Over the past few weeks, we have spent almost 75 hours putting Mollymawk through her paces and have now and amassed a great deal of information and raw data. We are really happy with the performance data recorded so far and will be publishing it all soon, but thought we’d give our followers a brief synopsis of where we are at.
The hull design has proved to be very successful, and a big shout out to the team at LOMOcean Marine for the work they have done delivering the vessel and the performance to our specified brief. The hull is efficient and slippery, which is something to be aware of when approaching a dock. The hull comfortably pushes through a head sea as the fine entry slices through the waves with ease, the motion is very soft with the stern stable and offering just enough resistance to deter pitching without being so stiff to create any accelerated motion, ensuring a soft predictable ride into head and quartering seas.
On one day we had a gale blowing 40 knots, with 3m – 4m swells, where we took the opportunity to run over some shallow water of 10-12m deep, where the swell was standing and almost breaking. We ran this area at all angles including beam on the hull performance is confident and reassuring, when beam on to these steep swells the hull just lifted with little or no heel as the wave passed under the hull. The question we are always being asked is “will it surf?” Well, we are finding surfing is very easily achieved, and with adjustments of fore/aft trim with ballast fresh water tanks strategically placed for this purpose, optimising the trim to suit the wave period and size, really enhances the hulls ability to hold the wave for extended time periods.
To date, the top speed recorded as an average with and against a small tidal flow is 13.5knots (excluding surfing) The fuel burns we have recorded are showing quite a linear curve up to almost 12 knots, that allows the owner to cruise at a speed which they feel most comfortable at, with the best balance of speed and fuel burn being between 10 - 11.5 knots, but as an example at 11 knots we are burning 26L of fuel per hour.
The range of the vessel will always be decided by many factors, including the chosen cruising speed, with the 11,500L tank capacity, and with a 10% reserve the range from 10 to 11.5 knots is approximately 5250NM and 4000NM respectively.
‘Mollymawks’ owners arrived in NZ almost two weeks ago, and are now living aboard, and we are pleased to report they are very happy with all aspects of the vessel, from performance, handling and steering, to the quality of the fixtures/ fittings and all aspects of the build quality. During the build the owners were unable to visit NZ, but had seen many hundreds of photo’s, as well as video walkthrough’s & onboard video skype calls, but once aboard the vessel and quality truly came to life, but that’s another article.
We are now in the early stages of owner trials and training which will continue for another few weeks, as part of this, Mollymawk’s tanks have been fully topped off with fuel, which will allow us to gain more data on heavy departure condition performance, although we are not expecting to see any significant change in the fuel burn data.
We recently undertook the stability test, and the stability curve measured exceeds that of similar sized vessels we have previously built, both in arrival and departure loads.
Designers comment below...
"Please find attached a stability wash up based on the information provided to us Friday last week. The results show that the boat passes two well respected stability codes and with good margins."
We are now looking forward to the future launch of Circa 24m # 2 “Deo Juvante” which is equipped with larger MAN engines to meet CE compliance and the predictions show a top speed of 17 knots. We have on the drawing board a smaller 20m model, and a larger 30m -35m model in line for development on request.
For further information on “Mollymawk” data, vessel options and build slot availability please contact us.
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