Team Philips Catamaran

But designer Adrian Thompson confirmed a BBC report that the fault has been traced to a failure in the bonding between different materials.

A weight-bearing carbon strip in the hull structure was not bonding correctly with its honeycomb paper core.

 

I was lucky enough to attend the naming ceremony of Team phillips along with HRH the Queen - it was a fabulous boat - and I like many others were gutted when it collapsed. To the best of my knowledge it was a problem with the bonding between layers in the hull. Possibly due to incorrect curing techniques or some incompatibilities in the resins. The wave piercing design of the hulls was not particularly new and has been used on high speed miliatary powerboats (mainly for the special forces) for years without failures.

 

I didn't know that A. Thompson designed submarines but I do know that he works with PARANGON, a designers office of fast boats.

I remember that almost all the sailing multihulls designs by Thompson have been ill fated. They had in common to be very "innovative", very light, and to have been destroyed by structural failure.

High Tech composites need a lot of rigor and craftmanship. The visit of a shipyard like Multiplast (Vannes, France) which is one of the best of the world is impressive. The experience and expertise of the design team headed by Gilles Ollier is also very impressive.

If you cannot build a high tech composite cat in a good shipyard with controlled environment, it's better to stop the project.

I think that the loss of this cat is the result of a mix of engineering and building problems.

SWATH or wave piercing are mature technics in fast ferry cats. However these cats are strongly built and most of them beneficiates of dynamic stabilisation devices driven by computer which minimizes the stresses.