Solid laminate frp

This is a Safehaven Marine Wildcat 60 boat. The builder says its hull is solid laminate frp. Some models as pilot boats, some as SAR . They claim it's built to Beaufort 9, and 6 meter waves. Does solid frp here mean that the hull won't absorb water the way the balsa cored ones apparently do?

 

Yup

 

Thank you. And would you trust their claims? I guess if built to handle Beaufort 9. That's almost as good as it gets , right? This is a catamaran too.

 

You're welcome.

No, it's marketing.

 

I guess the Irish coast guard, and international customers buy them. Do you think they don't care, or are naive?

 

Neither.

This is a strange series of closed-probed questions James.

 

N

Not sure what you even mean.

 

It could be dangerous to build your boat to the specifications engineered for another craft.
If you’re designing 60’ catamarans for rough and tumble use, you’d do well to hire an engineer!

 

If the water reaches the core, the problem is, first and foremost, with the fiber. You resolve the tightness of the fiber and no core, not even balsa cores, will absorb water.

 

I have seen balsa core waterlogged in a "freedom" class yacht, but also in RNLI Arun 52.
That cat looks like the taxi boat between StMarys and St Agnes. I never saw it stay in port due to weather in my time there.

 

James. You can build solid FRP boats, boats with balsa or foam cores, and some boats with Western Red Cedar cores and thinner fiberglass skins. Each can be well or badly built, each can be virtually water proof or in some cases eventually leak due to bad construction or poor combination of materials. Lets deal with an older Lagoon 38 sailing catamaran. It has up to 12 mm of solid glass below the waterline then goes into a balsa glass construction above the waterline of less than 2 mm glass skins and 15 mm balsa at points and depending on the age, has some foam cores. This model is considered long lasting and can handle some very rough weather.

So lets get to the point. A solid laminate of CSM and woven rovings can be strong and heavier than other structures BUT if built with polyester resin and a poor surface finish can develop Osmosis which is water wicking into the CSM or cut woven roving surface layers. This can cause considerable damage over time. If the solid fiberglass is built with vinylester or epoxy resins there is a much reduced chance for surface moister causing damage to the structure.

If the external skin surface is a very well done gel coat or epoxy paint job the underlying fiberglass resin structure is of less importance, until you bang into a wharf or run aground, then you have to repair the surface back to its original condition quickly.

Now we get to modern multihulls. I am choosing 60 foot ocean racing trimarans that peak at speeds of 40 knots (without foils). They have a layup of high strength epoxy resin, a single skin of 600 gsm high strength carbon fibre, 20 mm foam and 600 gsm high strength carbon fibre for a lot of their skin area. These boats drive at speed through seas that would even concerns a Safehaven skipper. I do not know the shell specs of a Safehaven 60 foot cat but I would suspect you would find solid glass up to 25 mm thick in places.

Please listen to Tansl, he is a naval architect. This is all about the fabrics, resins, paint job etc and quality of build on the surface layer. Then it depends on the design, application of materials and use of the vessel. And finally, don't bang boats into things and not maintain them. A very well built boat will become a disaster if it is not looked after.

Speak to builders, see boats being built, understand the materials being used etc. You can have a good designer and a bad builder or the opposite. Each vessel needs to be inspected for what it is at the build and in the water.

 

I bet the boat can handle it but the person on it cannot.

Had a little 42 foot boat built in the early 70s, never really liked the boat. It was always a third wheel in my vessel ownership. Had a few situations where we were caught in some..... stuff... or at least a word that starts with "s".

Never did find it's limit of survivability, lord knows we saw some stuff in that goofy thing. Probably saw my hardest onshore wind in that slow old thing.

Sold it to a young guy, so young that didn't have open water experience. Insurance wouldn't cover him across the gulf so condition of sale was me escorting him and the boat to its new port. No big deal, neat kid and I'm always down for a boat ride on someone else's fuel.

We ran in to a deadline and I was talked into leaving in weather not to my liking. Never will forget about 8 hrs from town when the wind changed directions, hit the current and stacked waves. Utter look of terror on that kids face as we did 2 knots for the next 6hrs until we made it around a near cape. Trip that should have been 50 hrs, 7 days later... saw the roughest water he'd ever seen. Old story was the boat will survive more then the mental capacity of the crew. Proved it even on its last trip.


Wouldn't shock me if a boat like that could survive some stuff.... question is will it break you in the process....

 

It's a production boat.

 

What's the boat?

 

Looked around the safe haven 60 page. For its weight and power it appears to be a relatively reasonable commercial craft. Not crazy wild about the 16 liter Volvo, but admittedly not wild about much of anything made after 2009.

Seems like their design philosophy was rugged and reasonable, it's a very straightforward setup.