BOAT REVIEW: EDLIN PILOTHOUSE MOTOR SAILER 10.66M
Rebb'l with a cause
ONE LOOK AT REBB'l PROVES HER designer/builder Richard Edlin is not afraid to push the boundaries of tradition.
The pilothouse motorsailer Rebb'l - an
acronym of Richard Edlin Boat Builders
Ltd - could also mean to rebel against tradition.
Traditionally, motorsailers have tended
to be relatively modest performers thanks to
smallish low aspect rigs, heavy displacement,
and low resistance hulls incapable of being
pushed past hull speed. With her tall rig, wide
powerful hull, high pilothouse and 100hp
engine, Rebb'l is far from the model of traditional
motorsailer and, provided you get past
her unusual styling, offers genuine advantages
for cruising.
Rebb'l began 10 years ago, when Edlin and
his good friend Rob Neeley decided to build a
10.5m race yacht in partnership. Edlin and
Neeley designed a 2600kg displacement yacht,
with a shallow hull, U sections forward, a flat
bottom and flared topsides.
Edlin and Neeley built the boat to a bare hull
stage before Neeley became involved in other projects.
Edlin also had other projects on
the go and parked up the hull for several
years - meanwhile, his needs changed.
He decided a pilothouse motorsailer
had more appeal than a race boat, so he
re-designed the boat using the existing
hull. This included adding 150mm to the
sheer, a new deck, cabin, interior and rig,
and a hinging pod to the hull aft - more
on the pod later. Edlin also wanted shallow
draft and designed a lifting daggerboard
and twin rudders.
However, Edlin was faced with a bigger
challenge. Pushing the average yacht hull
past its hull speed under power usually
digs a big hole in the water. This is usually
due to lack of buoyancy and/or lifting surface
area in the aft sections of the hull.
Had Edlin started with a clean sheet of
paper, he would have drawn a wider hull,
with flatter, straight aft sections. However,
constrained by the existing hull shape, he
had to find another method to improve
motoring performance.
His solution was a movable pod fitting
into the aft section of the hull and hinging
from the front. When the boat is sailing,
the pod is fully up and remains fair to the
original hull lines.
When down for motoring, the pod
alters the water flow aft, forcing the bow
down, which prevents squatting.
The pod was built in glass-sheathed
plywood, hinged with twin stainless bolts
in carbon fibre hinges. Fully deployed, the
pod extends around 150mm, and is operated by twin electric motors driving
worm drives.
The hull was built in glass/foam epoxy
sandwich, with Divinycell foam and West
System epoxy. The decks are glasssheathed
plywood, the cockpit floor is
foam/glass and cabin tops are
ply/foam/glass. The large windows - so
important on any pilothouse design - are
six-millimetre safety glass, set into internal
flanges.
Photos by MIKE HUNTER
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