89er

[JulianB]

So I'm building a 89er for myself, there is a possibility of a sister ship being built, but really, at my age, and with Covid and wanting to sial with mates around Australia, I'm doning this for me, myself and I along with maybe 6-8 sailing mates (inc females).

I have quite a few people asking whats happening, and 2 of those mates have been sending out photo's of the process, as we go along (about 1 month into it already) and that group of interested parties is getting bigger, so the queastion is do people want me to post it here, if so I can start that, from right back at the design stage, and go right through to the actual build process.     Finished the for-deck on Friday, we start on the cockpit plug today!    Hopefully finish this side of Christmas, just myself and Alex (my youngest son) are building it!    Few mates will jump in, when we need extra hands!

        jB

 

[Jethrow]

Hell yeah! B)

 

[Crazy Horse]

Would be great to follow the build process.

 

[WCB]

Agreed. The 20+ Footer from Hawaii has been a popular thread because we all love the build process.

 

[stealth]

Looking forward to follow your building process Julian. I have always loved the 89er and would love to build one myself given the chance.

 

[JulianB]

OK, give me a few days, and I will start with how we decided on what, why and when!

 

[WCB]

Julian, in case you need reinforcement that it's a good idea, look at the stats of the 20+ Footer from Jim Donovan.  745 replies, mostly Jim, 125,000 views.  It blows away most of the threads.  Free advertising.

 

[JulianB]

The one thing I don't need is free advertising and I am not contemplating even considering building another.   All ready been asked once and politely refused.

It's just not on my play list for the next 5 year, got way more than I could hope to have already.

This is very very much for me, myself and I!

But the inner circle that it's going around top has spread to about 40 people already and my mate in Adelaide, suggested I do this, so give me a few days, got a bit on, Wednesday is my sailing day so I should have some free time then.

But I'm spraying the cockpit plug today!

                jB

 

[mathewgj]

Thank you! So excited to follow this!

 

[Ex Machina]

Yeah very I interested ! Especially keen to see how you use granite fibre 

 

[JulianB]

[SIZE=12pt]The stuff is known as Basalt Fibre, but Granite is cute! [/SIZE]

[SIZE=12pt]Glass fibre is just sand melted, Basalt is just Granite melted, same process, it's a very dark brown, almost olive-brown in colour.    Temp to generate Basalt is about double that of glass which is possibly one of the reasons it has a higher MPa.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=12pt]It all started 2-3 years ago when I started looking into Flax, and it's impressive also, I happened to be invited to Albert Eisenstein’s supposedly favourite cafe in Zurich and this super cool guy told me all about Flax, and I tried a bit, initially in a 49er centreboard and it was impressive.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=12pt]But something when wrong, possibly a 3rd party and I started looking around at other options (trying to reduce or remove the use of Carbon, because unless you get huge longevity out of it, it's really not very GREEN) anyway stumbled onto Basalt, did another 49er centreboard out of it, so if Carbon was good, and Flax was great then Basalt was sensational.    Thing about 49er foil is we define it's bend, everything has to bend so we require it to fall within a range, max and min bend.    All 3 fibre's can easily be used and comply with those bends, lightest was the Flax, Carbon is Carbon but Basalt just took so much abuse, far greater than either Flax or Carbon, so it's potential for longevity is extraordinary.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=12pt]Then couple that with PET cores, so again being green but also being weight conscious and a tad misery on $$$, by upping the density of the PET, you can almost 1/2ve the weight of the skin's and end up with a tougher (& lighter) laminate.    And that's were, to date, in all our empirical testing, Basalt shines.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=12pt]Before someone jumps down my throat, Carbon mast, near perfect use of the material, mostly because you can be pretty sure the mast will live and remain competitive for a ridiculously long period of time.   By that, on a boat like a 49er, or a 18teen Carbon mast, 5-6-7 years of sailing 6 days a week, on a Farr 40, 20 years, Farr 30 also 20 years.   Tomorrow I am sailing on Exile, (Farr 40) it has literally just had it's rod rigging replaced for a 3rd time, same mast, 21-22years old, no alloy mast would ever dream of seeing that sort of service.      When I sailed 18teen's we had 3 ALLOY masts with FRP tips, we sailed 4 days a week, and the alloy sections where done and dusted after 4-5 months, we started sailing with the 1st set, in July, we switched them out in September and raced through to February with the 2nd set.   (this was the early 90's)  The idea was if we broke one of our race masts (2nd set) we could grab it's twin (1st set) and be up and going with a mast that was near identical and not trashed. [/SIZE]

