Box 8.5

 

Not a plug for this but I thought it was a cool boat and maybe someone would like to see it:

Box 8.5 is the yacht bred from our frustration that mid sized high performance cats are financially out of our reach. Spending 300k on a lake boat didn’t sit well with us so we went about designing and building our 28ft option to enter the market 1/3 the cost of boats only 5ft longer! The concept is for a one-design yacht that is easily and quickly rigged and de-rigged, light enough to tow with a regular vehicle and able to be shipped in a container with up to three other boats. The yacht is designed to be manageable in the marginal moments of bearing away and windy running, carrying the main beam aft and the buoyancy forward with lots of reserve buoyancy while still supporting enough horsepower in sail area and smooth underwater lines to hit 20kts in 12-13kts of wind!

We offer the yacht in kit set options, differing in stages of completion to give people more options to fit their budget. Initially the kit concept involved CNC machined polystyrene cores wrapped in carbon laminates. Our first yacht seen in the sea trials video is built this way and to be honest we have become very attached to the “poly plug”.

The reality however became obvious when we had fluctuations in weight in the two hulls from resin soak and the worry that kit set builders could modifying the hull shapes which is clearly not conducive to a strong one-design class. The new hulls are all female moulded carbon/foam/glass and epoxy infused. The kit set purchaser gets the hull “shells” in two halves with all the materials to join them and finish the yacht along with everything else for a complete platform. The finished yacht buyers get a boat ready to sail, all that is needed is sails.

Masts are 230mm rotating carbon sections supplied by C-Tech in NZ along with all the carbon tubing for tillers, bow pole and lifting posts. The Box 8.5 may not be the fastest most technologically advanced new one design on the market but the “bang for buck” is unparalleled. With two sold and more in the pipeline we are finally be able to go racing a mid size high performance multi for realistic cost.

Two boats will compete in the Bay-to-Bay yacht race next month in Queensland, Australia and at least two will be at the Multihull Nationals in Airlie Beach later in the year.
Platform kit sets start at $29,990 AUD. The completed yacht option is $75,000 AUD (both ex GST).