Hands-On innovation at Morrelli & Melvin
November 4, 2009
A common attribute among designers and engineers at Morrelli & Melvin is the ability to build what they design. We believe that the hands-on experience enables our team to not only design products that can be built efficiently and economically, but also leads to innovation in materials and construction methods.
Gino Morrelli started out working on racing cars and boats in his family’s back yard as a teenager. He built his first boat with his dad and brother, a 33-foot Crowther trimaran in high school. Soon after he started his first company, Climax Catamarans, designing and building 18-square meter cats. He has been entrenched in onshore and offshore race-boat construction efforts since the early 80’s, managing and participating in the construction of 60’ ocean racing catamarans, Formula 40’s, the 1988 Stars & Stripes America’s Cup catamaran and many racing beach catamarans. Today he manages the Product Development side of our business where he helps bridge the gap between design engineering and our customers’ production lines. His many years of experience in racing, design, as well as on the shop floor, help us design boats that are beautiful, perform well, and are practical and economical to construct.
Pete Melvin has been creating innovative vehicles since his youth. Not discouraged when the boat he built as a 6-year old did not float, he rebounded and built a fast motorized skateboard by the time he was 10. Pete and his father designed and built several Optimist dinghies and then formed a company to build them. They used Nomex honeycomb and carbon fiber long before these materials gained acceptance in the marine industry. Pete has always designed, built, rigged, and prepared his own race boats, creating many innovations along the way and gaining valuable hands-on experience. He recently designed and built an innovative electric motorcycle that goes 50 miles on a single charge at up to 60 mph. His motorcycle is a test bed for lithium battery and electric propulsion systems that are increasingly finding their way onto M&M’s commercial, military, and pleasure boat designs.
“Consequences” / Wing Sails – Seahorse Magazine
November 3, 2009
Seahorse Yacht Racing Magazine - Jan 2009
Bob Covarrubias in Seahorse Magazine takes a look at using wing sail technology since it was famously used 20 years ago on Dennis Connor’s 1988 America’s Cup catamaran. Bob analyzes current uses of the wing sail by Harbor Wing Technologies for the US Navy and coastal security, as well as interviewing Pete Melvin, of Morrell & Melvin, about the other advantageous opportunities for hard airfoils on yachts and commercial ocean vessels.
Pete Melvin on America’s Cup Wave Piercers
August 7, 2009
Martin from Catamaran Racing, News & Design in Argentina compares and discusses the similarities and differences between Morrelli & Melvin’s hulls and the “wave piercing” bows on the America’s Cup yachts.
For the full article see http://catsailingnews.blogspot.com/2009/07/pete-melvin-on-ac-wave-piercers.html
NACRA Infusion Formula 18 wins World Championship
July 21, 2009
Photo used with permission from Pierrick Contin
Coen De Koning and Thijs Visser (NED) won their second consecutive Formula 18 catamaran World Championships sailing a Morrelli & Melvin-designed NACRA Infusion Formula 18 catamaran. The Royal Belgian Sailing Club – Beachclub Duinbergen was the host of the 180 teams from over 15 countries including Australia, Argentina, the USA, Canada and several European countries.
De Koning and Visser had their work cut out for them. They won the nine-race series on countback to Rob Wilson and Marcus Lynch (GBR).
The Formula 18 is currently one of the most successful one-design classes worldwide. The Formula 18 is a “box rule” development class, which specifies basic dimensions and weights and invites designers to create unique hull shapes, daggerboard and rudder designs, and rotating wing mast shapes. Over 30% of the boats in the world championship fleet were the Morrelli & Melvin-designed NACRA Infusion F 18, which was by far the largest representation of any design.
The NACRA Infusion design has been very successful since debuting in 2006, winning two World Championships and many continental championships. NACRA has sold over 400 Infusions to date. With the Infusion winning major regattas such as Kiel Week, Texel Sailing Week and the Worlds, Peter Vink, one of the founders of NACRA Europe stated, “After sailing the Infusion for four years and seeing all the new F18 designs, I would not change a thing.”
The results are speaking for themselves. This latest World Championship is yet another success for leading multihull design experts, Morrelli & Melvin Design & Engineering, Inc. Our designs have won the America’s Cup, over ten ISAF World Championships and dozens of continental championships. Morrelli & Melvin designs have also set ‘Round the World and Transatlantic records.
Morrelli & Melvin managed the tooling design and construction of the NACRA F 18 prototypes and trained the Performance Sailing staff for the production of this World Championship-winning design. Morrelli & Melvin is committed to creating and assisting builders in bringing trendsetting designs to markets around the world.
Picture used with permission. Copyright Pierrick Contin. PierrickContin.fr
Morrelli & Melvin Design & Engineering, Inc. is one of the world’s foremost designers of multihull sail and powerboats for private, cruising and commercial uses. In business for over 16 years, Morrelli & Melvin have won numerous industry design and innovation awards, the America’s Cup, World and Continental Championships and broken dozens of World records.
