Hi it's Lawrence Schlaffer again from Boating
New Zealand, and today we are on the 60 foot Cation.
She's a Roger Hill designed Catamaran.
Entirely carbon fiber, very light 12
tonnes for a 60 footer, an intriguing boat
because she's such a clever blend of
high performance and cruising comfort.
This is a 60 foot vessel, and to say that
she's good for short handed sailing doesn't
sound logical. But the way the sail
controls have been designed and set up.
These twin helm stations, they're replicated
on each side makes, it extremely easy to
sail short handed. She's equipped with
very nice fly-by-wire electronic
controls for the throttles and the gear
levers on the engines - twin Yanmar 75 horsepower.
Everything is controlled from here,
with this B&G instrument array.
Very nice set up. Your view lines to the
foredeck, to the jib or code zero.
Very easy over the way the coach roof has been cambered over here.
I'm sitting with Graham Catley,
the owner of Cation, and he's very
kindly taken us out sailing today.
I was struck by this boats in the blend of the
performance orientated detail and the
cruising comfort. Graham can you tell us
a little bit about how you came upon
this concept? Well we wanted a boat that
was beautifully comfortable for the family
and so forth, but also incredibly fun and
exciting boat to sail. And working with
Roger and North's and Hall's,
guys who came up with that configuration
that is giving us the performance, the
layout of the boat in terms of the
sailing processes. So we wanted a boat
firstly that could be easily handled
with two people, and secondly having a
pole and a Jennicas that drive the boat
along, move the apparent winds forward on
the on the rig, and so that you're getting
that real fast performance,
as well as being really easy to handle.
Most of the processes can be handled from the back of
the boat here. She's also a supremely
comfortable boat - you can sleep
eight people in comfort here.
It's minimalist I would almost call it, it's
beautiful and functional ...
Simplicity was one of the design criteria, the boat was
designed to be simple but sleek, and it's
designed to be relatively light, that
allowed us to carry the comforts ...
the dishwashers, and ovens and all sorts of
things that are in the boat, and while
maintaining a good high performance.
Clearly every time
we've been sailing it sails on most
points of sail faster than the wind that
you're sailing in. And so that's
indicatively telling us that as the
wind gets up over 20 to 25 knots we're
going to be doing those sorts of speeds
comfortably in it.
There's no point in having a vessel of this size if you
can't actually entertain people and one
of the best ways to illustrate why this
boat is so successful for entertaining
is the saloon table. It unfolds into
about five times its current size.
You can use it if you're two people or
twelve people on board, and most
importantly it's very easy to deploy
this table. And there we go more than
enough space for entertaining all your
favourite friends.
So the boat is set up to handle eight
guests including the owner and his wife.
We've got two cabins like this - mirror images
of one another,
one on the other side, double bed each with their own en-suite,
with a separate bathroom and toilet,
which just makes life very, very
comfortable.
A good place to relax on a hot summer's day, it's a daybed
but like many things on this boat
there's a lot of different features and
different functions that go into the
design. This for example opens, the bed to
the master cabin is just below, if you
want extra ventilation you could open
this hatch it's a great flow of air
through the system over here.
Another part of the easy sail
equation is the self tacker - she's got a
very wide track which gives you a fairly
sizable jib which is also equipped with
a code zero of course or a couple of
code zeros, part of it which makes sail
handling so easy is the roller furling
in the boom. I've watched this going up
and down a couple of times today and I must say I was
absolutely staggered at how nicely it was
deployed on each occasion. So if you've
ever sailed on a large Catamaran with a
deep roach main you'll know that
dropping the main or raising it for that
matter is a problem because you always
have to undo the headboard from the
shackle which invariably involves
climbing onto the boom and undoing it,
like that this Cat has got a
much nicer an ingenious system for
raising and lowering and unclipping
the sail which doesn't require you to climb
anywhere near the boom.
