Team Seacats

Looking up is apparently something that we didn’t develop through evolution. I’ve nearly made a similar mistake – it’s easy to do…please remember to check for overhead power lines when setting your boat up in an unfamiliar area – particularly with boats as portable as our catamarans. Click the image for another all-too-familiar sad story.

Hull #2 of The Bogy is nearing completion as fellow designer, Neville Cork, is finishing up the body work on his ideas of the deck layout. The rear sugar scoop extends much further forward than mine and his hatch opening is longer but narrower too – I’m looking forward to seeing his final thoughts with regards to control lines and he’s apparently got some trick for sealing the hatch that I can’t quite make out in this photo.

Neville had previously designed a skiff-style US1M that he brought out and we did some sailing against on Saturday.  These two boats were very different in design philosophy so it wasn’t a refined “test” but the Bogy clearly had a performance advantage.  I look forward to getting it up against some other US1M boats.  In an unusual departure from standard, I didn’t take my camera along and only had a camera phone.  Here’s the only sailing photo for the day, which inconsequently, also shows a dragon fly on my head.

I believe that when we look back 10 or 20 years from now, we’ll view boats like the Windrider Rave and the Hobie Trifoiler as “ahead of their time”. This rave has a welded aluminum tubing frame that is surrounded by rotomolded polyethylene hulls…not exactly the lightest construction method possible. Yet, they sold pretty well for a while. I used to believe that these were no longer in production, but the manufacturer’s website sure looks like it’s still current: http://www.windrider.com

I know this isn’t entirely sailing related – but this came from NC Doug over at the Catsailor Forums. Quite a bit of engineering going on here – how far do you think it traveled? Reportedly, the rear tires had 160psi in them to keep some shape in them.