The brief given to us by the owner of the Gunboat 57 was to manage the boat’s sailing system package and to overcome the various problems faced by the first generation models.

In order to achieve this, we first sat down with the owner to understand his expectations for the new boat’s performance from a cruising and racing perspective:

• Choosing the right sail plan area along with foil appendage package to balance the boat correctly
• Achieve the correct hull flying speed to make the boat sufficiently exciting, while retaining safety as a priority

With these expectations in mind, we then worked in conjunction with naval architects – namely Nigel Irens Design – to incorporate these parameters in the final design.

We started proceedings by contacting spar suppliers with our custom-built specification and, upon tendering, eventually chose Southern Spars for the project and longeron.

While we were managing the mast side of the project, we also started working on the integration of the a new deck plan to combine with the spar package. Overseeing the project benefited our client hugely, as it allowed us to work simultaneously on deck, rigging and spar packages, ensuring that the sailmaker would get exactly what they needed in order to build the best possible powerhouse for the boat, and that we could coordinate our in-house designers with the rigging team to ensure that fittings would match required rope sizes and load specifications.

Following the build stage, Rigging Projects was then charged with the stepping and sea trials of the mast, sails and deck packages. Our in-house multihull expert, Nick Black, was on hand to perform mast tuning, and ensure that all systems were working correctly and just how we wanted them to. Sea trials then began with a smooth first day.

Having built confidence that everything was working as intended, we were able to go out on the second day of sea trials and hit 21knots of boat speed, with the A3 in 15 knots of wind and the boat flying a hull upwind in 16 knots, confirming that we were hitting all expected performance targets and putting a pretty great big smile on the owner’s face.