Weta Trimaran-Sailing Worlds Best Dinghy

Congratulations to the WETA development team-the boat has just been named Sailing Worlds Best Dinghy in the 2010 Boat of the Year Awards!

http://www.sailweta.com/

Specifications of the WETA trimaran

Length (LOA) 4.4 m ~ 14.4 ft
Beam – rigged 3.5 m ~ 11.5 ft
Beam – on trailer 1.7 m ~ 5.6 ft
Weight – main hull 60 kg ~ 132 lbs
Weight – float w/ beam frame 18 kg ~ 40 lbs
Weight – rigged, total Approx. 100 kg ~ 220 lbs
Sail area – main 8.3 m2 ~ 89.4 ft2
Sail area – jib 3.2 m2 ~ 34.5 ft2
Sail area – gennaker 8.0 m2 ~ 86.1 ft2


MATERIALS

Main hull / Float hulls Fibreglass / Foam
Beam frame Carbon
Mast / Prod Carbon
Rudder stock Dotan kick-up rudder more info »
Rudder foil / Centreboard Fibreglass
Hardware Harken
Sails Gaastra


PERFORMANCE

Top recorded speed 18 knots
Rigging time ~ 20 minutes
Crew capacity 200 kg ~ 440 lbs

 

We've got one of these at our club, it's not the fastest boat by any means but the guy seems to have a lot of fun with it and takes the kids out regularly which I guess is exactly what it was designed for.

 

Weta Marine

It's going to be a real blast to see the next boat from this company-and there will be one sooner or later!

http://www.wetamarine.com/

 

Do recognize that this boat is a simple, nicely thought-out, solution for a variety of sailing interests. The design stands as a tribute to solving problems through effective conceptual design, rather than an overhwleming need to heap piles of uber-tech on the boat in order to make it relevant.

No canting keels, no flying foils, no flying ballast boxes with battery systems that are asking to fail, no park benches... just a really nice boat that scoots along dependably and can be righted easily by the Average Joe.

How beautiful can it get?

 

Not from Weta, but there already is a next boat within this genre. I give you the Collage... http://www.lunadadesign.com/collage.html

The first example of this boat is just about to get underway in New Zealand. You'll be able to follow the build on either my site, or a dedicated blog will appear to document the construction.

 

Yeah the Weta is a great boat. I sailed on the prototype in 2004 with the designer Tim Clissold of TC Design before the boat went into production and was impressed by its responsiveness and tackling agility. When Roger Kitchen of Weta Marine commissioned the design it was for a small cat as a trainer for kids learning to sail. It was Clissold who convinced him that a trimaran was the way to go for load capacity, three or four kids or and adult and a couple of kids, and handling. Cats are real pigs to go about on in the hands of learners. This is also why the amas don't have 100% + buoyancy the original brief wasn't for a race boat. Once it was built Chris Kitchen saw the performance potential and the sail plan was expanded and a bigger rig added etc. Clissold work with the Kitchens on the project right up until it went into production. It was Clissolds design that won the Annapolis Boat Of The Year award for the builders Weta Marine.

I've attached the first Weta boat review which tells the story pretty accurately, there has been a lot of mis-information that has gone down since then. But if you check out the Weta spec or the acknowledgements on the About tab on the Weta website you will see belatedly the Kitchens have had to acknowledge who the designer really is.

 

Weta Marine Ltd having acrimoniously parted ways with the designer of the Weta TC Design / Tim Clissold means they won't be coming out with another of Tim's excellent designs that's for sure. I'm sure another constructors will though.

 

----------------
Disapointing that there are numerous "beachcats"/racing cats under 20' powered up and using curved lifting foils and not one single small high performance trimaran under 20' using foils and designed to fly the main hull.
Mystifies me....

 

The TC 44 is the Weta and I've just an hour or so ago got details of the TC 627, the Tim Clissold big brother to the Weta TC 44 but of course it's not a Weta. It is a Siam Cat Trimaran TC 627 (21 feet) and it has just gone into production.

 

----------------
Interesting-do you have any more detail? Doesn't look like it has foils in the ama?

 

No the Siam TC 627 doesn't have lifting foils in the ama so in that respect it is very like the Weta. See the attached image I found on the net. I know that lifting foils are all the rage at the moment but interestingly I had the opportunity to go to a presentation and discussion with Lauriot-Prévost of VPLP a couple of years ago or so. They had just designed and launched their Multi50 racing trimiran which doesn't have lifting foils in the ama and he said they were just as fast as the ORMA60s despite the fact they don't foils which I thought was really interesting at the time. So perhaps foils aren't as important as we may think they are unless you go fully out as with ETNZ AC72.

 

I think theres a lot more to ama lifting foils then that they're all the rage. Theres evidence from ORMA tris to Mod 70's to many others including BP5 that foil assist is very fast. As to being "all the rage"-seems to be true in cats but not in small tri's-too bad. Foils are illegal in the Multi 50 class-if they were legal I guarantee you all the boats would have them.

 

I think you are right if foils had of been legal the Multi 50 would have had them. But the point I think Lauriot-Prévost was making was that with good design they were able to produce equivalent performance and a less complex and expensive boat and I'm prepared to accept his word on that.

 

-------------------
I respect Lauriot-Prevost a great deal but saying that a tri w/o ama foils is going to be equivalent to one with foils is just wrong if the boat using the foils is designed specifically for them. In other words a Multi 50 designed specifically for curved ama foils would beat a Multi 50 w/o foils. Thats been proven many times in the ORMA class. Foil assist reduces wetted surface, allows the boat to be pushed harder off the wind, allows for a smaller(lighter) ama and more.

 

Looking at the TC 627, I think those hinges above the beams will be the first design change, after it shows it's kneecap-removing ability. Nice looking boat though. It's a pity the designer and the Weta builders couldn't get on, must have had something to do with money...
Back to the origin of this thread, when I first saw a Weta in the real I was disappointed, it looked plasticky and cheaply made along the lines of a roto-moulded Hobie, and for the price I wasn't impressed. It's low sail area also didn't inspire me much as it's performance isn't great in moderate conditions. I've seen the Ninja Pro and trimaran in the real alongside it, the Ninja is a better boat for moderate conditions.
Having said that I think it has a real place in areas where it really blows, after seeing some youtube footage of these little boats like the Columbia River race where they had it 2-up in over 30knots going downwind with the spinnaker up, not many race-optimised beachcats would be happy doing that in those conditions with that amount of chop, so I do have quite a lot of respect for them, given their multi-role ability and the fact that they appear bulletproof in a blow. I might even want one given where I sail is usually a but breezy, but the cost of one landed in South Africa is why there aren't many here.