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Koh Samui is well appreciated as the paradigm of idyllic tropical paradise escapes. With its beautiful white sand beaches, fringed by swaying palm trees, the island is best known for its tourism and property development industries. However, with the advent of the annual Koh Samui yachting regatta held during the last week of May and now in its fourth year, the island is becoming a popular sailing destination. Samui Ocean Yachting, in association with Coco Sailing has now
realized that one of the best ways to get boats to the island is to build them here.
As a young start-up company most people might suppose that they would have chosen a tried and tested design for their first boat. But the two prime movers behind the concept of this business, Peter Plant and Kim Thomas, decided to be a bit more radical in their approach. They settled on a brand new boat from the drawing board of Schionning Designs in Australia. With an established broad range of multihulls on their books, Schionning went for something quite different when submitting a new concept for a small, multihull design competition boat, and the Radical Bay 8000 was the result. She measures in at 8 metres in length by almost 6 metres wide and draws a mere 300 mm at minimum draft, making her ideal for the shallow bays and beaches around the islands.
Weighing below 1100 kgs, she slides through the water fast and easily. Fitted with a small outboard motor she can be effortlessly driven at surprisingly high motoring speeds when the tropical breezes fade. The boat has good interior volume for her size, enough in fact to contain 4 berths, a galley, a toilet and ample storage room. Up on deck the full size trampoline has an amazingly large area of 30 square metres, making this the ideal place to sleep and enjoy those star-filled tropical nights. A further asset of this boat is that she is de-mountable for road trailering,
economic storage ashore, or to fit inside a standard 40 foot container for shipping.
But the most striking item on the Radical Bay 8000 and the first thing that everyone notices, is the rig. Instead of the usual single mast, fitted at the centre of the cross beam, with its stays and wire rigging, this boat has twin free standing masts
- one on each hull. This bi-plane rig set up (as it is commonly called) is not unique and has been used on quite a few racing and specialist speed machines - but this is the first time the concept has been introduced on a standard design catamaran.
The first Radical Bay 8000 was launched last year and the first 6
months of test sailing have proven this new rig set up to be very simple, very
efficient, very stable and very safe - oh, and did we mention fast? Yes, she is
also very fast. After a clean sweep in her initial racing outing at the Ocean
Marina Regatta in Pattaya last August, Coco Sailing campaigned Coco Blues at the Phuket Kings Cup last December and took first place overall in the multi-hull class, receiving a replica of the Kings Cup Trophy, which now sits proudly in a display cabinet in the namesake Coco Blues Bar in north Chaweng.
This first boat is available for chartering around the islands and will be joined by the second locally built Radical Bay 8000 due to be launched in March.
Coco director Alan Sadd was so impressed when Coco Blues was launched that he
immediately ordered another three to be built. Soon Coco Sailing will have their
own fleet of boats ready for self-sail charter, sail safaris, skippered day trips and one-design racing. This building programme makes the Radical Bay 8000 the first production catamaran in the world with a twin mast, bi-plane rig. Not only is this a first for Thailand, but also a first for Samui. Retailing at just under 100,000 Australian Dollars it is easy to see why the company is already receiving export enquiries for this innovative and fun design.
For more information check out the Coco Sailing
web site at cocosailing.com. |
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