As some of you may remember, I?m building a replacement for my beloved, but aging, EC12.
Its taking a while, thanks in no small part to a new job and to living in a unit without a garage to work in, (have you ever tried spray painting in your lounge room!!!) but progress is still ongoing.
Im at the point where I am almost happy with the hull, keel and rudder plugs so I thought I give you guys a look at how things are shaping up before I make moulds.
Firstly thanks for the kind words. The history of the project is that some of the guys I sail with thought it would be cool to have a “new” style hull instead of the current EC12 shape. That way our boats only look 20 years old rather than 40ish!.
I liked the idea of a one design hull & deck with a max draft and a min/max displacement but you can build your own keels or bulbs or twin rudders much like the real rule. That way you can experiment without building new hulls & rigs.
So I started drawing the hull and with a slight increase in draft (215mm instead of the EC12s 200mm) & displacement the boat has about 30% more stability than my current EC12.
We then started thinking of different rigs, scaled down versions of the real ones. Compared to the EC12 they will have longer booms with maybe genoas or kites or whatever you can run with a max of four channels. I figure if a spinnaker is the be all and end all (and hey, it might be) then the extra weight from the winches and stuff would mean you would be slower up hill and faster down. I?m not sure what is fastest around the track but it will be a good way to prove what a lot of people have so far only guessed about. (not mentioning any names???)
My plan is to get the first boat tuned up against the EC12 (it will be interesting to see which is faster out of a heavier boat with more sail or a lighter one with less) and keep building new hulls as required. So far I have to build 3 boats and I hope to get more people joining in once we get racing.
I am working along the same lines you are in changing around the EC-12. We call it the GC-12 as in Gulf Coast because we are located in Texas not far from the coast. The problem here was that I have two multi-sets of molds that are now illegal. That is a lot of dough to just pitchout the back door, so I wanted to try and do something with them.
Obviously yours looks much more up to date, don’t worry about competing with an EC boat, yours will slaughter an EC boat under any wind condititions unless you build it for extremely heavy. The advantage of the winged keel will make your boat much more than 30% stiffer.
I am in the process of taking an existing EC boat and adding a winged keep to it and a genoa just to see what comes of it. Since we have such a mixed bag of models here in town it will be handy in the “run what your brung” event once a month, but only on light air days. It would be useless any other time. Still… in extrememly light air the EC is a tough boat to beat… it can out “ghost” most others. Not exactly sailing or racing… more like controlled drifting. Actually your boat bears a strong resemblance to the old VORTEX 60 which was based on US 26 Intrepid. They only made a few of them. Also it is very close to the current AC class from what I can see… have you checked your measurements to see if you comply? Might be something to think about before molding. A few small changes might net you something extra. Still it is a great looking boat as is.
troy
that is a great looking hull. wow i cant wait to find out more info on it. and need more pictures
great job.
cougar
long live the cup and cris dickson
No pics yet as there are still too many arguements about how to attach and what angle and how much etc… but as soon as I get something solid they will appear here… you betcha.
