Oceanbuilt is a West Australian company
that is rapidly developing a reputation for
designing and building fast surf skis
for the
international racing circuit. The design team
behind Oceanbuilt surf skis is very formidable
indeed. It includes Britton Ward
a worldclass
naval architect who specializes in hull
design. He has been heavily involved with
numerous Volvo ocean racing machines and Americas cup yachts. Other members of the team include father and son Shaun and Brendan Rice. Shaun has been a world-class river and ocean paddler whereas his son at 21 is already eighth in the world rankings for open ocean surf ski racing.
To further improve speed, strength and
reliability, Justin Brent-White, Managing
Director of Oceanbuilt, joined forces with
the Composites Consulting Group (CCG)
to design and engineer a surf ski from the
ground up rather than just evolve a design
or copy features from other surf skis. Justin
believes, “If you are going to go to all the
trouble of putting together a great team why
skip a step? Get the best construction and
engineering team as well”.
By combining the surf ski knowledge
of Britton, Shaun and Brendan with the
composite and structural engineering
expertise of the CCG engineering team, a
carbon sandwich laminate was developed
that could be produced by an infusion
molding process. A series of Finite Element
Models (FEA) were created to analyze the
performance of the design under a wide
variety of loading conditions. With this
information the fi nal laminate was developed
and the prototype surf ski was produced. A
rigorous on the water test program followed
to validate the engineering.
Justin maintains that having the surf ski
professionally engineered is a very cost eff ective
approach as it saves the time and money
that
would be expended using traditional
trial and error methods.
www.oceanbuilt.com