The build of the first Gunboat 72 is well underway at our factory in La Grande-Motte, France! Experienced Gunboatbuilders revel in the process of building our yachts to race boat standards, hyper-focused on quality and attention to detail.
Construction underway on the first Gunboat 72
Pictured above: The first layers of carbon being laid and then the completed outside skin.
Below: The meticulous fit of the bridgedeck core.
The devil is in the details. 5-axis milled plugs and female molds mean smooth hull parts and small tolerances, but it doesn’t help if you plan to add large bumps of joining laminate after the fact. We incorporated all the fine details into the mold, like recesses for seacocks and most importantly small rebates for anything that will be laminated together later, like the deck or the daggerboard case. This ensures minimal paint filler and weight.
The laminators apply the dry carbon to the mold following strict rules for overlaps. The hull is engineered using the latest Finite Element Analysis (FEA) software, so we have reinforcement patches and core recesses in exactly the right places to match the load that each area will see. The thermoformed core-fit is performed by expert craftsman, done to millimeter tolerances.