Start to Finish: Building Our 50' Skater
 

We are finally in the home stretch of finishing our 50' Skater. It has been a long process to get this boat built the way we need it - to eventually attempt the around the world speed record - but we are nearing the end and should be on the water in a few months.

We thought you might like to see the build process so we will post photos from the very beginning until the boat is done. We plan on doing some testing at poker runs later this year before attempting any endurance records so keep an eye out for a silver and black 50' Skater rolling through a town near you!

We will start out with the 46 Skater hull mold being guide coated. And the start of balsa core installation

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When they say a flat deck skater, it truly starts out as a big flat piece of cored fiberglass. Here it is on the table being vacuum bagged.

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Kevlar anywhere there is a corner, it is not as stiff as carbon and fiberglass so it will flex instead of break. We may end up in huge waves a thousand miles from shore so we wanted it to have quite a bit more laminate and bracing than a normal Skater
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There was another 46 Skater sitting there so Peter taped the side in sections and measured the inside then did the math to figure out how much fuel was in each section to see where and how big of fuel tanks we could get. We ended up with main tanks that are 600 gallons each sitting at the center of gravity and two 100 gallon tanks about 3/4 of the way to the front.

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Interesting ride to cross the Alantic with. What kind of power?

the amount of effort, care and detail in those pics is staggering. If people only knew what it takes to set core at that level. Great pics, its not often you get to see a view like that. . . . . the fit and finish of that core is mind bending.

I notice a section of the tunnels vertical wall at the stern has a marine ply laminate in instead of end grain. Never seen that done before was this part of the "over building" heavy seas program? Just curious, keep pics coming . . .

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Awesome trip!

Hope you transmit via satellite so we can watch in real time, day and night.

where are the scheduled refuel stations?







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We are building custom diesels, they are based on a Duramax. I will add more pics each night.

The guys at skater that laid up my boat have worked there for 30 years. They have a lot of experience and are definitely good at what they do.
You know the amount of work it takes to do this, which is why it takes so long to build a Skater compared to other brands.

The marine ply is for more strength. There are several areas we used plywood instead of balsa as a core to get more strength.

I'm building the boat to set long distance endurance records, and after we started building it and looking at different records we wanted to try to break the distances kept growing and getting more complicated and then we decided the biggest record would be the around the world record.

We have a satellite uplink and 8 cameras on the boat and will be transmitting live the whole way on each endurance record attempt. When we did the Bermuda Challenge we had live video with one camera the whole way.

There is a lot of logistics to setting the around the world record, we have worked on the logistics side of it for two years now. studying weather patterns from the last 30 years, plotting a course that we will have enough range to be able to make and contacting countries to see what we will have to do to be able to fuel up but not spend a lot of time doing paperwork when we get there. With the course we are planning on right now there will be 16 fuel stops. The longest legs will be San Diego, California to Hawaii, and then Hawaii to the marshal islands. Each of those runs will be around 2,400 miles. All the other legs of the trip will be less then 1,800 miles.

will you need fuel bladders or do you think you can do a 2400 mile leg on 1400 gallons of diesel?

Great Thread. I caught a write up last year in Boating mag.. I assume this is you.

Link http://www.boatingmag.com/record-breaking-boat-design

Congrats going forward!! ..I look forward to watching the progress and adventure your taking.

You will have to share the inflatable fender Idea...

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definitely once in a lifetime...gotta do it!





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Our design goal with the boat is to be able to get 2 mpg at 100 mph with a few hundred gallons of fuel in the boat. When we have it full of fuel that number is going to go down but we can either run slower to get better mileage on some of the legs or if we end up not getting the mileage we want then we will add fuel bladders for the longest runs.

Being able to get 2 mpg seems pretty optimistic in a big high performance boat, but with the Skater v-bottom with the diesels we were able to get 2 mpg at 84 mph and this is a catamaran which will be more efficient and we will be able to lean the motors down on the fly just like in an airplane to get the best fuel burn.

Great Thread!
Impressive workmanship (although I'm not surprised knowing it's a Skater)
Looking forward to following your progress.

