Quick And Cheap

Hi
We are installed in New-Caledonia and building a 50 foot trimaran with planning hulls. The material we are using is one we tuned ourselves by building somme dinghyes and modifying existing boats. Its a sandwich that as a polystyren core and skins are made of plywood. Everything is glued under vacuum on a versatil mold made of a steel sheet and a PE tarp. The glue with use is PU wich is easily sprayable. So each panel is buid in shape and then fits to the former one just like a children construction toy. It's actually very fast to build and probably the cheapest method we can find here. We allready built the main hull, both cross arms and the two amas. It took us two weeks to build the second one (50 foot hull, 300 kg). The whole thing is then glassed (200g roving on top, 400g db on bottom. I posted some pictures if anyone is interested.
Now comes the question. As anyone seen or heard of a trimaran with planning amas. The bottom of ours is shaped like a sailboard, dead flat, and we are wondering about the loads it will give to the arms.

 

Interesting!

you have probably seen this looong discussion on planing trimarans, "are they planing?"...
http://www.boatdesign.net/forums/showthread.php?t=14047&highlight=planing trimaran

 

Yes I have! The discussion was about the results. The hull they were talking about have "standard" section (nearly round or elliptic, as usual). Ours has got a really flat bottom , developpable surface for our material. On a model, it was working perfectly, our concern is now the stress in the arms (also made of sandwich).You can see some more pictures at http://utopia.lagoon.nc