Omahu - 16m Displacement Power Catamaran

Design Concept

New Zealand multihull designer Roger Hill designed this long-range displacement power cat for an existing client, whose previous boat was sailing cat, also designed by Roger, who is now ready for some long range adventures around the bottom of the South Island of New Zealand in the Summer and cruising around the Pacific islands during the Winter.

The accent is on comfort rather than speed and plenty of space for two couples to live aboard along with all of the equipment and storage required for long trips in remote places with no easy access to fuel, water, and food.

Construction

Because of previous experience and construction success, Roger based the design for construction with DuFLEX Composite panels and construction began this month at Lifestyle Yachts in Pipiroa, New Zealand.

The owners of Omahu decided on a dark blue hull which dictated the choice of foam core to be used in the hull and transom areas. A combination of Divinycell HP80 and HP100 foam cores in 20mm were chosen for the DuFLEX Strip Planks used for these areas to provide elevated temperature performance under the dark blue paint and offering high properties in all significant areas including mechanical performance, elongation to break, adhesion/peel strength, fracture toughness and dimensional stability.  Divinycell HP is type approved by DNV-GL Maritime.

The panels were laminated with a high temperature laminating resin with an 800grm unidirectional E-Fibreglass and scarfed on the shorter edges of the panels to facilitate joining to panels to the full length of the hulls and the DuFLEX Z-Press was shipped with the panels to New Zealand.

Other DuFLEX Composite Panels components in the first shipment included wingdeck, soles, girders, webs, bulkheads and longitudinal all supplied in CNC-Routed Kit Form with various core types and densities – from H100 in 25mm and 30mm laminated with an 800grm unidirectional for strip planking the wing-deck sections,  to 25mm H80 with 2 layers of 600grm or 800grm double bias on either side for the bulkheads – that were engineered to suit the design loads in the vessel.  ATL also manufactured the CNC-routed MDF Build Jig for the project and each panel type, including the jig, was supplied with a CNC nesting and joining booklet to aid in the assembly process.

More soon….