FIBRE Mechanics

Congratulations to Niklas Zennström and the Rán racing team for winning a highly contested battle in the 2024 Caribbean 600 IRC Zero class.

Niklas Zennström was delighted with the class win, tinged with a little frustration at just missing out to Leopard 3 for an overall win after IRC time correction.  “...We did as much as we could. We sailed a really good race and Steve (Hayles) and Bouwe (Bekking) made very good calls. Did we have a good time? Absolutely. You have to play your strategy well and as far as luck goes, this year we didn’t have weather for our class to win overall, eventually that will even out….”

Rán is a 52 foot ocean racing yacht designed by Carkeek Design Partners, all carbon pre-preg with kevlar honeycomb, supercharged water ballast and a very sophisticated Southern Spars Rig. She was built in 2023 by the raceboat team at Fibre Mechanics in Lymington UK under the watchful eyes of Adrian Gillitt and Marcus Attridge - a team with a long list of Volvo Ocean, America's Cup, TP52 and IMOCA boats to their name.

Tucked away in the new hull oven at Fibre Mechanics, a Bill Tripp designed 88ft shoal draft cruising yacht is fast taking shape.

 

The challenge set by the Client was to design and build a high performance cruising yacht with a maximum draft of 2m. The phrase ‘Shoal Draft Performance Yacht’ is full of contradictions…. the performance of any sailing yacht depends on its sail-carrying ability, and that largely depends on a low centre of gravity. So designing and building a yacht of this size with such a shallow draft is a serious challenge for any yacht designer. The responsibility for making it work of course rests with the builder, and in particular depends on the builder’s ability to save weight in every aspect of construction.

 

To turn their concept a reality, Bill Tripp and his Client chose Fibre Mechanics because of the yard’s uncompromising attitude towards saving weight. To fulfil the design brief the hull and structure will be full pre-preg carbon with Corecell and Nomex core; and to maximise her potential the yacht will feature a carbon composite keel and a water ballast transfer system. Fibre Mechanics have taken the spirit of the design to the next level with a series of measures to lower the structural centre of gravity and increase the weight of the lead bulb. The build team are drawing on all their experience of building racing yachts such as the Wally Cento ‘Galateia’ and the offshore raceboat ‘Rán 8’ to build a very special cruising yacht. We look forward to reporting on the detail of this project as construction progresses.

Fibre Mechanics have opened a new factory facility in Hythe UK, with direct waterfront access and a new hull oven that can accommodate yachts of up to 50m in length.

 

Fibre Mechanics' planned growth is set out in three phases. Phase 1 was to take over the original Green Marine factory in Lymington (which we did in 2017) and to establish a business in yacht building, with a strong marine component business running in parallel.  We are now embarking on Phase 2 which entails expansion into a second factory with waterfront access to facilitate the building of large composite yachts.

 

The new factory is in Hythe, 12 miles to the east of Lymington with waterfront access to Southampton Water and Central Solent. The large single span roof gives us clear workspace of 38 x 55m., Over the next few months we plan to building a hull oven and an assembly area; in the short term we are installing an overhead gantry crane with a 9m mezzanine at one side.

 

We are also widening the front door access to 18m in order to accommodate a new project due into the yard: the re-build of a 100 ft catamaran.  More details on that fantastic project, and on Fibre Mechanics’ planned Phase 3 Expansion to follow…

 

 

Photo Caption:- Fibre Mechanics Hythe will have a full overhead gantry crane and a mezzanine deck.

FIBRE Mechanics and Carkeek Design announce a new 52ft IRC racing yacht for 2021.

Full production tooling for the new boat, to be known as the CF-520 is now under construction at FIBRE Mechanics in Lymington UK; with boat one due for launch in March 2021. FIBRE Mechanics plan to build a short series of CF-520s, with boat one already scheduled for launching in early March 2021. Two more build slots are available for delivery mid April and end of May 2021 respectively.

 

Boat one is being configured principally for offshore racing and will feature a water ballast tank system designed to reduce the crew numbers to 7 or 8.  However, Carkeek Design Partners and FIBRE Mechanics are making a wide range of equipment options available allowing subsequent boats to be configured to suit different racing programmes. Preliminary details indicate a full on approach to the hull build, with Waterfront Composites specifying full IM carbon and honeycomb core throughout. Detailed specifications and pricing for the standard boat are due for release on Sept 18th. 

 

 

In July FIBRE Mechanics announce the delivery of a fire rated superstructure to WightShipyard in Cowes IOW. The Superstructure will be installed onto a 20m aluminium hulled SES catamaran wind farm service vessel, due to enter service in the North Sea by the end of the year...

 

The structure was designed to be built without the expense of making production moulds. Instead, WightShipyard are taking advantage of FIBRE Mecehanics' composite panel factory, but also taking the concept to its next logical stage.  The entire structure was moulded on high temperature vacuum tables using Gurit's fire retardent pre-preg epoxy resin system and glass fibre re-inforcement. The panels were then assembled on a simple alignment jig and bonded together.

