beach catamaran hull plans

I'm looking for a set of plans for a beach cat, I'm thinking 16 foot as in the F16 class or maybe if I can keep it light enough using A class hulls at 18 feet. I've been to the F16 forum and saw that at one time there was a ply version and that would be just great, though I can strip it in either cedar or foam as are the other methods. I had just not had any response back from the F16 forum.

I'm looking for symmetric hulls using a dagger board .....
So are all I've seen is Richard Wood's low aspect keel Quattro16 and Bernd's asymmetric Duo480. Both have feature I'd not want to use.

Duo 480
http://www.ikarus342000.com/DUO480page.htm

Quattro 16
http://www.sailingcatamarans.com/

I plan on using this for the Ultimate Florida Challenge (using the original no boat swap rule) so it has considerable design features that need to be incorporated so there will be changes to the design such as a flat top for the hulls, hatches for ALL storage, etc.

There's more A class development here in the States, but I like the size of the F16, and these are modern designs so it would be nice if I could adapt these hulls for my use.

below are pics of all 4 boats I've mentioned:
btw, that first pic of the F16 on the grass I really like!

 

A mosquito catamaran would fit what your after the club association can send out a plans package and the beams are square section aluminium. The hulls are symmetric and have daggerboards and trapeze built to plan from ply they look similar to the first picture you posted. They have a bit of carrying capacity and are generally sailed one up with a cat rig or two up as a sloop rig. The class has also adopted a spinnaker for the one up configuration. Ply boats are slightly off the pace of the foam sandwich constructed boats but not much if kept light.

http://www.theracingcat.com/index.php?page=vic

 

Have you ever thought of shrinking a Tornado hull. The original Tornado was tortured ply. I don't know what it would take but you might just get the Tornado plans (available on the internet) and just scale them down to 16 or 17 feet. I suppose the less you shrink them the better chance you have. If you used some baltic birch plywood it might not be too expensive to experiment. Tornado's have much more displacement than other similar designs.

 

upchurchmr, that is an interesting idea. I don't know if I saw any plans available but one if I remember correctly, but it was in russian ...... I'll have to look some more, this could be an option!

this is a Taipan F16, it has lots of what I'm looking for especially a flat deck for my folding system.
I photoshopped out the mast, sails, bloke to help with the look of the boat features.
Note the black center platform area. That is a hard deck to which the folding system will attach.

 

I checked these guys out but haven't contacted them. This is an older design still in the F16 class. Don't think I really need the new wave piercing bows but I put them on my second model just to have a look see. "Typical old style" would suit my design better, but that anti pitchpole design looks sweet! And maybe save my butt? Though I don't want to sail that hiked out at anytime with this boat, it's an expedition racing boat, besides with this free standing biplane rig there no place for trap wires to hang from. Because of this I want to extend the beam. The mossie in stock class form is a very narrow boat. I'd be changing that!

 

I did not buy the plan package but I've owned a few mosquito's they are quite narrow in beam but I'm quite heavy and so were the boats and rarely needed to trap and sitting on the high side was enough. If you build a foam sandwich boat you are trapping quite regularly due to the lightweight of the boat. There are two sets of plans in the plan package the early boats like I owned were tortured ply and a lot like a scaled down tornado in shape. I also had a solid fibreglass mozzie that weighed a ton and was totally unburstable I glued a bronze beaching strip on the thing and used to sail it up onto the beach at top speed. Had a stack of fun on that boat but way too heavy to race competitively.

My favourite little boat so far has been my supernova trimaran it's a bit like a weta about 15ft long with a 12ft beam and low buoyancy floats the thing sails like a super fine dinghy with really good light air performance and due to the beam design you have a comfy cockpit to stick your legs in I could imagine going long distances in this boat in comfort and it has a surprising amount of carrying capacity. The beauty of the low volume floats is the boat gives you lots of feedback when sailing if you start burying a float hike if you dont the float buries without any sign of the boat tripping you pretty much just slow down to a crawl.

The only time I've ever capsized the boat was when I first got it. The floats are a hollow shell without any bulkheads the bung had failed on one of the floats and it gradually filled with water, when I tacked the boat fell over very slowly it was a surreal experience my wife said "should it do that" and I said "ahhh no!". New bungs and no further problems. It was easy to right by the way just swim around and pull the centreboard out stand on the float lean on the centreboard and up she comes.

 

Blade F16

Dennis, you can order "plans" for building the Blade F16 here:
Phil Brander--- bladecatamarans@gmail.com
They're not actually plans in the traditional sence, as I understand it-more like section patterns and instructions.

a pictorial on the process:

http://www.thebeachcats.com/pictures/?g2_itemId=11955

 

And now for something completely different,

http://www.surteesmultihulls.com/5m-folding-catamaran

 

Bat Cat

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I like that!

 

That surely is different! I do like his hulls though ..... He might like to try folding his cat the way I'm doing it? Actually the Bat Cat I've seen way back and partly inspired me to do what I'm doing. The center pod idea and my center hard deck are similar sort of.

 

thanks Doug! I'll be giving him an email shortly.

as for the assembly pics, are they really steaming the whole hull? I gather I'll have to get a bigger boiler, my metal 5 gallon can isn't gonna be big enough for this! This method of ply looks like a pain and I think I like the foam strip idea instead.

Doug, maybe you can shed some light on this? The trend now is symmetric hulls and boards vs the asymmetric hulls of the hobie/prindle early designs. Why is that? I'm going going with the trend because thats the way the development has gone. I got two sets of old beat up prindle 16 hulls that I'm gonna use as my 1:1 model and proof of concept boat.

 

here's a model of what I want my boat to do.

 

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Lower wetted surface of symmetrical semi-circular hulls(or close thereto) and because designers want the lateral resistance to be developed by efficient high aspect foils instead of asy hulls....
neat vid-don't know how accurate the model hulls are but try to get the L/B of the hulls at least 10/1 preferably significantly skinnier( 12-14-1 or so)

 

I was going off the prindle16 for dimensions and at the deck it's 1.5' wide, so with both hulls folded in that gives me 3 feet, a maximum width for portaging and getting thru tight river sections.

This is why I want to go with a known hull design and I'll adapt from there. I also have an idea of stretching out the beam quite a bit, from 8' to 10' for a couple of reasons, the biggest is being for stability, combined with the lower masts of the biplane rig I should be able to keep her from wanting to pitch me over in the middle of the night when I'm trying to stay awake after endless hours .........

 

I got an email back from the Blade guy and says he thinks the hulls may not have the volume I'd be needing. I asked him for the width and height of the hulls. Maybe I could modify them for a bit extra height? His plans were for tortured ply but I'm still thinking that foam core would be easier especially if I modify the plans or any plans. Really all I'd need are the offsets as I know that there's one guy that I communicated with doing it as a cedar strip build. I could do it that way as well as I'm gearing up for that kind of building anyway. ...... Still looking .......