Sailing Scuttlebutt researches the controversial America’s Cup rules. In the article, Pete Melvin of Morrelli & Melvin Design & Engineering, explains the details of hydraulics, equipment weight and the benefits to racing with “stored power”. For the original article see:
Transpac Targets – Multihulls
July 10, 2009
Written by Lynn Fitzpatrick
Wednesday, 08 July 2009 20:28
Los Angeles, CA (July 9, 2009) – Alfa Romeo, Neville Crichton’s Reichel Pugh 100, is on track to set a new course record for a monohull. As the team surfs closer to Hawaii, their eye will be on the clock. Their focus on Hasso Plattner and Morning Glory’s record of 6:16:04:11 may shift to two other faster elapsed times that are not touted as much as the monohull records. Those times are held by multihulls and go back to the 1995 and 1997 Transpacific Yacht Races.
In 1995, Steve Fossett and Robert D. Hanel were the first multihull owners to take the Transpacific Yacht Club up on its invitation to participate in the Transpacific Yacht Race. Fossett purchased the former Route de Rhone-winning Jeaneau 60 and worked with the Huntington Beach design and engineering firm, Morrelli & Melvin, to modify his multihull entry, Lakota. Hanel’s entry was Double Bullet. Both multihulls shaved over a day off of Merlin’s long established elapsed time record of 8:11:01:45. Lakota’s elapsed time was 6:16:07:06 and Double Bullet’s was 7:06:27:29.
The multihull contingent doubled for 1997’s Transpac Race. Four entered including Bruno Peyron with Commodore Explorer, an 86-foot catamaran that broke the mythical 80-day barrier for going around the world in 1994. The multihull race pitted the 86-foot monster cat against the 60-foot Lakota tri.
The 1997 Transpac is the year that Roy Pat Disney skippered Roy E. Disney’s turbo sled, Pyewacket, to a new elapsed time record of 7:15:24:40. In the same race, the Commodore Explorer took off two days after the sleds, overhauled and passed them. The invited multihull guest finished the race in 5:09:18:26 and claimed the new Rudy Choy Trophy for the best multihull elapsed time by averaging 17.2 knots. The much shorter Lakota also slipped in well ahead of the monohulls on elapse time also. Lokata’s time was 6:00:30:46.
Lakota sailed the first half of the 2,225 miles in less than three days. Commented Pete Melvin of Morrelli & Melvin, who was on board Lakota for the 1995 and 1997 Transpacs. “We had perfect conditions for the race. The Transpac and the southern Californian coastal races are ideal races for the multihulls because the boats are so fast downwind. Ideal conditions for the sleds are ideal conditions for multihulls.”
Morrelli & Melvin have designed record setting ocean-going multihulls such as Steve Fossett’s PlayStation and continues to do so. Recently, they have been defining and dominating the luxury performance catamaran category. Comments Melvin on the possibility of the merits of sailing a luxury performance cat such as the 65-footers, which are being built at Westerly in Costa Mesa, CA. “The large performance cruising multihulls have more than double the living space, they are comfortable and they perform right along with the 80-foot monohulls. It would be good for everyone if the multihulls participated in the Transpac.”
This article reprinted by permission. Original post http://www.transpacrace.com/medianews/general-transpac-news/184-transpac-targets-and-an-invitation-for-multihulls.html
Volvo Ocean Race Filmed by High Speed Boat
June 30, 2009
The Volvo Ocean Race 2008/2009 and its official provider of satellite communications, Immarsat, pushed the standards of media coverage of an around the world race in numerous ways. Coverage was beamed to a global audience of over 2 billion – on TV, radio and the Internet. Not only did each boat have an on board media person recording the action, but at points in the Mediterranean and when the fleet reached Galway and started its European port to port sprint some of the media swat team climbed onto Fleet Broadband Express.
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- The advantage of the power cat is it can maintain speed with the racing yachts
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- The Volvo yachts were filmed from the water from a specially designed power catamaran
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- FleetBroadbandExpress can be seen at the right side (leeward) of the fleet
Fleet Broadband Express is the 15-metre catamaran platform designed by Morrelli and Melvin so that the media could follow the fleet. The race organizer’s goal was to bring its audience the stories and multimedia usually could not be provided because the fleets were too far offshore.
It’s difficult to keep up with a fleet that is moving at 25 knots. Even for a catamaran. While the likes of Torben Grael and his team on Ericsson 4 crashed and burned in high seas and gale force gusts, Fleet Broadband Express did its best to match the pace. It proved to be a valuable media platform for the in-port racing and the short legs in European waters.
From the 2009 VolvoLog:
“For the first 18 hours or so after the start, the FleetBroadband Express worked according to plan. In extremely challenging conditions (20-plus knots of wind, two to three metre seas), it was able to keep up to some of the fastest racing monohulls in the world as they scorched down the Irish Coast to the Fastnet Rock.
