Trimaran Design

The trimaran design is made up of three hulls: two sponsons and one main hull. The sponsons stabilise the thin main hull, just like on a helicopter that can land on water.

This is a major feature this differentiates it from other boats like catamarans, which only have two hulls and therefore are still prone to capsizing. Trimarans cannot capsize (unless in like a hurricane, but not in normal sailing weather).

They do however suffer from front rolls like catamarans (one of which can be seen on the sailing video on the homepage), which are caused by to much weight at the front.

The trimaran usually has only one sail and the boom is angled upwards to stop the person getting hit by the boom (they are sitting in the main hull). A gib can be used in theory, but just adds more complication to a boat that is designed to be simple to use.

It has a centreboard unlike a catamaran (which uses it's two hulls to counteract the force of the wind), which can be raised or lowered and the normal kicker, cunnigham and outhaul adjustments that are present on all boats.

When used as a yacht concept, trimarans are superior in size (they have three hulls containing three times as much space as a monohull of the same length), but are the slowest yacht (because the three hulls cause excess drag to motion).

The photo is of David in his trimaran and you can see how the design is completely different to any other boat concept.