SUPERB GUNBOAT 66 VIDEO BY YACHTING WORLD

MORELLI & MELVIN 78

Morelli & Melvin are currently working on this amazing 78 footer. Here is the slideshow of the first rendering.

SOME NEWS OF THE GUNBOAT 66 "PHAEDO" IN SAIL MAGAZINE

Phaedo after the ARC: Shifting into Cruising Mode

By Charles J. Doane • Posted: Jan 10, 2012 Wandering the docks at Rodney Bay Marina in St. Lucia in December as the last of the 2011 ARC fleet came trickling in, I was mostly interested in talking to folks on American-flagged boats. The Atlantic Rally for Cruisers (to cite its formal name), which starts each November in the Canary Islands, is very much a European event and the Americans who run it are often a bit out of the ordinary. Without doubt, the least ordinary American boat in this last edition of the rally was the Gunboat 66 Phaedo.

Read the complete article. 

MORELLI AND MELVIN 65 "MAULIOLA" LAUNCHED AT WESTERLY MARINE

Morelli and Melvin launched their latest 65 foot luxury catamaran at Westerly Marine.

BREAKING NEWS AND SMART MOVE OF THE YEAR : LAGOON CUSTOM LUXURY CATAMARANS BUILT BY CNB WITH THE WORLD LEADING MULTIHULL DESIGNERS

This is one of the most important news of the year in the world of luxury catamarans . The yacht builder CNB will be building the Lagoon Custom range of luxury catamarans according to the drawings of some of the the most famous designers in the world.

I think this is a great idea. CNB is well known for building very high quality yachts. Most potential buyers of large catamarans are reluctant to trust shipyards with little experience in multihulls and not financially backed by a large company. Both of this issues are addressed in this offer. CNB is already building all the lagoon catamarans range including the Lagoon 620 and is financially backed by the Beneteau Group, the world largest boat building company.
This should entice potential buyers to build the large luxury catamaran of their dream.

Most of the luxury catamarans offered by CNB were already introduced in the luxury catamaran blog. I hope now some of those beautiful yachts will come to life.

Design are offered by the following naval architects :

Van Peteghem-Lauriot Prévost (VPLP) : VPLP 100, VPLP 80, VPLP 186, VPLP 85 POWER
Philippe Briand : Philippe Briand 80, Philippe Briand 90
Dixon Yacht Design : Dixon Yacht Design 95, Dixon Yacht Design 100 Power Morrelli & Melvin : Aeroyacht 85 and Aeroyacht 110
Berret-Racoupeau Yacht Design : Berret Racoupeau 76, Berret Racoupeau 100, Berret Racoupeau 160 Power

Here is the complete brochure.

Charter Lagoon catamaran with Windward Islands.

34 TH AMERICA'S CUP ON MULTIHULLS

As you all know by now, the next America's Cup will be held on catamarans.

Pete Melvin from Morrelli and Melvin was on stage in Valencia on the 13 th of September next to Russel Coutts, Vincento Onorato and Cam Lewis to present the new cup and the AC 72.


Morrelli and Melvin are the designers of the Gunboat range including the recently launched Gunboat 90, the Aeroyacht 110 and a few 60 footers.

The team was part of the group that worked on drafting the new rules for the cup.

Congratulations to them.

MORRELLI AND MELVIN - NEW WEBSITE AND BLOG ONLINE

The california based design office has launched a new website and also, for those of you like me who are into RSS flux, a blog updated more often than their previous website and that's great news.

As I have stated in a previous post about reverse bows and the Aeroaycht 110, Morelli and Melvin have become kind of specialists in the design of such hull shapes. They recently took part to the BMW ORACLE trimaran amas design. The team contributed to Sailing Scuttlebut about the use of hydraulics and stored power in the America's cup.

Alinghy Stored Engines for hydraulics - Credit Philippe Chaplin

AMERICA'S CUP DESIGNS PROVE THE AEROYACHT® 110 IS AHEAD OF THE CURVE

The hull shapes of the America’s cup challenger BMW ORACLE Racing and defender ALINGHI didn’t go unnoticed and will make a lot of ink flow. Both are using wave piercing bows.

The radical Aeroyacht 110 catamaran designed by Gregor Tarjan and engineered by Morrelli & Melvin had, since the beginning - reverse bows. Pete Melvin, from Morrelli and Melvin, who took part in designing BMW ORACLE, and Gregor Tarjan founder of Aeroyacht International, tell us why?Morrelli and Melvin 60 ' Mala Conducta - Photo Credit Billy Black

Gregor Tarjan: “Reverse bows make the water think the boat is longer. A regular shaped bow will make the boat hobby-horse because as the boat is dipping into the sea the shape of the stem will force it back up quicker than if the stern is allowed to pass deeper and more gentler into the wave resulting in more comfort, safety and yes wetter. I think reverse bows are the future for small racing boats (where a wet ride is secondary) and large yachts over 60 foot.” Of course the potential clients for a luxury super catamaran like the Aeroyacht 110 will be interested in performance but this single argument might not be enough to convince him to go for reverse bows. That is what Gregor Tarjan and Pete Melvin both answer when a potential client asks them why his yacht should feature a wave piercing shape.

