News on Standamaran?

[rkdjones]

A few years back I was intrigued by the SIC Standamaran 16' catamaran.  All the reviews claimed it was game-changer in terms of speed and glide.  Yet I just haven't heard much about them recently or anyone else trying the design.  It seems like a good idea on flatwater.  Anyone seen, paddled, or heard much about them recently?
Robert

[dabigkahuna]

I've been wondering the same thing.  Seems like a great concept and all the reports were positive.  So what happened?

[PonoBill]

Expensive, not that much faster, strictly unlimited. Mark races his in all the Maui races he has time to paddle, and there's a few around, but they are not cheap.

[DavidJohn]

It seems to be right up there with the leaders in this pic..

[PonoBill]

Yup, Mark does well with it, though Mark would be pretty fast on a locker door.

[rkdjones]

I spoke to some guys from Easy Rider Kayaks at the Northwest Paddle Fest.  They claimed that their stand-up-catamaran (SUC) did really well at the Round the Rock race; I can't recall their precise claim and I can't find detailed race results.  Their SUC is 2 hulls with holes in them for your feet, granted not very elegant.  I get that it is not a surfboard,or a board at all for that matter, but does a catamaran design work better for flatwater paddling.  We had to wait a long time for displacement bows to finally start showing up on SUPs; will multihulls be the next step toward a faster Stand-up-___?  Robert

[PonoBill]

I'm building a tunnel hull 19', but that's kind of a different thing. Multihulls with the hulls close together have an energy problem (so does my tunnel hull) in that the bow waves bounce back and forth off the hulls and create interference patterns. You might suppose that cats are so wide to gain max stability, but it's mostly so the bow wave from each hull passes behind the other. Not a big deal when they plane, but draggy when they aren't.

[TallDude]

Maybe you can shallow and/ or taper the tunnels so the internal bow wakes compresses the trapped air? Then use the air bubbles to lubricate the hull like they do with ships.

[PonoBill]

I'm incorporating a NACA duct at the nose of the duct to increase the pressure in the throat. My theory is that will shear some of the flow through the tunnel and slow it down, decreasing the skin friction. We'll see. It worked in the model (sort of).