We featured the beach trimaran named “Hop” in this post last summer. There were some good pics, but no video of the boat sailing.
Site contributor Ian McGehee recently found this video of a Hop under sail and shares the YT video link with us here (below). Ian also commented: “This was an interesting 1980’s design that you featured a while back when one was up for sale, not a lot here but it’s nice to see how it performs under sail…pretty much as I’d suspected based on the slinky shapes (not a ton of inherent righting moment from the amas) and lower tech materials of that era- she’s probably fairly heavy by modern standards and combined with all that structure things are very low in the water…. which makes for a pretty wet ride considering the mild surface conditions. Still looks fun as hell, just maybe not so much when it’s not warm out.”
Here is the video…
Thank you, Ian, for finding this. You are right: old materials used and looks (without the sailor) fairly heavy. Poor sailing on close reach. In my opinion due to to much rocker in the hullshape. But suprisingl concept though, looks a bit like the modern Weta!
Hi Dutchy,
I’m glad others appreciate this kind of thing too, and Joe deserves a lot of thanks and credit for making it possible and creating/maintaining this incredible resource and wide ranging archive of small tri info.
This boat is very much of its time as far as hull shapes go and maybe slightly ahead when it comes to the aluminum tube parts…Hobie cats had used structural extrusions that way but tris like that were not so common…early 80’s was the era where Dick Newick -style swoopy molded crossarms were the cutting edge in tri design, and neat as those were I think they were in many cases still rooted in earlier solid bridge decks, just made with all but the necessary structural parts carved away.
This one gets rid of that entirely and as you say is almost Weta-like in that respect but is still staying to that more traditional sailboat hull shape of earlier eras with that traditional sheer line and bow profile that “good” boats were “supposed” to have, and lots of rocker that I think was in many cases an attempt to overcome tacking problems that many people still considered inherent flaws in all multihulls and was the Achilles heel of Hobie cats with no centerboards. I think along with more modern hull designs the way people sail them has changed to some degree and tris are being judged less by monohull standards than they were decades ago, so that rocker has all but disappeared.
It would be very interesting to see a design like this made lighter with the various advanced materials that are available now…even with the original hulls if you replaced the tubes and spars with CF, used synthetic rigging and ultra-modern sail materials, etc. to shave weight off, I imagine the performance would be improved greatly and that those old school hull shapes would come away as not as much of a problem as they might seem.
I see more options for better sailing with this boat.
a traveler for the mainsheet and a well-tensioned luff of the jib would improve the sailing characteristics.
When it can reach a speed above 6 knots you could get so much lift with wing profiles on side hulls that it becomes much less water ballet and increase the speed up to ten knots.