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Ed Montague
Captain

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USA
499 Posts

Initially Posted - 01/03/2004 : 00:41:03

Tomorrow morning I am meeting my younger brother in Alamenda, CA (near Oakland on the SF Bay) for a test ride on his newly aquired catamaran. Aquilon 26. See the link.http://www.2hulls.com/gallery/catamaran_model_99/Aquilon_Catamaran_Model.html
I will take photos for those interested. I am an old Hobie sailor and racer from the '70s and '80s, in fact I still own a Hobie 16. My brother is trading in his Hobie 21 for this larger and more cruising like cat. Sometime in February, if all goes well with the survey, we will sail the boat out the Golden Gate and head up the coast to Bodega Bay and then into Tomales Bay where he has a mooring. He lives a few miles away from Tomales Bay which is also known as the nursury for the Great White Shark.

Ed Montague on 'Yahoo'
1978 #765 SK, Stnd, Dinette ~_/)~

Edited by - on

dlucier
Master Marine Consultant

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Virgin Islands (United Kingdom)
7583 Posts

Response Posted - 01/03/2004 : 10:54:57

Nice looking boat, Ed!

It looks like your brother is going to have some fun.

Just the other day my younger brother said to me, "Hey why don't you get a catamaran...they look like fun!"

Edited by - on

Arlyn Stewart
Master Marine Consultant

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USA
2980 Posts

Response Posted - 01/03/2004 : 14:18:07

Cats are fun...

There may be another boat design which is gaining in popularity. The twin bilge design. According to this marine designer, they are becoming the configuration of choice on production boats in the UK that offer a choice between single and twin.

He adds that the long standing thought is that they incurred more wetted surface and were slow and thus were shunned in North America, but that computer modeling has debunked the wetted surface theory and shown the importance of optimizing placement of the keels to dampen the bow wave and realize a net increase in a hulls speed potential. He suggest that higher aspect ratio keels have reduced the drag associated with UK counterparts that are built to withstand drying out on the keels. With the debunking that twins have to be slower, we may see the host of advantages to twin keels be explored.

http://boatbuilding.com/content/twinkeels/

Edited by - Arlyn Stewart on 01/03/2004 14:43:48

Ed Montague
Captain

Members Avatar

USA
499 Posts

Response Posted - 01/03/2004 : 23:02:02

It was an interesting day. The weather was clear and cool with the last Pacific storm just hours past and snow falling in the Sierras at the rate of feet per day. The wind was about 10 knots and the air temp in the mid 40's. I have never sailed on a cat this large before and the ride was very smooth and of course flat. I was a little disappointed in the speed. My C25 could keep up in these conditions. The broker was on board and stated that he had made 17 knots in 20 knot winds. Maybe the bottom is fouled. Tomorrow the boat comes out of the water and the surveyor gets to take a look. This boat has a very large main with a huge roach and a small jib. Also a large roller furling genaker for down wind work. I wasn't very impressed with the finish on the interior, but the sailing hardware is all Harken and self tailing winches. All in all an interesting boat.

Any of you who were at the Pacific Sail Boat Show 5 or 6 years ago may have been on the boat. It was on display. Price tag off $100,000 put it out of reach and quite honesty I wasn't worth that price. Maybe a little more then the new C250 would have made them more marketable.

Edited by - on

MattL
Admiral

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USA
990 Posts

Response Posted - 01/04/2004 : 03:24:36

Yea Ed, but the real thing is you were out sailing on the bay and I was at home with a sore back, sick wife, and the kids going crazy in the house with us.

Edited by - on

Oscar
Master Marine Consultant

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USA
2030 Posts

Response Posted - 01/05/2004 : 21:53:33

Milestone post...(700)

I spent many years growing up on a 27' Westerly Centaur, a very solidly built (to Lloyds specs) twin keeler. The boat was no speed demon, but I don't think that was as a reult of the keel configuration, but more as a result of the compromises towards comfort, strength and stability.

There were unmistakeable advantages to the twin keel configuration. (They were both solid steel/lead? keels, attached to heavy bilges). In winter you plucked her out of the water and put her down, standing on her own legs, rock solid, on a couple of planks. Spring bottom painting was a breeze without pads.....in summer you could "park" it on a sand bank, and run around it when the tide went down.

Level the draft was around three feet. Heeling the lower keel would dig in six feet. If you ran aground, you spilled the main, leveled the boat, backed the jib, turned around and got back to deeper water. When heeled way over it was fun to peek over the windward top side and see the upper keel flying through the air....

The only draw back I remember, is that in a short chop, three feet plus, close hauled, big air pockets would get trapped under the windward keel, and create a very loud "bang". I've heard some cats have a similar situation under the bridge deck....

Oscar

Lady Kay 250 WB #618
Sunrise on the Neuse River...

Edited by - on

dlucier
Master Marine Consultant

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Virgin Islands (United Kingdom)
7583 Posts

Response Posted - 01/08/2004 : 22:43:51

Speaking of twin keels...this is on ebay....

