The brand new ketch ‘NanuQ’ has been out stretching her legs on sea trials these last few weeks. This 24m expedition explorer designed by Dykstra Naval Architects and built by KM Yachtbuilders was developed to venture into the northernmost and southernmost waters of the world. The project was developed for a client who is a sailor with over ten years experience in arctic regions and will be largely be used for exploring the vast and most frigid areas of the globe.
The vessel has a striking rig package consisting of two (2) free standing, rotating wings masts. The wing masts with soft sail combination provides better lift/drag ratio than a conventional rig to enhance sailing performance with the limited sail area that can be managed single-handedly. Each wing mast is covered with twenty (20) solar panels per side, amounting to 40m2 of solar panels in total to generate electricity in arctic environments.
The rigs are free to rotate +/- 140° to enable sail handling and reefing when sailing deep courses. The absence of standing rigging reduces the risk of icing or rig damage due to drifting ice. The main sails are handled by closed-front OceanFurl booms with hydraulic furling motors and can be reefed at virtually any angle of sail. Results from the first sea trials are very promising!
This ground breaking rig package is detail engineered and produced by Hall Spars using full ply-by-ply in-house FEA calculations.