The boat was a great platform to film from, as you can see by some of the shots Dave Kneale was able to take. The television images were impressive as well, and will turn up in the weekly shows that cover the Galway start.”
- Rick Tomlinson, Volvo Ocean Race.
Fleet Broadband Express is managed by Water Wizards, an international media company specializing in on the water live-feed and film coverage.
The Merits of Wing Power Revealed
June 25, 2009
This article has been used with permission from Lynn Fitzpatrick of WorldRegattas.com
2009-06-23 Released
By Lynn Fitzpatrick
Wing Sail may be the future of the America's Cup design
The architects of the San Diego Yacht Club America’s Cup defense were considered heretics when they went against the tradition dating back to 1851 and proffered a catamaran rather than a monohull design for 27th America’s Cup Defense. Even within the defense syndicate there was a radical group of designers and engineers who worked diligently to test and prove their theory that wings would perform better than soft sails. At first their theory was scorned, but once they came up with a design that proved to be more powerful than the traditional mast rigged with soft sails, they were accepted. The technology that they introduced earlier in the C-Class, helped to Stars and Stripes chalk up the most lopsided America’s Cup victory in history: a cumulative elapsed time trouncing of over 39 minutes in the two race series.
Over twenty years of technological and materials advancements have passed since that America’s Cup. Some have retired, all have aged in one aspect or another, but one thing has remained constant: Duncan MacLane and David Hubbard have continued to use and perfect wing technology. Among their latest collaborative project is the Autonomous Unmanned Surface Vessel being developed by HarborWing Technologies. Not conjoined twins, one is engaged by the Defender and the other is engaged by the Challenger for the 33rd America’s Cup. They are sworn to secrecy. Mark Ott, President of HarborWing Technologies, however, was willing to speak about the merits of wing technology.
While mainstream sailors may consider the use of the wings a bit heretical, those in the know and those involved in the arms race to win the America’s Cup are clearly embracing winged technology.
The merits of hard winged technology over a traditional mast and soft sails on a multihull, according to Ott:
- Wings don’t change shape. Sails do. You change the angle of attack to control a wing. You change the sail shape and the angle of attack to adjust sail trim.
- It is easier to turn a wing on and off by changing the angle of attack than to trim running rigging and soft sails.
- Wings are more precise and controllable.
- Wings only have inertial weight; they do not have compressive loading. Masts get out of column very easily and buckle with compression.
- Without needing to resist the compression loads from a mast shrouds and stays, a winged hull or platform can be much lighter than a traditional hull.
- Wings are more powerful. Tests performed with Harbor Wing Technologies X1 prototype indicate that in certain wind strengths and directions, a wing is at least two times more powerful than a soft-sailed rig. The effect of slots when using multiple wing elements improves the efficiency of wings.
- The weight of a mast, rigging, spreaders, halyards, sheets, winches and deck and hull reinforcements to counter the compression forces is comparable to inertial weight of a wing. (Granted, the weight aloft of a wing is slightly greater than that of traditionally rigged sails.)
- There is less stress on the crew that uses a wing, because they do not haul big sails up and down nor are they constantly trimming.
- Teams will get take advantage of the best of both worlds on the run when they have the wing element engaged and can hoist a big spinnaker or gennaker to capture the breeze.
If you can’t find footage of the 1988 America’s Cup with one of Stars and Stripes’ hulls gliding through the water while the other barely kisses the surface and New Zealand plods along, take a look at the video of Harbor Wing Technologies X1 at www.HarborwingTech.com or on YouTube. The Harbor Wing seagoing vessels do not have shrouds, because the wing must rotate 360º to adjust to changes in sea states and wind conditions instantaneously. The next generation of manned America’s Cup monster multihulls will have shrouds and that’s where some of the fun will be for spectators. There may be times when the wing is loaded up and the angle of attack can’t be changed quickly or radically enough because of interference from the shrouds.
Video of HarborWing Technologies X1 Autonomous Unmanned Surface Vehicle http://www.harborwingtech.com/
Keep your eyes peeled for wings. They are coming soon at America’s Cup practice venues.
Rendering courtesy of Morrelli and Melvin Design and Engineering
Concept Demonstration of the Harbor Wing AUSV (Flash Video). Produced By Southside Entertainment, Inc. and Aloura Charles. Courtesy of HarborWing Technologies.
The father and son team of Pete Melvin and James Melvin won the Formula 18 catamaran class at Alamitos Bay Yacht Club in
Pete Melvin and James Melvin awarded the Formula 18 class trophy
Long Beach, California. The two days of yacht racing were held over Memorial Day weekend, May 23 to 24, 2009. James at age 14 has moved into catamaran racing from Sabots quite easily.
Team Melvin & Melvin look forward to competing in the 2009 Formula 18 North American Championships being held Tuesday, September 8 through Saturday, September 12, 2009 in Long Beach, California. Alamitos Bay Yacht Club hosts many national sailing championships each season and is the home of many World ranked catamaran sailors.
For more information see:
