Frank Pong goes one bigger

by Courtesy Scuttlebutteurope on 11 Aug 2004 Building the fastest possible sailboats for oceanic record-breaking is the newest game in town and the ante just went up as Frank Pong's new 115-foot Juan Kouyoumdjian-designed super maxi rolled out of the shed at DK Yachts in Malaysia.

The design brief specified a lightweight, high performance monohull capable of sailing offshore and achieving speeds sufficient to break existing oceanic records, combining innovative solutions and without the restriction of any rule or qualification society. The following excerpts from the information on the DK Yachts website provide insight into this amazing project.

‘The combination of soft sails and a rotating wing mast allow us to achieve a very wide range of power without requiring a massive rig compression with a simple, non-spreader rig. Such a rig also allows the mast to be able to cant to windward. By doing so the gains are two-fold:

Improved stability - by shifting the centre of gravity to windward.

Thrust - by turning forward the lift component of the sails, i.e.: in similarly reducing heeling moment. The optimal arrangement of such a rig requires it to be attached to the boat in such a way as to minimize the compression loads when canting - or simply when upright. This obviously means a wide shroud base.

Within a monohull concept, this translates into a wide boat, which in turn increases the hydrodynamic drag, so reducing the speed potential. It therefore became apparent that to go forward we must combine a narrow hull with a wide shroud base, therefore we find ourselves with giant wings. Once the wings have been acknowledged, the next step, of filling them with water to further increase the righting moment, becomes self-evident.

‘The speed range of this sailboat is so large that it requires radically new blends of power and resistance. Since the boat will never sail 'downwind', due to its speed (the apparent wind angle during sailing will range from 17 deg upwind to a maximum of 92 deg downwind) the sail combinations go from a maximum power full mainsail and gennaker to a three-reef mainsail with staysail.

These aerodynamic combinations have to be properly balanced under the water throughout the speed range. Here it gets tricky, as we ask the same underwater configuration to work in equilibrium for a full mainsail and gennaker at 10 degrees heel and 12 to 15 knots boat speed, and also with a keel canted 30 deg, a boat heeled 20 deg and a three-reef mainsail and staysail.

Although a combination of canting keel and asymmetric daggerboards has been analysed, such solution is left for future developments of the boat.’

For complete information, and drawings: www.dkyachts.com/p2_115.htm

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