More On the W17 Trimaran (Wooden Beach Tri)
In a follow up to the last post about the coming W17 beach trimaran, here is a fuller description of this new “beach tri made with wood.” Michael Waters has posted a detailed description at SmallTrimaranDesign.com on the boat’s development.
To my knowledge, a few of the main goals for this particular design are:
– Relatively modest cost
– Simple construction
– Nice performance while staying as dry as possible (not bad for a small, fast boat).
(For specs, plus a description of the drawings included in the plans, email mike at wate100 AT earthlink DOT net with the subject line referenced to the W17).
Here is Mike’s article/summary for the W17 …
Designing the W17 Trimaran
Once having decided that I wanted a small, inexpensive day-sailing trimaran to get out on the water as often as possible, I figured I had better use my own fairly extensive design and building experience to come up with a unique design that I could share with others. The first thing I do with ANY design is to identify the target user and the attributes that I want the boat to excel in. In this case, the user was to be me and the top attributes were to be speed, comfort, relative dryness and ease of handling, both sailing and ashore. And all this from a rather small budget along with a relatively short build time using readily available materials. Hmmm… quite a challenge!
So where to start? The budget and build time would lean me towards plywood hulls, and having already written about the various options on my website, it was pretty clear which hull shape I should consider. Something with a narrow flat bottom that was kept well below the waterline tied to flat sides that would simply divide the water without much disturbance. This would be easy to build and sit neatly on a flat surface or trailer.
But would this simple shape give me enough performance to satisfy my hunger for speed and efficiency? I would have to find out.
So when I had the opportunity to test sail a small tri of this configuration, I jumped at the opportunity. A fine furniture-making contact from the North East had made a number of boats for his personal use and friends using this narrow-flat-bottom configuration and as he was looking to sail on picturesque Lake Champlain on the Vermont-New York border, it was a great fit. So last September we got together and had a great time test-sailing his little 12’ folding trimaran and talking boats. So what was the result?