[SIZE=12pt]Carbon boom and Carbon Spinnaker pole are also near perfect and very environmentally logical (because of longevity) use of the material.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=12pt]But if you want to 1/2ve the amount of resin you need to build a boat, then you had better think about, say Carbon at 450-500gms/m² as a outer skin and be willing to put up with it's brittleness.    Just so people understand 450gms of any cloth thickness (excluding flax which is about 150% thicker) = 0.45mm of skin thickness.   One of the reasons Flax is so good is it's organic and like more things organic it's hollow tubes (thick Nano tubes, but don't by nature).    Exile (Farr 40) has approx. 3mm of outer skin (e-glass), then approx. 20mm of Balsa core, then 2mm of a inner skin.    That's a pretty standard racing laminate.    Most USA based boats would be double that thickness (of laminate, not core)  most racing European boats would be similar, but if you want to push the edges, then you had better get down to what you actually need to handle the loads.     The 18teens we talk of above (early 90s) had a outer laminate of 275gms so approx. ¼ mm thick, I14s have 200gms so less than ¼ mm, 29er has 525gms, so ½ mm thick and is now considered extraordinarily tough, my thinking come from Vivace![/SIZE]

[SIZE=12pt]Just to follow this logic, I designed Vivace in 2004 with Martin Billoch, Pierre Gal (the owner/sailmaker) use 20mm PVC foam core and 1 layer of 450gms Carbon on both sides, and that boat is still sailing today and still fetching a premium price.     If you use 450gms of Carbon then you had better expect to use 500-520gms of resin also to "wet it out".  So your total skin weight will end up 1kg/m².    ( In Pierre case, from memory, he did wet lay-up, but it was not Vacuum consolidated, he built the boat, amazingly well on a male open jig.    So he possible ended up at 1.3-1.5kgs/m².)[/SIZE]

[SIZE=12pt]So a) I am a bit green, I don't have grand kids yet, but if I ever get any then I do worry about what we are doing to the planet (watch this space WRT the 49er/FX) so I really wanted to avoid PVC foam cores and Carbon skins. plus b) Vivace was 8m LOA, this boat, call it Don't Panic for now (because some of the crew are, and I'm a huge fan of Douglas Adams) is 8.5m LOA and as anyone who knows about these things, as you increase length, you increase depth and width and complexity so actual surface area goes up as  x³ law, it's not linear,  so I needed to get that skin weight down, and I need toughness, so I am investing in closed male plugs/moulds that are capable of Vacuum consolidation, and I have decide to use a 2 stage PET core, so the outer core is 3.5mm thick and P115 (115kgs/m³) and a inner core under the chine of 20mm thick P80 (80kgs/m³), so my outer skin/core density is P115 (rather than P80, and this is also either a x², possibly a x³ law) which has allowed me to reduce the skin laminate from what say the S8's used which was well over 1200gms/m² (with a corresponding 1600gms or resin) down to 200gm S-glass with a 370gm Basalt (twill) on the outer skin and a single layer of 370gm Basalt (Bi-Axial) as the inner layer.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=12pt]We have built to date, the breast hook, the fore-deck and 2 flat panels, and all the weights are a little below target, so we are achieving or weights / m² which is really gratifying, the fore-deck which is the "full-monte" (so all s-glass/basalt, 3.5mm, 10mm and more basalt double sucked, is stupidly strong and stiff and tough),  I think it came in at 26kgs, that includes peel-ply, excess and Unies.     Target was 22.52kgs plus approx. 3kgs of unies, surface area is 6.88m²    (Peel-ply is about 220gms and soaks up about 300gms of resin/m²)[/SIZE]