Here's the link to ebay...[url="http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=2452618971&category=26433#ebayphotohosting"]Hurley Twin Keeled Boat[/url]

Edited by - on

osmepneo
Past Commodore

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USA
1420 Posts

Response Posted - 01/09/2004 : 07:46:37

It looks like it would be a fun boat to sail!

My CAtamarin experience is limited to a bad hair day on last year's cruise. They put the sails up and the kinda left them and paid attention to the loud thing on the transom - an ob. I was looking forward to sailing but the boat was one drunken party. And, I'm ashamed to say it was lead by University of Michigan people. Was to have raced Catamarins in Key West but that "shore" excursion was cancelled due to lack of interest. They still raced, and I was ticked off.

Oh, well this year I planning on racing on America Cup boats. Report on that when we get home.

Edited by - on

Drew Scott
Deckhand

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2 Posts

Response Posted - 02/22/2004 : 21:52:18

Ed,

I was wondering how the survey went on the Aquilon? I have been living in the Bay Area for 3 years now and the boat has been for sale the entire time. I had noticed that it had gone up on Yachtworld as "sale pending" and then dropped off. I was wondering if your brother decided not to purchase it and if so why?

Thanks for your time.

Drew Scott

Edited by - on

Ed Montague
Captain

Members Avatar

USA
499 Posts

Response Posted - 02/23/2004 : 14:45:33

Drew, Unfortunately the survey went very poorly. As the yard was preasure washing the bottom, one of the keels literally fell off. Thats right, it looked as though the keel had been just glued on, probably 3M 5200. The keel is just a hollow shell and was full of water. All the jointery (sp) was of poor quality, parts of the hull oil canned when pressed on. The forward cross member of the cockpit had a large ding mark where it had obviously hit something hard and heavy. Blisters everywhere!!! The interior was in poor shape, but repairable if the rest of the boat had been in any decent shape. Stove was gone, water damage in wood trim. All the running rigging is first rate Harkin, self tailing winches, etc. Some of the lines had been replaced with cheap K-Mart type rope. The sails were crisp and clean. My brother felt that he wasn't getting the whole story from the brokers, the gentleman who went out on the trial with us was nice enough, but silent to questions and the partner just seemed slick, if you know what I mean. So my brother walked away with a survey he would be happy to sell to the next looker.

Edited by - on

Derek Crawford
Master Marine Consultant

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USA
3321 Posts

Response Posted - 02/23/2004 : 15:24:35

That's probably why it's been for sale for 3 years...!
Derek

Edited by - on

Ed Montague
Captain

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USA
499 Posts

Response Posted - 02/23/2004 : 17:25:04

To top it all off, no hull number could be found like we would find on Catalina and other boats. They looked everywhere!! And the boat appeared to have never been registered. I saw this same boat at the Pacific Sail Expo in Oakland, CA 6 or 7 years ago. They wanted $70,000 for it.

Edited by - on

Raskal
Navigator

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USA
162 Posts

Response Posted - 02/23/2004 : 18:10:56

I didn't detect any objections yet from some of our naval engineers in the audience, but everyone should understand that bilge keels and catamarans bear no functional relationship to each other; catamarans are the fastest sailing designs in existence because their hulls can plane (an enormous trimaran shattered the Atlantic crossing record last month, in something like 3 1/2 days); bilge keelers are displacement monohulls with the keel weight cleverly distributed on 2 stub keels so that the hull can sit upright when the tide goes out. That last fact is so important in Britain, with its enormous tidal variation, that the Brits will sacrifice performance for convenience when it comes to buying them.

I don't doubt some clever modifications will come along to make bilge keelers fast enough that they may become the next marketing fad for the shoal keel market, but never in a million years will they take on a Hobie...until someone finds a way to fill them with Helium...

Rich Kokoska

Edited by - on

Drew Scott
Deckhand

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2 Posts

Response Posted - 02/24/2004 : 19:46:31

Ed,

Thanks for the update. My wife and I had gone on-board at the boat show a number of years back when they were asking $70k. We both thought it was a nice layout ergonomically and my wife really liked all of the light in the cabins. I was a bit concerned about the lack of daggerboards and what that would do to the sailing characterisitcs (especially to someone like me who is used to sailing mono's)

Too bad that it has deterioriated so much over the years! And most of it has just been sitting there at the dock. Just goes to show that a good design is worthless unless there is quality construction to back it up.

Drew

Edited by - on

lcharlot
Master Marine Consultant

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Antigua and Barbuda
1301 Posts

Response Posted - 02/25/2004 : 00:50:55

<blockquote id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote">Originally posted by Ed Montague
 Blisters everywhere!!! The interior was in poor shape, but
<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote">

I have read that osmotic blistering is mostly a problem in warm, freshwater lakes and rivers. The fact that this Aquilon 26 has suffered extensive blistering in the cold salt water of San Francisco Bay suggests to me that the quality of the gelcoat used is questionable. If the gelcoat isn't Marine grade, what about the structural materials used in the laminates and cross-beams? It sounds like you did the right thing by walking away. If it was me looking at a boat and the keel fell off!... I feel kinda sorry for whoever ends up with this boat.

Edited by - on

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