WILD!

Rob Mundle looks at Sean Langman's 'out-there' new 75ft skiff (sic) design

Sean Langman first gets your attention by talking about his planned 75ft offshore racer doing 14kt upwind, and 30kt-plus downwind! Then, when he presents you with the preliminary drawings of his ultra- radical 'monomaran' you tend to say something like 'holy hellfire'. It is extremely different, so different in fact that when he sent the drawings to the IRC for a rating analysis he drew a blank.

'I'm more than a little disappointed with their response, or lack of it,' Langman said of the IRC office. 'I've been championing the cause of IRC in Australia for several years but now they don't want to know me. I expected some questions to come back to us about our numbers relative to the other boats, but their response was that they noted the innovative, unusual and different approach to design, and had decided to invoke rule 2.5, which means that they don't have to give us a reason for refusing us a rating. I thought they'd at least give us a chance to fly to London and explain the concept; instead we got no rating and no reasonŠ'

To read the remainder of this article please go to the May 2004 edition of Seahorse, available at selected newsstands or by calling: + 44 (0) 1590 671899 or by email at: info@seahorse.co.uk

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Langman's (picture below) previous Grundig Xena is itself no slouch, but the new boat will be something different altogether...