Technimar & Alubat

[Distiller]

Has anybody any experience with the French Technimar Hermine 47 or Alubat 455? Both have aluminum hulls. Would they be suitable for liveaboard/single(or short)handed cruising?

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[Trevethan]

I think the biggest issues with ali are that its very prone to electrolysis and much harder to repair than steel --

You can find steel repairers everywhere -- a man a van and his welder. Indeed you xcan learn to do it yourself

I don't think its that easy with aluminium.

Why are you interested in aluminium anyway? its nice and light but that to me seems of little benefit to a licveaboard/bluewater cruiser.

P.S. the golden rule with liveaboards and living the life you envisage is KISS -- keep it simple stupid -- because at some point you will probably have to fix it yourself because either its too expensive to get someone else to do it, or more likely, there is no one else around too fix it!

Which in reference to your other post means small is good as you don't need electric winches, bow thrusters and gizmos like that to help you handle things short handed because you cann guarantee that when you really need them they won't work -- boats are perverse like that!

 

[Distiller]

From the other posts here I have the impression that "plastic" boats like the Nautor or Baltic I saw in Dusseldorf could have problems with strange things like floating containers or pirate-pilots trying to ram you or other boats in marinas or mishaps caused by yours truly. I saw that larger multi-crew yachts 100ft+ use aluminum, so I tried to figure why smaller boats hardly use it. But basically I'm just collecting information, don't like the looks of those two Fench boats anyway.

The KISS concept. You mean Murphy is always waiting next door?
Regarding bow thrusters: Doesn't having one make it easier to handle a larger boat around marinas? I mean a Baltic 60 has one, but not a Baltic 50. Wouldn't be one of those fold-out bow thruster on a 50 (don't know if they do that) a way to make such a boat more handleable for a single guy?

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[Talbot]

I am fitting a bow thruster to my catamaran because it makes it more easily handled.

If you are looking for a serious liveaboard with a decent amount of room, but still easily handled, have a look at a 10-11m catamaran Prout Snowgoose or the newer Lagoons for example. From what I have gleaned from your postings, travel around the windies is definitely on the agenda, and a large monohull is nowhere near a easily handled in shallow water as a cat!/forums/images/icons/smile.gif

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[Distiller]

Was focused on monohulls sofar. Thx for the input!

... Broadblues look interesting.

<hr width=100% size=1><P ID="edit"><FONT SIZE=-1>Edited by Distiller on 29/01/2004 14:40 (server time).</FONT></P>

 

[charles_reed]

The OVNI (alubat) was the boat that jimmy Cornell chose when he got rid of ARC and indulged his passion for high latitude cruising.

They're very much a french passion and you'll seldom find one for sale second-hand, which proves their popularity.
Their two greatest benefits are shallow draught (Centreboard) and toughness - I know of someone who spent a night bumping around on a coral reef in swell and when they were dragged off the bottom was unholed and all they had to do was renew the antifouling.
Deck layout is good and very practical, but stowage and use of space below is indifferent.

The masthead rig gives a reasonably good performance for offshore sailing, but won't win any races off your production cruisers in light airs.

With regard to the relative merits of aluminium and steel.

you'll find far more round-the-world cruisers in steel than in aluminium - mainly because it's so much cheaper, more common and easier to weld than aluminium. Steel suffers from the additional disadvantages of needing far more maintenance and care in paint protection cf aluminium as well as not having as great a strength weight for weight.
Both suffer from potential electrogalvanic problems, though aluminium is rather more prone to sudden attack.
In fact, for various different reasons all 4 main boatbuilding materials (wood, steel, aluminium and grp) are very comparable.

For my part my next boat will probably be aramid-glass-epoxy-wood as being less hi-tech and liable to catastrophic degradation than the carbo-aramid composites of the majority of Open 40s & 60s, even if rather heavier.

The best place to see and evaluate the boats is at la Rochelle, where they invariably exhibit in les Minimes.

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[Ric]

Alubat Ovnis are dream boats. They are superb round the world boats for single-handing or short-handing. Aluminium is no longer a corrosion or repair problem. Brits are always years behind France when it comes to long distance cruising - here in France Alubat Ovnis are at the top pf the list for anybody thinking of going around the world. Alubats are perhaps the best know, but there are about ten other yards I know of making aluminium cruising boats in France (and every time I pck up a French sailing mag I read about another!). Try Googling Garcia, Alliage, JFA, Allure, Meta, UY Yachts Carros. There's lots more. If you have trouble email me - I'll help you buy one if you like as I know lots for sale down here in SoF.

Ric

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[HaraldS]

If I was really worried about pirates, aside of ramming they might actually shoot at you and then I guess steel is the best defence. It's fairly easy to shoot through aluminum and a 'plastic' hull with Twaron or Kevlar embedded does a much better job on that. It is actually the material that is used in bullet proof jackets.

The same is actually true with respect to the occasional container. I have seen simulations of hitting a corner of a steel container at 11 knots, and really only steel held up very well. Alu was always punctured, glass fibre with a few layers of Twaron held up but the outer layer of the sandwich broke fully and the inner had cracks.

Where aluminum holds up much better is when a boat ends up on a reef and gets tortured by the waves. GRP hull break up entirely and bends to some degree that may safe it.

At least that's what I have gathered, haven't tried myself and hopefully never will.
Since I felt steel too heavy and too rusty, I ended up with the usual plastic, but had it Twaron re-inforced.



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