[SIZE=12pt]I am very big on empirical testing, we developed this ball peen hammer test, so what it is, you have a simple ball peen hammer on a pivot, you lift it up to a desired height and you let swing down and hit a panel that is mounted vertically just as the ball part of the hammer passed vertical.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=12pt]You then put a test sample in front of the apparatus and count how many "swings" it takes before you get surface deformation, you then replace that test sample with another and count the next tranche of swing and so on.    Pretty basic stuff.     And my laminate not only "twangs" when you hit it (rather than thuds), it's about double the number of swings. [/SIZE]

[SIZE=12pt]WRT the use of (or not) of Carbon in the hull.    Re rig loads, a extra 300mm wide layer of 300gm Unie locally around the chainplate negates any possibly disparity in MPa, if you actually think about the bit of wire (shroud (or Dynema)) and it's surface area, and then compare that to the amount of material available in the hull to resist that pull, it's a very lop-sided comparison, even if you have 1200gms of e-glass (most boats have 3000gms).     In terms of skin stiffness, thickness trumps MPa ever day of the week.    Pierre’s boats was 20-21 mm  mine is will be 23.5-25mm.    20.5² = 420,  24.25² = 590 so it's 150% up just as a starting point.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=12pt]Glass is approx. 270 (MPa x 000???), S-Glass is about 420, Basalt is about 480 and Carbon is about 720, so sure, carbon would be marginally stiffer, but I will be infinitely tougher and last a lot longer, be less twitchy, (be far less expensive (about 1/2)) and I will be using PET (so net negative WRT environmental issues) and Basalt which is green, all the while using approx. 1/2 the resin which has to be better than using more.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=12pt]Very happy with where I am at![/SIZE]

[SIZE=12pt]                jB[/SIZE]

 

[nogetwe]

Super interesting! Thank you!

However, is my understanding correct, that the 'green' of the basalt is mainly in longevity and additional strength compared to glass and carbon? Is it still better when factoring in the 2x energy use to produce it compared to glass? Sorry, probably a difficult question to answer.

Is the basalt recyclable?

 

[JulianB]

Correct, Basalt probably takes more energy than E-glass to make, probably similar energy to S-Glass to make and likely to be far less energy than Carbon to make.

All the fibres have similar UTS, what Carbon has is elongation or streach down around 0.7 - 1.5%, Basalt its between 1.5 -2.2%, S-Glass is 2 - 3% and E-glass it's upwards of 7%.   Now this is all from memory, and if someone can "refine those numbers" go for it.

Into that equation is the fact that if you plan to make a boat using minimal scantlings, in this case 570gms (200gm S-Glass + 370gm Basalt) outer skin then at that weight E-Glass really is not a option.   A 49er has about that weight of E-Glass on the outer surface (564gms/m²) and it weighs 275kgs all up, panel sizes are 1/4 or 1/8 of the size (and it's a x² law) and a well kept 49er stays Gold fleet competative for 3-4 years, and then has double that again as a silver fleeter (the 2008 Gold Medal boat is at my club, and is still just OK).     So if I want to build a hull using similar outer skin weigh, carrying 4 times the weight, traveling often at similar speeds, on panels double or 4 x the size, then E-glass is not a option.

So we have started this conversation mid way, really need to go back to the begining as to why we are building what we call a Sportsboat.

Let me go back to that, and then work forwards to your queastion so you get my thinking.

             jB

 

[JulianB]

2003 – 2014 I spent a lot of it towing Trilogy around Australia, 32ft Tri, 2.5 tonnes, tandem wheel electric braked trailer behind a Jeep Laredo.   Initially we needed a crane to get the 48ft mast up, but later we devised a A frame, but it still took all 4 crew 6 hrs to assemble it.