The whole concept of what you are doing is beyond my comprehension. Trying to cover every possible scenario, that could go wrong out in the middle of the ocean is such an immense task in itself. Building a boat capable of the voyage and just getting yourselves physically and mentally prepared is a huge challenge.

This is awesome, I commend you and all those involved in your vision.

RR

Here is the Magazine article Boating mag did on the boat.
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Thanks for sharing your progress, best of luck. As rak rua said beyond comprehension.

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This is so awesome!! Thanks for sharing all the details as you go. I have a feeling this is going to be one of the all-time best threads on OSO.

Awesome project! I'm looking forward to see if you can reach those (optimistic?) burn rates with several hundred gallons of fuel on board at 100 mph. What's your target weight? With all the ply and extra reinforcing, diesels, etc, never mind all the endurance goodies, I would think this is going to be fairly heavy.

What are you going to use for a chase boat?

We could use a C130 aircraft. That would be handy, they could drop us spare parts.

When we did the Bermuda challenge people always ask what we Were going to use for a chase boat, the problem was there is no boat in the world that could go as fast for as long as we could in the diesel v-bottom Skater. We had no chase boat, the coast guard helicopter cannot go out as far as we were going, your only hope for help was if there was a cruise ship or container ship close by and you might be waiting days for them to get there. It was really dangerous to do the run. Another thing to think about is if anything broke that caused us to have to idle back on one engine we could have been 600 miles from shore, idling at 6 mph would take a week running 24 hours a day if you could keep it going reasonably straight.

But on that question, we have already offered to be a chase boat for anyone trying to set an endurance record. We could follow them to be a safety boat, have cameras and video. Or we could position the boat close by and be able to run out if they needed help. We are putting a big tow eye in the back to be able to tow someone on plane.

After posting I was thinking I should have said plane. It's a shame that there are so few PBY Catalinas still flying, they would have been ideal for the project.

This is truly amazing. Good luck to all involved. Thanks for sharing.

Towing is what Duramaxes do best! :cool:

Nice Thread Tyson

Go man Go!! And Tristan too!!

Great project, good luck with her, there great boats, I used to get to take take of Ruthless , still miss rubbing on her.

We were originally going to use Cummins diesels, here we were test fitting them to see where to put stringers in the engine compartment.

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Thanks for sharing, I know there are hundreds of hours of thought and prep, to go with these pictures.

Incredible project, best of luck on you record setting endeavors!

In these pics the boat is out of the mold and they have added height to the side of the boat and transom for more freeboard and cut the basic side profile shape.

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These are the gas tanks in the front of my boat. We will only need to fill them on a few of the longest runs. I have a fuel pump From FASS fuel systems that works both directions that can transfer fuel from the main tanks to the front tanks and back. In the right situation I will be able to transfer fuel to the front tanks to make the boat handle big waves better with out it being like a water ballast tank that actually adds weight to the boat, I will only be moving weight around on the boat.

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600 miles at 6 mph would take 100 hours, 4 1/6) 24 hr. days right?
Why Duramax's over the Cummins?

"Awesome"

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6 MPH water speed, might only be 3 MPH ground speed depending on current, and distance adds up when you go up and down waves for long distances (the 3d distance traveled can end up being a lot farther then the 2d straight line). Not counting that its really hard to go in a straight line when your going slow, especially on one engine. (if you were asking about me saying a week?)

We went with the Duramax over the Cummins for a few reasons, The Duramax is hundreds of pounds lighter, The Duramax can turn more rpm, and it fits in the boat more like a normal engine (V8 bigblock). Keep in mind we are calling them Duramax's because that is what they were originally designed off of, but there is nothing on them from a duramax besides about half the block.

Nevermind already answered.

Yes, was just clarifying. I definitely understand it wouldn't be no set calculated rate as per the various factors and conditions you mentioned. And would take longer.
I've seen the pics about the engines and understood they were based on them and were much more.
Good luck and look forward to the build pics and the trip.
Btw, why the guide coat on the mold? Did they block it before they spayed Gel in it?

The bottom main tanks are in already in these pics and you can see the outline where the top tank will be, and then the baffles for the top tank to keep the fuel from sloshing around. The bottom tanks have baffles that look about the same.
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