Sep16-TBHHCats-Final.qxp_SH-March10 Table Final 13/07/2016 11:27 Page 44
Creating (and living) the dream
The world of large performance cats is coming alive with a vengeance
Hudson Hakes HH66
Large performance multihulls offer
the best of all worlds – sailing
excitement, comfort and style, both
racing and cruising – and are
entering their next generation with
the recent launching of the HH66
catamaran, built by Hudson Yacht &
Marine. This is the latest in a long
series of designs from Californiabased Morrelli & Melvin, who have
been leaders in not only finding the
right balance but also optimising
the competing elements of speed,
style and reliability into bold new
innovative designs. Couple this
design refinement with one of the
world’s largest integrated
production builders in advanced
composites and the results are
spectacular.
Hudson’s history in building large
performance cats goes back several
years, with eight 60ft fast luxury
multihulls already under their belt.
Builder Paul Hakes’s own
relationship with Gino Morrelli goes
back further with the development
of small, fast cats like the SL33,
introduced in 2008 for the
European lake sailing market. This
fast 650kg, 10m design also
caught the attention of America’s
Cup contenders of the day who
were new to the multihull genre,
both Luna Rossa and Team New
44 SEAHORSE
Zealand getting their own boats to
play with as they learned more
about multihull sailing and design.
Yet Hakes and Morrelli actually
go back further still, to Hakes’s
days at Cookson Boats during the
building of Steve Fossett’s Jules
Verne-contender PlayStation, a
100ft monster from the late 1990s
designed by Morrelli & Melvin. It
was here that Hakes got a taste for
the uniquely high static and
dynamic loading inherent to big cats
and the structures needed to
accommodate these loads in an
offshore performance context.
In design evolution Hakes says
the HH66 differs slightly from its
60ft predecessors – they’re not only
larger for size sake, but based on
feedback from the 60ft owners.
‘They found that the 60ft design
was large enough to accommodate
the owners and their guests, but
not to comfortably accommodate
the minimum two full-time crew
needed to manage a boat of this
size and complexity,’ said Hakes
‘Many thought that one or at
most two crew would be sufficient
for boat handling and the
maintenance and operation of
simple onboard systems, but as
these boats became more complex
it became apparent that two pros
were needed to allow the owner and
Modern, fast,
comfortable
and very well
finished, not
a bad way to
cruise around
the world…
stopping off
occasionally
for a nice
‘venue’
regatta
guests a measure of comfort when
making journeys of any significant
length.’
Another important element in the
new design is the evolution from
centreboards to daggerboards.
At 6m long and fabricated using
300kg of carbon, the latest boards
are curved slightly inboard for
efficiency. And this configuration is
efficient, giving a 20% boost in
lift/drag efficiency and generating
up to 3 tons of lift. Fully deployed
these boards yield a 4m draft; but
when cruising in shallower waters
the boat still performs well with
them partly raised.
The T-shaped rudders of the
HH66 contribute as well,
generating 800kg of lift to help
dampen pitching, in turn increasing
comfort and speed. In total the
foils generate nearly 4 tons of lift
when the boat is at speed.
With all this load, the boards
inevitably have to be robust: the
designed static load limit is 8.5
tons and the dynamic load limit
much greater. To ensure reliability,
HYM fully test each board before
installation. The daggerboard is
also engineered to take 0.5m
deflection at 17 tons of load, with a
breaking strength of twice this
amount. But it’s important that the
engineered maximum load is not
Sep16-TBHHCats-Final.qxp_SH-March10 Table Final 13/07/2016 11:28 Page 45
too high: if the boat grounds at high
speed the foil needs to break and
not the boat.
This kind of tailored engineering
is possible due to the scale of
HYM’s operation; there is complete
digital control on the design, tooling
and fabrication of parts both large
and small. This vertical integration
in the design process allowed
Morrelli to nearly achieve his ideal
design scenario, leaving the hull
shapes to be the last element in
the design process – because all
the other constituent pieces of the
boat, their weight and their position
help drive the choice of hull shapes
needed to maximise performance.
