Small Trimaran with Folding Hulls Sailing in Italy
Here is a very small folding trimaran (collapsible amas), designed and built by a small tri lover in Italy. Perhaps I can get some more info about this small trimaran. But for the moment, I want to thank Peter Evans, who publishes http://tacking-outrigger.com/ for sharing the below link with me.
This small craft is in the same class as the Uffa 10 trimaran that we’ve looked at here and here.
But this one is unique.
There is little doubt those ultra-small cars most Italians drive figure into the motivation to construct a sailboat like this one. But regardless of whether anybody thinks that is a good or bad thing, I’m always amazed at what guys will do in order to operate as best they can within their culture/economy/conditions to produce a desired boat-type.
With this in mind, check out the following photos, which are linked to from their location at the following website — http://www.cantierino.it/AProgetti/fastwo/a.html. (You’ll want to visit that webpage in order to see all of the photos).
By the way, the page is entirely in Italian, so you can use a tool like BabelFish to translate the entire webpage (into an imperfect English) to get a gist of the thought process that went into creating this very small, hull-folding trimaran.
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February 24th, 2012 at 9:23 am
Hi to all.. this is still the breed of the 10 ft development class in Italy, not only trimarans..
If I recall correctly this one is demountable, not foldabl, and it has been superseeded by a third version: fast tri… but then the plans may not be availble as these are.
One of the main concerns here is light weight. So I’m sure the akas can be built with mre ease and simpler structures, perhaps also sturdier. This class has stiff wind limitations when competing.
February 25th, 2012 at 12:56 am
I think the crossbeams seem strong yet flexible. I really like the design.
March 2nd, 2012 at 10:45 am
Hi Stefano-
If I’m not mistaken, in this instance I think the “folding” part refers to the collapsible amas that can “fold” flat when demounted from the akas and disassembled, like the old “Porta-Bote” dinghys-
http://www.porta-bote.com/index.php
Otherwise there’s no folding crossbeam mechanism like on bigger trailerable tris, which makes sense on such a tiny boat trying to stay light.
The various tab-and-slot connections here all look very elegant- it’s Italian after all- and they really use the sheet material to good advantage and eliminate the need for a lot of heavy hardware.
The akas in the bottom photo appear to be just the frame of what is shown in the model…just adding a thin plywood sheathing or even a covering of stretched and epoxied fiberglass or kevlar cloth could either stiffen and strengthen the existing structure significantly without a lot of weight gain, or could be used with even lighter framing to keep the same overall strength and flex at the same or possibly less weight.
Even a trampoline made of a low stretch fabric and attached properly could help keep the akas square to each other while still allowing for some flex and could keep the boat dryer as well if it was a tight weave or rubberized.