The UltraLight 20 Trimaran from Warren Light Craft
The UltraLight 20 trimaran is now available! Ted and Zac Warren (the father and son team at Warren Light Craft) have been working on this sailboat for awhile. And it’s a beauty.
As you can see from the photos and short YouTube video below, this craft is pure sailing machine. It’s designed to be a true 1-4 adult performance trimaran.
She has no cockpit and is designed to be sailed from the windward ama!
A UL20 weighs in at anywhere from 175-220 lbs. all up … depending on options. (The main hull weighs just 44 lbs.) As such, it’s car-toppable with many vehicles.
You can see a demo of the UL20 trimaran at the upcoming Annapolis Boat Show this October . Both Ted and Zac Warren will be on hand to answer questions and demo this boat.
Here are a few photos of the UL20 from the Warren Light Craft website (used with permission here below):
Click here for the UltraLight 20 trimaran “Designer’s Statement”
Click here for the UltraLight 20 trimaran Specs page
Click here for the UltraLight 20 trimaran Features page
You can find more photos of the UltraLight 20 trimaran on this webpage at Warren Light Craft
And here is a light wind video of the UL20 in action:
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September 20th, 2012 at 10:52 pm
I really like the direction they are taking here by simply getting rid of the cockpit and the weight involved in framing/reinforcing it all…this makes all kinds of sense for a boat of this type.
Of course it won’t appeal to everyone but that’s the beauty of these things- they are adaptable to all kinds of applications and approaches.
In the case of a tri of this general size with no central cockpit, there are actually other approaches for crew seating that fall in between the extremes of a car-like driver’s seat or a more or less traditional cockpit with lazarette style seating, and nothing but flat tramps inches off the water… a simple foot well can be made without the same need for heavy framing and hull width (or drains) as a traditional full cockpit, and can be combined with tramps, spray skirting and slung seats fitted to pipe framing to create very lightweight yet relatively dry crew seating that gets seat height above the waterline without the weight penalty of using traditional structural materials to get there.
The previous entry with the Russian boats shows a good example -
http://www.fordak.ru/data/gallery/181/full/1187027636.jpg
- with that simple space frame there are all kinds of possibilities to attach very lightweight panels and get many of the benefits of a cockpit and coamings and even a rudimentary cabin/shelter…and as you can see, the seating could actually be higher without losing much cockpit width and that could also allow for a very shallow foot well or completely closed deck to be used in the main hull while still allowing for more chair-like seating.
Similarly, this space frame could be used to mount lee/center/dagger -boards and their trunks and hardware totally away from and outside of the hulls, eliminating yet another big hunk of hull framing and a number of seams, and opening up all kinds of adjustment and orientation options like angling the boards to weather for upwind work.
Best of all it would be a relatively simple thing to create such a frame as an modification/upgrade for a boat of this style, or make purpose built frames or additions for certain applications. Ultimately you could have a modular system that could be fine tuned for weather/sea conditions by using different hulls, or for different uses by reconfiguring the cockpit/trampoline panels and rudders/boards for racing, cruising, fishing, diving, etc.
Even if the manufacturer isn’t part of the process and sticks to one production model and doesn’t care about capitalizing on modifications and accessories, the fact that the boat is built this way will still attract buyers who by nature tend to be be willing to experiment and adapt to perfect their tris…even more so for racers and pure speed sailing junkies.
September 21st, 2012 at 12:18 am
Great comments Ian. Your insight, which comes from a lot of experience, is very much appreciated.