Having said this, the HH66 hull
design is a bit more generous than
seen on other similar cats, in part
because Morrelli and Hakes agree
that when owner specification and
cruising gear inevitably tip the
scales beyond the original design
weight, the effects on hull trim are
less pronounced with a less
deleterious effect on performance.
There are other practical
elements that make the HH66
distinguishable from the previous
generation of this genre: for
example, rather than install complex
and enormously expensive
co-generation electrical systems
that limit fossil-fuel dependence but
historically lead to myriad problems,
the HH66 is powered by two
old-school but highly efficient 80hp
Yanmar marine diesels. Being easily
driven, this big cat does not
consume much fuel anyway; a
calculation made for a client
interested in trans-Atlantic
crossings found that if the wind
stopped completely and it became
necessary to proceed under power,
at a modest 6kt the boat would
have a range of about 1,500
miles… not bad.
If a client does insist on having a
carbon-free platform to cruise the
world, HYM can accommodate it,
having invested on the previousgeneration boats in the
development of retractable skegs,
lithium battery banks, dualpropulsion/generation prop
systems, solar panels, 280V
electric engines and the energymanagement systems to control
them all. Not such an easy fix on a
remote Pacific isle, though…
Armed with a team of 25
in-house engineers and designers
at HYM, Hakes is able to efficiently
translate design concepts into
reality across an entire project,
since these boats are built from
ical
n
h
TecBrief
strong, stable carbon tooling to
optimise longterm cost and
production efficiency. This is
particularly important, given that
HYM now has no fewer than six of
these 66-footers in production.
Yet, as Paul points out,
‘production’ is a relative term for
these boats, when each of the
owners and their project managers
have specific requirements in their
choices of deck and interior
layouts, onboard equipment and
the systems needed to support the
functionality of each choice.
‘Our in-house engineering and
design staff work with our clients to
lay out the options,’ says Hakes,
‘This makes the process easy and
efficient. We integrate the design
and engineering of the tooling and
components, then put parameters
on the options, so performance is
not unreasonably sacrificed and the
overall design concept is not
compromised. This is important
when we go through a fabrication
process of several months, while
we try to stay within reasonable
timelines and deliver the quality the
customer expects as well as the
reliability to ensure problem-free
sailing over the long term.’
An example of how HYM can
customise a production boat is in
steering station choices. The last
generation of luxury performance
cats had steering stations located
forward in the boat, either fully or
partially enclosed within the cabin
structure. While certainly secure
from the weather, this also limited
the helmsman’s ability to have any
visceral feel for the boat, an
element in sailing that every sailor
needs. With the high speeds
possible for these big fast cats,
Hakes and Morrelli also felt that it
would be safer to have weight
trimmed further aft in the boat.
To address this and the practical
matter of how to dock a boat that is
nearly as wide as it is long, HYM’s
engineers came up with a clever
solution in the helm station, where
not only are there seats available to
accommodate the helm on each
hull, but the steering pedestals
themselves rotate to allow greater
visibility in close manoeuvres.
‘This was a complex feature that
we were only able to achieve with
the help of efficient fabrication
based on our digital design tools,’
says Hakes. ‘It would not have
been practical without this facility.’
The helm detail is just one of
many factors that elevate the HH66
and set her apart from her
predecessors and other market
offerings. State-of-the-art technical
details, cutting-edge design, bestpractice construction and attention
to detail combine, setting a new
standard in the realm of luxury
performance cruising multihulls.
HYM and Morrelli & Melvin have
achieved a bold, yet refined, dualpurpose yacht that will undoubtedly
propel the brand into the future.
The first HH66 is already turning
heads in Valencia and is sure to
stun when she makes her official
debut in Cannes this autumn.
www.hhcatamarans.com
o
Rather than
follow the
previous
trend on
these large
modern cats
with the
steering
position
buried inside
the interior,
the helmsman
of the new
HH66 is more
involved in
the sailing of
the boat while
still enjoying
generous
protection
from the
elements
Brought to you in association with
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