F 18 - Photo Crédit Pierrick Contin

Pete Melvin “To make it short and simple, wave piercing reduce pitching motions and hull resistance though waves. Pitching results in motion discomfort for passengers, increases hull resistance and reduces sail efficiency. We’ve been designing wave-piercing bows for quite a few years now both for racing and for cruising multihulls. It is quite interesting to see that Alinghi have developed a hull and bow shape quite similar to the A3 A-Class catamaran we developed in 2003. There were other wave-piercers prior to the A3 but the A3 has a very unique shape that has been emulated many times since then. We are involved with the BMW ORACLE team and had some input into their news floats shapes as well. Lots of R&D went into confirming what we already knew was a fast wave-piercing hull form. The shape of the bow and underbody of a wave-piercing hull is dependent on many variables so the best solution for one design may not look the same as another design. In fact, the F-18 cat is actually closer to the design requirements for a high performance cruising catamaran like the Aeroyacht 110.”



Gregor Tarjan and Pete Melvin have put all their experience, knowledge and energy to design the Aeroyacht 110, the most advanced cruising catamaran every created so far.

AEROYACHT 110 - The World most innovative super catamaran

Multihull passionate and expert Gregor Tarjan, founder of Aeroyacht International, and renowned designer Pete Melvin sat down together to think about what their dream luxury catamaran would be. They came out with many innovative solutions, some of them never seen on a multihull of that size.

In a previous post, I introduced a list of these innovations, like the Icon A5 amphibian plane “tender”, the reverse bows, the competition wing-rig, the semi-flybrigde... Let’s complete the list to show how well the Aeroyacht 110 concept was thought out.

A “Outside-In” design process. Most of the time yachts are designed the other way around. Large multihulls are loaded with equipment, staterooms and end up with two or three decks. Gregor says: "We first have conceptualized a pure sailing machine with a beautiful streamlined shape and then estimated the weight for a high-end, open plan luxury interior. Instead of fitting 6 small staterooms we prefer to offer our clients three large VIP suites in a fast sailing machine"

“Soft-chine” hulls. Multiple Chines hull can be seen on racing sailboats, fast motor yachts and tenders. They increase the yacht structure stiffness, stability, performance thanks to less wetted surface, and improve esthetics. On the top of that Morrelli and Melvin have applied all their knowledge in fast hulls and bows out of the water design. The entire forward section of the Aeroyacht 110 hulls are forced up and will come out of the water keeping resistance to a minimum and increasing surfing capabilities

Asymmetric dagger boards. They are seen on smaller size catamarans but never before on a 110 footer. Retractable dagger boards increase windward performance and safety at sea. In the downward position, they enable the Aeroyacht 110 to sail close to the wind. In the upward position, the boat experiences less resistance and really "flies". The asymmetric boards also prevent the Aeroyacht 110 from tripping over the waves since the yacht offer no resistance and can slide sideways. They are also a great feature to reduce the draft and access really beautiful and private anchorages.

Aeronautical engineering. The design team in charge of the Aeroyacht 110 at Morrelli & Melvin is made up of aeronautical engineers and structural designers. They have made the most out of the same tools used to develop aircrafts structures like complex computers programs that model Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) and Finite Elements Method (FEM). They succeeded in keeping the structure as light as possible, yet strong enough to face the roughest sailing conditions.

All this innovations were aimed at creating a super catamaran with a speed potential of over 32 knots and effortless cruising at 20 knots, in supreme yacht comfort and safety.

MORELLI AND MELVIN 65 ' AT WESTERLY MARINE

Westerly Marine, is a custom boat builder located in Santa Anna, California specialised in Carbon Fiber performance Vessels. They are actually building two 65 footer Morelli and Melvin designed catamarans and they look great.

Westerly Marine was founded in 1970 (the year I was born). The yard can take in charge a custom project from A to Z thanks to a highly qualified work force mastering the arts of composite, wood works, mechanics, and electricity. They have built very fast racing monohulls and more confortable ones still able to achieve high performance.

Two Morelli and Melvin 65 ' are being built in the yard full carbon as you can see on the pictures. I don't have any drawings of the interiors but from the exterior you can see that twose two cats are really designed to sail fast and long distance off shore. They should be easily handled by a crew of two.

The design office also located in California, in Huntington Beach is doing a great job designing sleek, fast and elegant catamarans. I would say that recently their trademark is the use of reverse bows which not only are great looking but also very efficient in increasing the performance of this sailboats.

If you have more information about those cats, let me know.

MALA CONDUCTA - A BEAUTIFUL MORELLI AND MELVIN 60' BUILT BY LYMAN MORSE

This great looking cat was launched in April by Lyman Morse. With its reverse bows I have to admit it is one of the most beautiful cat launched in her size. Again a great Morelli and Melvin design.
MALA CONDUCTA was designed to be fast and comfortable. The shipyard did some testing to know wether to build in pre-preg or SCRIMP infusion method. They went for pre-preg. The mock up was carefully worked through with the owners. As you can see the interior is modern with light wood.

Two other 60 footer Morelli and Melvin designed with reverse bows are currently being built by Westerly Marine in California. I will introduced them in a future post.