I'm sitting with Roger Hill the designer of Cation,
am I right in saying that the entire vessel
is carbon fiber? Well, it is 100%
carbon fibre, the purpose of this boat is
to optimise the performance of it, but
also make it a live aboard
cruising yacht. So any weight that
doesn't need to be there shouldn't
be there because it has a detrimental
effect on how the boat performs. She's a
very big boat, how many people need you
likely to be sailing with? Well that's
for eight. Probably not the case very often
with Graham because the intends to do
a lot of sailing with just him and his wife.
There's a crew berth planned for the bow,
the boat has to be a dual purpose boat a
four cabin layout it's pretty luxurious
for a boat of this style - you know which is high performance.
I've chatted to quite
a number of the people that are on board
today ... it'd be true to say that this is
a collaborative effort in the sense that
a lot of people provided input into the
way things evolved? It's a good team by
the sounds of it? Oh absolutely I mean it's
one of the great pleasures of
being a yacht designer in Auckland, when
you do a project like this you have
absolutely the best people in the world
to work with, you know? And no single
designer can do everything that you see
in this boat - it's just not feasible.
Now you could have a go at it,
but then someone would ultimately have to go
and employ one of those people anyway so
we put together this team they're really
the top people in the world it's my
design but all these other people have
made a big contribution. I was
particularly struck to discover dagger
boards move up and down considerably.
But also the rudders are completely
rectractable, which ultimately means you can
get this boat into a fairly shallow
Anchorage if you wish to. I'll put it on
the beach part of the brief was that the
boat had to be able to do that for the
owner to have to get the boat up to his
holiday house in Mangawhai. You know
we can literally get it to float in
about 800 mill of water.
I understand the
rudders have got a Tee section, a sort of
a foil on them as well you know they
designed to predetermined hydrodynamic
shape? Yes they are actually and they the
purpose they serve really is to control
vertical motion and the stern in a way.
If you see the boat sailing hard on the
wind with a rudder like that it just
doesn't pitch. It controls the stern
squat. So as you go faster and faster
with a displacement hold, generally they squat
in their stern. This rudder stop that, and it's
just when the boats particularly going
to wind with it's just an amazing effect.. yip.
So this is the port asymmetric dagger
board - and it's partially raised. When it's
fully deployed fully down the draft of
the Cat goes to 3.8 meters when it's
fully up, it's only about 600 millimeters.
It's particularly clever in that, the way the
curve or the Kemba of this dagger board
works you can take this dagger board out
from the top which makes maintenance a
lot easier obviously. Very clever.
On a boat this size it's hard to control
things like lighting and services like
air conditioning and heating but it
becomes an extremely easy job with
something like Seazone. You can create the
right lighting literally at the touch of
a button. The other advantage of
Seazone - because it runs on a network
rather than having to run wire,
conventional copper wire throughout the
boat, you can use the Seazones network
system and, it cuts something in the
order of two hundred kilograms out of
what would be a conventional wiring
situation. It's a great system.
There is no shortage of refrigeration on
this vessle. She's in fact equipped with
three very large fridges. The first one
is a freezer - built into the desktop over here
under the navigation station. Heaps of
space, it's empty at the moment, but as you can
see you can pack a lot of stuff in here.
In the galley we've got a much more
conventional fridge that opens over there.
But my favorite fridge on this vessel is
the one that in the cockpit. Just when
you need it, when you need a cold beer.
It's built very cleverly under the
cockpit seat - and it's a fully
functioning built-in fridge. It's not
just a cool locker, it's an actual fridge.
One of the best things about the
entertainment space on this boat is the
way the flow between the cockpit and the
saloon is accentuated by these sliding doors.
And on the starboard side you have
a window which slides all the way out
here, so if the weather is inclement
everything closes up keeps you nice, warm
and cozy. But on a sunny day like this you
open it up completely they fold away
inside the bulkheads out of sight...
It's just glorious.
She's one impressive vessel..
the most disturbing part of today was
that we had very light wind so we
couldn't actually see her at her full potential.
But I'm told they've headed
out in 20-25 knots of wind, and she as you
might expect goes remarkably well.
One of the most intriguing designs I've seen in
a long time. A very clever blend of the
functionality of the design with this
high performance. She's a great vessel
and I'm looking forward to seeing her, at
some point in better wind conditions.
John Eichelsheim from Boating New Zealand.
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