Why is a c-fury™ different from other small boats?

The c-fury™ designers started by looking at the requirements of the passenger and driver. They asked a simple question:

Is it possible to produce a compact, high-efficiency craft that is fun to use but with the sea keeping properties of a much larger vessel?

The craft had to be towable behind a small family car, fit in a standard garage on the trailer, light enough for single-handed launch and recovery, simple and intuitive to drive, yet capable of achieving >40mph, a cruise speed of 25mph in a >1m swell up to a Force 6 - all whilst seating 4 adults and a child comfortably.

This specification was exceptionally tough. It pointed in one direction: a hybrid hull, a catamaran for stability and ride quality, an assister hydrofoil for efficiency  and ride enhancement and large air tunnels for stability and shock reduction.

The resultant hull configuration we simply call smoothride.

How does the smoothride hull work?

The catamaran hull is designed to give a very smooth ride, along with good levels of lift and directional stability. The hull has two large tunnels (the nearest hull in the diagram has been removed to show the tunnel profile) separated by a narrow central wave deflector. The constantly decreasing tunnels compresses the air stream (blue shading) which helps duct water spray underneath the boat and past the engine leg. In between the hulls just above the keel sits a high lift hydrofoil which delivers both lift and stability.

The majority - over 65% - of the lift is provided by the hull, shown in grey on the diagram. The hydrofoil provides up to 30% lift, shown in red , while the air trapped and being compressed in the tunnel provides up to 5% of the lift. The result of all this lift is the hull planes very high in the water, so the wetted area of the hull is reduced, hence the efficiency is greatly increased.

click [here] for smoothride video

Passenger benefits

To summarise, the key benefits the hull offers are: