WOODS DESIGN Power Catamaran Skoota 28

[fallguy]

"hulls were very light " what was the weight approximately?

They were built on a vac table.
Only part of the deck shoe was hand laminated.

The hull glass schedule did not meet the ISO requirement per a composites engineer and needed to be more glass forward.

The beam sockets were moulded solid frp due to their round shape and quite a bit of frp to connect them to the core bulkheads/hull as well.

The one place I had room for less weight was the tabbing could have been db and instead I used 1708 tapes. This added maybe 200 pounds per hull per my calculations. But I mentioned it to a few experts and they suggested it was much stronger done this way.

I think the hulls came in around 2000 pounds before electrical and batteries. But was I supposed to give up on remote battery switches? The real problem is too little displacement and especially forward given the less than ISO laminate for Class B vessel. And the lack of hydrostatics that included the bdeck is not on me.

Could I have made them lighter? Yes. Significantly? No. 10%? Probably, but lots of little things add up. The beaching keels were all hand laid. They have a wood shoe on the bottom that weighs about 20 pounds, but also adds displacement and messes with the flow for a semi-planing vessel. After adding the forward bow extensions, not sure they even hit the beach. But the boat rests on them on the hard. Etc.

The 28 is a much, much simpler build.

 

[fallguy]

See the netting beam fixtures? Those are stainless with a stainless backer. Could they be made with carbon? Perhaps, but all these things add up quickly and the offset would have been to build these hulls about 4” wider which would have been very little impact to fuel economy which is already not as good as we’d hoped. How many days does it take to mould qnd build a vac bagged custom carbon mould for two pieces? Etc.

The windows are tempered to meet a class B vessel. They are heavy, not detailed in drawings, but most of Woods cats use simply acrylic windows and wood frames.