 

Areas where curvature was required have single curvature only, so that the boat builders at FIBRE Mechanics were able to bend and in some cases fold the cured panels to the shape required.  The superstructure incorporates the sole and undersole structure that will be resiliently mounted on the deck of the ship. Also incorporated into the panels are the seat mounting fixtures to make the fit-out of the superstructure as efficient and fast as possible.

 

FIBRE Mechanics have delivered the 5th set of structural components for the Gunboat 68  -  shipping over 150 components to Gunboat Europe in La Grande Motte.  The delivery of components is timed to co-incide with the completion of the hull, so that the assembly teams can get to work building the boat without breaking stride.

 

The FIBRE Mechanics team in Lymington UK have become key partners in the construction of the Gunboat 68.  William Jelbert is the Project Manager for the GB-68, and was responsible for the development of the boat and the key decisions about the production process. He describes the 'discovery' of the FIBRE Mechanics panel factory like this....

 

"...Once the key structural elements were designed, the rest of the internal structure could be optimized accordingly. We weighed the option of outsourcing these advanced components to an industry partner. A breakthrough came when FIBRE Mechanics presented us with the opportunity to employ robotically-laid fiber to the structural components on the Gunboat 68 (i.e. the bulkheads and stringers). This is the same technology that produces aircraft tail fins and F1 car parts - structures with incredibly demanding engineering tolerances - and the quality is just exceptional!

 

The process is called North Thin Ply Technology™ (NTPT) - a cutting-edge technology using the highest-quality materials and yielding the most precise results. In NTPT, extremely thin layers of pre-preg carbon are laid by a machine, after which CNC-cut Corecell is fitted. Then, more layers of carbon are robotically applied and the whole panel is cured at 110°C in an autoclave.

Thin ply pre-pregs allow greater optimization of modulus, strength and weight, and an overall improvement in the mechanical performance of the final part.
 
This repeatable and automated process can handle very fine laminate details. This opened up opportunities for our engineers, as decisions on the internal structure (and ultimately performance gains) could be further optimized...."         (Excerpt from 'The Gunboat Story')

 

 

 

Delivery day at FIBRE Mechanics....   As the 100ft central hull of Banque Populaire XI is loaded onto a wind turbine transporter to make it's journey from Lymington UK to Lorient in France.  The new Ultime 100 trimaran was designed by VPLP and is being built by CDK Technologies in Lorient, with key components being contracted to long-time project partners FIBRE Mechanics.  The hull is built entirely in High Modulus carbon fibre with aramid honeycomb core, and cured at 95 degrees centigrade in a 35m long hull oven. This is all fairly routine for FIBRE Mechanics, the only remaining challenge being to navigate some tight corners in Lymington and a few tricky roundabouts in Lorient.

 

Newly installed at FIBRE Mechanics in Lymington UK is a 48m hull oven, for the curing of pre-preg yacht hulls and decks.  The oven was designed by the in-house project team who bring a great deal of experience to the task. Gary Vaughan (Director of Operations) commented   "...we constructed our first pre-preg oven here in the Waterloo Road factory over 25 years ago, when we were building a 90' carbon cruising yacht. This new oven has come together far quicker than that one, and requires a lot less energy to get up to temperature.  It's good to see we have learned something over the years..."

 

The new oven has been built over-length so that it can be sectioned into smaller units as required.  At present it is partitioned to provide a 14m oven for two large vacuum tables where FIBRE Mechanics are building the structural bulkheads of the Gunboat 68; and a 34m oven currently being prepared to accommodate a new project starting late August.  The oven is powered by electric heaters capable of raising the temperature to 105 degrees centigrade  -  with both temperature and vacuum pressure being controlled, monitored and logged across all component surfaces.  Fifteen separate heat inlets allow accurate control of temperature at every point within the oven; and a retractable roof allows use of the overhead factory crane during hull assembly.

 

 

 

In May 2019 FIBRE Mechanics delivered the 20th Melges IC-37 to the New York Yacht Club in Newport RI.

 

Having agreed to construct the boats just 12 months ago, the team at FIBRE Mechanics successfully completed a complete set of production tooling and 10 boats in the space of 9 months.  The 10 boats from FIBRE Mechanics together with the club's existing 10 boats make up a fleet of 20 one-design 37ft racing boats, available to Club members to compete in one of the most competitive and intense one-design racing programmes yet seen.

 

All 20 boats have been built to exacting standards to ensure that the weight, and weight distribution of each is identical. The 1520 kg carbon keel fin and lead bulb assemblies are corrected to within a single kg, and all deck gear, sails, rig and sailing systems adhere to a strict one-design specification drawn up by Mills Design in close consultation with Harry Melges, and drawing on the experience of an all-star committee of top sailors from the NYYC.