Also in 2004 Martin Billoch and I designed Vivace, a 8m Sportsboat that did rather well.

2006 Martin and I teamed up again and designed the SKUD that went on to become the Parra Olympic “lead assisted” skiff.

2017, my partner in “sailing” crime GT [Graham Turner] also a ex-skiffie brough a Farr 30, and after a rather successful season sailing it in the Super 30 series that happens on Sydney Harbour, a rush of blood to the brain, we all decide to sail the Farr 30 at Magnetic Island (2018).    That’s when reality hit the pavement.   Crane the mast out and then Sling the boat out at Hunters Hill in Sydney ($$$$$) Get it towed by a truck to Townsville, 35hr drive ($$$$$) the reverse in Townsville, Sling it in, then crane the mast in.  ($$$$$), 5 days sailing, but it was fabulous fun, we won Div 4 against mostly 40ft boats, so much fun we booked the same accom for the next 5 years. But then back to Townsville Sling & Crane ($$$$$) Truck back to Sydney ($$$$$) Sling and Crane at Hunters Hill ($$$$$) so we decided never to do that again.   As it was GT was offered a stupid price, so he sold the Farr.

2019 Maggie, we chartered a FE28R, much simpler, infinitely cheaper, lots of fun but a bit pedestrian.

GT was not finished buying boats, Hick 30 (for the Super 30 series) and a Thompson 8, ostensibly to do Maggie with, we called it “6 Pac” and latter a Fokboat.

On the way to Maggie  (2021) in Brisbane where the Sportsboat National Championships, so why not, we were going to be taking the boat through Brissy on the way to Maggie anyway.

As it turned out we won, but Covid struck. Maggie was cancelled and the boat is still in Brissy and has been there now for 12 weeks and we have no access.   To add to all that GT got elected to be the VP of the ASBA.   (Australian Sports Boat Association)

But that was a real eye opener, I have a very basic, ex-air-force Ford Territory with a 2.6lt Turbo Diesel.  6 Pac weighs 770kgs, and we tow it on a single axel, surge brake trailer. Brisbane is a 10 hr drive nth of Sydney, and the Territory did it without even breaking a sweat, let alone slowing down going up the hills, sat on 110kph the whole way, effortless drive.  Arrived early afternoon, then 3 of us basically rigged it in 2 ½ - 3 hrs and we were sailing that afternoon.

OK, Sportsboats in Australia can’t be longer than 8.5m, can’t be wider than 3.5m and max airdraft is 12.5m, they have to be capable of ramp launching, and they have to comply with Cat 5 or be ISO Certified.    I knew a bit about Sportsboats via Vivace and 6 Pac.

Super 30 in Sydney, and it’s a very Sydney thing, is 6 club all agreeing to race every 2 weeks, around the harbour anything that is longer than 8.5m shorter than 9.5m and it’s a monohull, really there are no other rules, Cat 7 is OK, some don’t even have bulbs or motors.    So there is a assortment of boats and the rules get stretched to allow MC32 to sail, Flying Tigers, a heavily modified Hick 30 tends to be the gun boat plus some very interesting concepts.

So we wanted a boat that had a foot in both camps, and the plan was and still is to do 8-12 Super 30 races each year along with maybe 6 travelling Sportsboat races per year.

Maggie is a definite, Port Lincoln (Sth Australia) is another (the seafood), and there are lots of possibilities in Victoria (Geelong, Marley Point), NSW (Port Stephens) and Queensland (Bay to bay, Gladstone.) we are spoilt for choices.

Super 30 racing is managed mostly through a historical PHRF system.

Most Sportsboat racing is managed via a simple PHRF process, so Port Stephens that we did earlier this year when we chartered another FE28R was PHRF.

But the Sportsboats have a SMS system mandated in their constitution.   And this is where it gets topical.

