Skater looks at improvements for 2009

Monday 18 August 2008

The #53 Pignolo 53 Skater hull crashes through the waves in Tunisia

Douglas Marine general manager Chris Mornes has said that the company is looking at increasing its support for the Powerboat P1 teams using its Skater hull, as well as finding new ways of helping them to improve their performance, durability and reliability through new ways of building the race boats.

The #53 Pignolo 53, the #77 Lucas Oil and the #69 Honeyparty.com Evolution-class teams are all using Skater hulls this year to good effect, often showing front-running pace, although not having won any races outright. Mornes has admitted that the light US hull may need extra weight built into its design to improve performance in the combination of Powerboat P1’s power-to-weight ratio and the rough European waters.

The power-to-weight ratio introduced for this year requires Evolution class teams to build their hull up to a weight 3.5 times their horsepower. This ensures that teams are competing on a level playing field. Heavier boats traditionally go better through rough waters, while adding unplanned extra weight to a lightweight hull can cause problems.

“It’s hard to add 2000 to 2500 pounds [900-1100kg] to the boats [to accommodate the power-to-weight ratio],” he said. “We build our boats very light, and adding weight has caused some problems. We’ll have to build our next boat heavier. We also need to work on team support. We need to improve a few things, especially when Powerboat P1 is ready to come to the US.”