Building the Stealth plywodd Foiler by Barry Marmion

Pics sent by Barry Marmion from the Stealth plywood Foiler featured yesterday: catsailingnews.com/2014/12/custom-stealth-foiler-from-australia.html

For the F18 OP I contacted Tony Grainger that was developing a foam plank system, pre cut, to build one of his Trimaran amas, to adapt it for an F18/A-Class hull. Still waiting for more info on the project for home builders.

Meanwhile Barry is using the good old plywood system in a great way to build a modern flying cat.

Barry Marmion on the project: “… Stealth Aus, concept I developed with my son Brad who designed the hulls. I did not have a big budget so I built the 15′ 6” hulls out of ply in my carport. I Glued 3 broken sections of A class carbon mast together and rigged it with a 2nd hand cut down A class main to end up with a boat costing $ 4,500.

After watching C class foiling Brad and I decided to design and retro fit foils to the Stealth. To construct the moulds we had 8 plugs (4 for each foil) made up using a router machine at RMIT, and then took moulds of the pugs. The 1st set foils I laid up had 10 layers of 200 gram carbon and a expanding foam core, they weren’t up to the stresses and broke under the keel. The 2nd foils of consisted of 15 layers of C F with end grain cedar core They are still good a bit heavy (5 kg) each.

The epoxy glue for the foils was sponsored and supplied by Marine Timbers and the rest of the materials for moulds and foils cost around $ 2,500.
It has not been an easy development process due to the fact that Stealth was not built for foiling.. Breakages include ! set of foils, 4 rudder blades, 5 rudder boxes, had to reinforce the main bulkheads,

My thanks to Robbee who tirelessly developed the tuning of Stealth Aus” —  More pics below.