I am quite well know in the industry, and I had 3-4 quite high level people come up to me and warn me off Sportsboats because of SMS, and they quote what happened to various owner/boats who did exactly what I am doing, that is putting some effort in and with effort comes results and once you start doing well the “black box” SMS system simply rates you off the dial so that’s the end of doing well.   One even went to the extent of giving me one person name, and insisted I ring them, his boat, Sleuth was the last one this happened to and he simply up and left.

That’s possibly why we in 6 Pac, a 21 year old boat, won the Nationals on our 4th sail.

GT and I tend to have coffee most mornings, its become a bit of a ritual along with other friends, and he and I spoke about Sleuth, I am yet to ring the gentleman concerned, but we decided that most of the sailing we wanted to do was going to be PHRF, even the Sportsboat racing (like Port Stephens) and that even though he is a VP we may never apply for a SMS,  and that was infact a pretty big turning point.

So rather than design (barstardise) a boat for a rating, we just go and do what is

a)       best, b)   simplest and c)   fastest

So that is exactly what I have done.

Basically, I rang up my SKUD mate and he by chance had a pre-loved pre-used SKUD bulb, 140kgs, done. I then took Vivace, stretched it ½ m and applied all the advances that have manifested themselves over the last 18 years and applied those to the design.    And there have been a few.

Vivace had 450gms of Carbon both sides of a PVC H80 core.   We had know for a long time 450gms is about minimum, in-fact a tad border line WRT idiot factor, you can get away with it with a 18teen but not with a 49er (468gms), and certainly not with a 29er (525gms).   So I decided to play the 60-40 rule (60% of the laminate on the outside/compression side, 40% of the laminate on the inside/the tension side.

So by opting for 200gm S-Glass combined with 370gm of Basalt on the outside, and complimenting that with 370gm of Basalt bi-axial on the inside, I’m at 65-35, which is pretty dam close, also the inner layer is bi-axial so no crimp, so that pushes the % closer to 60-40.

If you want to get pedantic, sure Vivace has 900gms in total (both side) and Don’t Panic will have 940gms but Vivace was made wet layup, where as I am making vacuum capable moulds so my resin usage is likely to be around 210% (so 940gms of fibre, and I’m impregnating that, + the foam with about 1000gms of resin, and that’s an empirical number) where as Vivace was likely to be 250-280%.

So in terms of environmental impact, as compare to Vivace and it’s Carbon or if you wish to compare it to say a E-glass lay-up, I’m way ahead.

The we get into PET’s as opposed to PVC foam cores.

There is almost 100kgs of core material that will get used in Don’t Panic, so inside of creating another 100kgs of PVC, I am instead using 100kgs of re-cycled PET plastic.

So that’s a 200kg improvement in the environmental position.   I am probably pulling a few thousand soft drink or water bottle, plates and other plastic waste out of land fill.

But that is not actually the real benefit.    PET is quite plastic-ly, far more flexible.

Just about all foam, other than Polystyrene, get better and better as you increase the density, and they all pass a tipping point at about 65kgs/m³. At that density, most of them cross-link, and in simplest terms that mean they become impervious to water, but they also become more structurally stable.      80kgs/m³ is a point where most manufacturers believe they can be very confident that 99% of the foam has cross linked so H80 as it’s know has been sprouted as the duck-guts for years.

But what happen if you go a bit denser, and plenty of boat builder do just that.

In the case of a 49er, if we chose to use say P115 (PET people use P rather than H) then our testing has shown that we can drop the outer skin weight from around 564gms to approximately 300gms with the same idiot factor.     There is in-fact a net weight reduction, plus you end up using approximately 2/3’s of the resin, and of-course 2/3 of the fibre plus the boat is likely to last longer.

With Don’t Panic, the outer core layer will be 3.5mm (because they can’t cut any finer with accuracy) P115 PET foam, and then it will be “bulked out” with P80, 10mm (or 20mm) PET core.

