Some years ago this project attracted inordinate interest in the UK, where the carbon-fibre wonder was constructed to power Pete Goss on a round-the-world race. It broke in what was described as a 'freak' Atlantic storm, freak being used to describe nature when it's not being fair: as in freak snow, freak leaves, freak flood, freak iceberg or the freak Moon you just missed.
It was abandoned when cracks started to form in the cabin that were eventually put down to computer programming errors in the design of the craft. Which goes to show that neither CAD/CAM nor carbon-fibre guarantee success either on water or in air.
Using wood along with expanded sheets or extruded sections of foam in a garage does show you ~ as it has me ~ where the principal stresses lie however. Waves being the freaks that they are, operate independently on either pontoon and especially so here where the length, width and height of the craft exceeded conventional limitations.
As you can imagine therefore, pushing the prow of one pontoon up and another down is likely to twist the centre-section... that in fact to which the cabin is attached, even prior to the eventual separation of one of those prows.
Beside BT, who have always had more money than sense, Philips also sponsored the build and what I found more interesting was the fact that the latter started out with the sals of light bulbs during the nineteenth century.
What I hadn't known was that since then, competition in the electronic consumables market from the Far East has seen them pivot into healthcare and not least electric toothbrushes.
A fate that may yet do the same to European auto-makers: 'Sheer Brushing Pleasure', as BMW might put it.
Can we consider alternative builds to the catamaran? Yes Bob, we can.
