Archive for February, 2010

Kokomo – the 3rd in a series of Dubois designed Superyachts for the same owner – had her sails fitted and trialed on the Auckland Harbor over the last week by Doyle NZ. She hosts a complete inventory of Doyle Stratis membranes designed and produced in New Zealand, and easily boasts many records in sail construction and sizing world wide. At 2,227 square meters (23,971 square feet) the Gennaker is thought to be the largest sail ever constructed. The working inventory comprises of a total of 3,038 square meters (32,688 square feet) of Stratis membrane sails, and many innovations in sail handling systems and detailing. The Mainsail has a custom designed boom furling system that utilizes the conventional bolt rope system of the Southern Spars, but also a self loading batten car system jointly designed and tested by Doyle and Southern Spars over the last 18 months, which addresses many of the weak points of boom furling systems with the advantages of full battens in a yacht of this size.

Building and designing Stratis membranes for this sized boat facilitated the need for a new view on the engineering and safety margins along with a new custom built 6,500 square meters Stratis lamination facility in Auckland. Over the period of 12 months Richard Bouzaid and Peter Heppel utilized the fabric structural design program Relax 2 to accurately model potential loads and redesign the previously used structural load paths to better address the enormous loads that this boat will generate. The investment and lessons learned from this new generation of Superyacht places Doyle well and truly at the leading edge of this market and the future of these high performance luxury yachts.