So we should end up with a lighter boat, that has increase idiot factor, increase longevity and we need to use far less resin so we should just in the build process be that much more environmentally responsible.

And of-course it dose not end there!    Hitch a lighter boat on the back of the Territory and tow it Sydney to Townsville, we may increase fuel burn from 9lt/100km to 10.5lt/100km.    When we were towing Trilogy we were lucky to get 300km to a 65lt tank, (6 Pac was about 12.5lt/100km)

I get asked often how do you design a boat, and the very fist thing you do is a spread sheet with weights, and you track the weights.   I never try and do the whole thing initially, it’s in flux, I will try and come back on Saturday or Sunday with my spreadsheet and my actuals.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I spoke earlier about running into GT for coffee most mornings.   This morning, both of us where early, and while sitting down, good mate who was in Garda in an infamous drinking hole looked up and there was a photo of Banana Republic taken in 1989 in Bandol Sth of France, GT saw the photo as it came in on WhatsApp, as I did and we both laughed a lot! He was the sheethand, I was the skipper.

 

[sailhmb]

what do you think of Yorky's REO 7.7 design?

 

[nogetwe]

This is an amazing thread already! Both a history and boat design lesson plus forward thinking and sustainability. Cool. Thank you Julian!

 

[Jethrow]

I don't think I've heard of sandwiching low density foam between higher density foam for panels before. Very interesting...

 

[mathewgj]

I'm curious how similar this boat will be to the Cadillac

 

[JulianB]

Sailhmb, we keep 6 Pac in the same dry storage as Yorky's Reo-speedwagon, and where as we decided to do maybe 18 events a year, just about all of which would be judged on PHRF, Yorky, possibly because he is the Pres of ASBA has gone the other way and fully down the SMS route.   So it's fully optimised for SMS.   And good luck to him, it's not what I want, and the boat looks grossly under rigged.   In a breeze is amazing, tiny rig, lots of power, it goes up-wind about the same speed as everyone else in terms of VMG, but 10 deg lower and 2 knts faster, down wind, its doing 20+ knts, where as Tasty (the gun Super 30 boat which is a modified Hick 30)  is probably doing 12-13knts.    Yorky's big problem, and he may have just managed to solve it is to get everyone to satisfy Cat or ISO Cert, so we will all watch with interest as they actually go and do that (it's a physical actual test where they have to fully capsize the boat sails up, and get it back upright in 5 mins.

Looks like it highly possible that Don't Panic may get a sister ship, talking about borrowing the plugs, and if that happens that owner will go the opposite direction to Yorky, even bigger than what I am contemplating, because he says, he sails in predominately lighter winds.

Horse for courses.     Super 30 stretched the rule downwards to allow boats like Yorky's to compete as it's very much under length, and in a breeze, it win's, but it aint that often.

Jethrow, if I may give you a little picture.    And it is to approx scale.



White represents the S-Glass 200gm

Brown represents the Basalt 370gm

Red represents 3.5mm P115 PET outer core

Blue represents the 20mm P80 PET inner core

I would make the P115 outer core thinner if I could, optimum would be around 2.2mm, if I was a purest, but it's not feasible.

Think about it another way, your going from Water at a bit over 1000kgs/m-cu, to S-Glass/Basalt and Epoxy, possibly 1300-1500kgs/m-cu, then we are quite deliberate about the bog, the interface between the Basalt and the P115, it's probably 450kgs/m-cu, then to the P115 at 115kg/m-cu, then to the P80 at 80kgs/m-cu then to basalt/epoxy at 1300-1500kgs/m-cu.     It's very obvious where you may get sheer, and we do things like only use 75-80% of a Bar to suck it all together so we ensure that the bog remains viable and goes deep into the pores of the foam.    Also the mixture of the bog includes Aerocell/Carbosil along with Q-Cell, so it dose not all get sucked out under vacuum consolidation.

Not the first time we have done this and it won't be the last.   Also pretty common in the gliding industry to have feather laminates.

                           jB