“MV 1005” Cruiser (Draft V1)

Past weeks I spent 10 days on board a Leopard 40 on the local Arg Nautic Expo. One of our F18 friends end up buying one and later getting the Leopard dealership. Early this year he asked he to help him with new project: Introducing cruising cats in Argentina.
When he sent the the L40 picture after buying it  I went “well, good , nice..” not much convinced on the boxy bulk cruising Leopard style.

But after spending much time on the boat, you realize the purpose of the design. Still not pretty or smooth but you learn to appreciate its functionality, she also sails rather good and after analyzing its competitors on the space distribution of the main cabin and hulls, and for the intended use of relaxed cruising the L40 stands well prepared and gets you liking it once living aboard.

Lets remark for the intended use, which is mainly chartering it all over the world.

So I was left wondering past days how to get that incredible inner space design (and great simple style too) of the L40 towards a smaller cruiser cat. the 30′ range is a quite tricky lenght to play with design, as these shorter cats cannot sustain the cabin size of bigger boats, they tend to look ugly.
Also for a daysailer or coastal cruiser you will want a fast lively platform, and the epitome of that concept is the Raku 32 by Tony Grainger that started as my local idea here in Argentina and he developed fully to such a smooth weapon design.

Targeting another market and after spending time at the Expo I realized too how people assigned the entire appeal of the L40 to its interior design, specially the foredeck access, which of course is criticized by the competition on getting filled with water and else, but thinking again on the Leopard line main charter use, it is a deal breaker feature. My friend analyzed live at the Miami boat show all the other boats like Fountain Pajot, Lagoon etc, and he ended chosing the Leopard.

You need to understand that local sailors don’t see much cruising cats here, if any aside our F18s & As. 100% of the visitors who step on board (we invited everyone no restriction) was amazed on the space and style of the L40 compared to their sail monohulls or even large motor cruising boats that fill our Delta rivers.

Last week I draw a sketch on paper , rough one on style concept mainly and later made a sketch digital version above. I played a bit past days with Fusion 360 and today I reached a point where the 3D took shape. And render above is what I got after adjusting to actual measures cabin size, height and else.

Nice design exercise without a doubt for me , to keep learning about bigger cruising cats.
Target is a scaled L40 type of cruiser, nothing fancy nor fast or light.
Lenght is 10.05mts or 33 feet. Main cabin target height is 1.90.
Style derives from Scorpion hulls plus a mix of the Leopard 50 cabin lines targeting a pocket 10mt cruiser that not looks like a container or a freezer!

For weapon, perfect design and high performance sailing in similar size, nothing else to look at than Tony Grainger Raku 32.