend. Beautiful pictures of the foiling cats.... and very interesting to learn from if there might be something which can be transferred to Trimarans to make them faster.

    Yes, Trimaran sailors can be inspired from the foiling scene... but thats all. Gitana Team is doing very well here within their tests of foil-assisted Trimarans (MOD70).
     
  9. CT249
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    CT249 Senior Member

    A few people in the thread seem to be saying that a revived F40 class would be a success - why is that so? The class got sponsorship, got publicity, got numbers - and then died.

    Why would the revived F40 class be any different? After all, sadly sailing in general and multi racing in particular is less popular now than it was when the F40 class was formed - why would the F40 succeed again when it failed in times that were generally more prosperous for sailing as a whole and for pro sailing and multis specifically?

    EDIT - the Tony Grainger article proposes a very good approach IMHO. It looks for reasons of the success of the Class 40 monos and the failure of the Open 50 and then uses the lessons of the Class 40. A cheap, seaworthy development class for offshore racing could be lots of fun.
     
  10. Corley
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    Corley epoxy coated

    I don't know that Tony's approach will achieve much support. Ocean racing is expensive, not many people want to do it and there is a also a general preference for trailerable multihulls and round the buoy racing. Could it gain some traction in France? Maybe but for the rest of the world it's a tough sell and the owners would want to be well cashed up indeed to build and campaign such a craft.

    Could it get up as a professional class? Perhaps but it has to be driven by the sailors and sponsors. Realistically why would they want to switch from Class 40's? It's an established class with a solid fleet and the Multi50's are already seen somewhat as a viable alternative multihull option.

    I note in his article that he doesn't attempt to target a price point for his 40'er so don't fool yourself it will be expensive even if the use of exotic composites is limited. How enthused would potential private buyers be if there was a 400k - 500k price tag attached to entering the fleet?
     
  11. powerabout
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    powerabout Senior Member

    The problem is rich guys cant sail multi's and therefore wont buy them.
    It was corporate france that pushed it for a few years.
     
  12. rogerf
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    rogerf Junior Member

    Exactly Corley, sailing is expensive and (generally) racers want to race against other racers. So the sport is dictated by the market.
     
  13. CT249
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    CT249 Senior Member

    Agree with a lot of that - it's just that I was trying to be positive because (as my previous posts may have indicated) it seems that there is no chance of reviving the old style of inshore F40, so I was looking at a different slant.

    Many of your points are of course very good, but don't they apply to an "inshore-style" development F40 revival as well? If you are only doing short races, why bother with a 40 footer at all? Why even bother with a 30 footer? It's interesting to see the mono sportsboats have been shifting from 25-32 footers down towards 20 footers. It seems that people have realised that if you can't do long races or go cruising, a bigger boat isn't worth the huge extra cost.

    From mono experience, the shift from 40 to 50 is pretty vast - in the heyday of offshore racing they tended to attract quite different owners.

    I watched some Decision 35s and Marstrom 32s race a couple of weeks ago. I'm biased but the Tornado that was chasing them looked like giving much the same sort of thrill at vastly lower cost! Given the cost of the 40s, and the issues that multis are having with generating strong fleets, the Grainger approach could be worth considering.

    Personally, I'd reckon a budget 30 or 33 with a fairly small rig and reasonable interior space could be interesting, but I'm probably in the minority and frankly wouldn't be in the market anyway.
     
  14. CT249
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    CT249 Senior Member

    Source?

    Several very "establishment" mono owners in the past have had multis and sailed them - many of them then went back to monos. One or two of them raced 60s with small crews. They seemed to be able to sail them. Another couple who have done well when owning 30-38 foot monos are also doing well in 18 foot cats, so it doesn't seem as if fairly rich mono sailors necessarily lack the skills to sail offshore multis.
     

  15. Skip JayR
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    Skip JayR Tri Enthusiast

    How looks offshore racing on a Formula 40 Trimaran

    Sailing on lakes with an expensive F40 Trimaran ??? How one can be so mad to do so and think about (in times of world recession) ?

    CT249... that would be same foolish as the guys did in the 80th... Here we have the foiling cats nowadays doing a good job to pace around and have fun for some hours.

    We talk here about offshore sailing (and racing), and mainly "long distance sailing", clearly to say.

    I have no single admiration for these mad guys who set oversized masts up to 80 feet (at a boat length of only 40 feet) just for crazy speeding around on lakes/inshore. Foolishing around like spoilt kidds to get the Adrenalin kick

    I dont have respect for millionair sons and guys like Ernesto Bertarelli, just being born into a family of billionairs... and having fun all day spending milliions out of their private pockets to finance expensive man's toys made of 100% carbon. Same is doing his sister Dona Bertarelli as owner of Spindrift Racing Team (running a multihull racing fleet: Diam 24, Mod 70, GC32, D35 and Maxi-Trimaran). I dont have respect for these folks as they never did work and never had to work for bread & butter.

    So Lets be seriously and realistically: a 40 Footer with 60-65 Foot mast (rotating wing carbon mast) + Bow sprit and some tuning elements (foil assisted daggerbords, T-rudder) is what we want see on a 40 Footer and makes sense... enough sail power for safely racing offshore (still following the security standards of IMO/SOLAS).

    Let stop to spin around like crazy mad people who can throw their money freshly printed out of the window for sail fun. And more seriously start to calculate what a realistically investment can give back to the owner and its crew on a (financially) well balanced trimaran at the size of F40.

    To give an excellently example of our days !! As it is not theory what I am talking about. - Maybe some of the crazy folks here come back down to earth what we natural sailor (I count myself as such) target at watching following video.

    Couple of days ago the Formula 40 Trimaran Spirit (which was refitted during 2014-2015 and came back into the water in July 2015) won a 579 nautical miles regatta, "short distance" from Australia to Indonesia: Darwin to Ambon Race
    [​IMG]

    Here the beautifully edited video uploaded on Monday. - Tks to Jason, the owner of Spirit. - Lean back, enjoy it and start to dream you can experience this one day on a Formula 40 Footer with three hulls...
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gpY9xwa-Qy4


    Thats it what F40 Trimarans still can deliver... lots of fun, pleasure and most: stress free sailing and winning against the big monohulls. - Or can you do burger grilling, hair shaving and sun bathing on an 80 foot monohull where the whole crew steadily has to hike (and eat dry food) ?

    It is smart sailing and racing ! :) The whole crew of Spirit did know what they were doing. All highly motivated but same very relaxed mood. Thats what one can experience on a Formula 40 Tri in good shape.

    All those "rich owners" who think, that they need the kick on the regatta circuit, shall invest into a brand new monohull racer TP52, a well organized one design class very successfully. Most of the boat owners there are around 50 or elder, have some millions on the bank account and need the kick in the *** to feel alive and as a real man... spending huge money with big crew every year. So it shall be but not very smart sailing in my understanding as it eats huge ressources (e.g. a Formula 40 trimaran you can sail two handed easily).
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mYKTXsRLY9Y
     
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