Matjaz Svetek of Jost Svetek & Co
One of the most surprising teams was the Slovenians, it was a long time ago a Slovenian did enter, and now they came back
with two top of the line protos. Instead of letting a French yard build them (communication problems galore then) they choose a Slovenian company. Its a small country but innovative. Think Elan skis, and appearantly Adria :) and Bernard Galley from Vendee background choose to let them build another one, so they must have done good work to satisfy this guy.. (he is top open 60 salesman and other raceboas, i reckon he knows a bit of boatbuilding) I know this company from the past when they did build olympic kayaks, always a field where high tech was early adopted because of the small size. And off course a photo of the yard dog.. its tradition. So lets get to know these guys better:
First question:how did you know about the minis ?
Actualy i came in to the minis by a coincidence couple of years back,while i has working on SPRINT techonology in a well known slovenian design and engeenering company caled Seaway.
Of course i knew some basic things about minis before but actualy Kristian and Andraz came to Seaway to get an offer for 2 mini protos to be made there,and
as carbon racing boats of all types were my speciality there i was assigned to calculate and come up with a feasibility and cost plan.
So i gathered as much info as i could(with help of your website) so that we made K&A an offer.At that time the 4-Ocean team still had quite a small budget and couldn't realy afford it so the project was scraped. But i was still very interested and keept track of the mini developements ,as it was something
new all the time with all the exciting elements packed in a small package.
What part in the buiding process was more difficult than you thought, and what was easier ? The building proces was by it self not unexpeced, what was new to me was the
amout of work need for all the small parts and details(lots of different chainplates and heavily structured hull) which is a couple of times more than normal boats of this size. The most time consuming was probably fully vacumbaged hull to internal structure joinery. In comparson to all the small stuf ,the hull and deck are actualy minor piece of work.
More minis in near future?
Currently we are planning to complete new plugs and mould for the new Manuard kick ass proto design and also build a couple of them, possibly one that will be available for rental.
With a lot of experience on the manuard boats and the fact that the moulds are in our workshop we can build protos to a very, very competitive price.
Parallel to this we are building a 3-5 new 5.8m carbon sports boats (Spada 5.8) of Swiss design and various other custom projects and small parts.
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What is the future of the yard?
We are also looking to expand with an new 20x20m workshop, but we are sort of picky concerning our projects (if the boats are not interesting we don't build them, no mater the money, as simple as that) as the boat yard is actually a big hobby so we get to play (build) with many things from airplanes to race cars.
One of our most interesting developments now is new Autoclaves which will enable us to produce rudders and similar parts in the highest possible quality.So what can you offer the mini world?
We can basically build protos of any design ,existing or new. The protos can be build complete or a bareboat, we currently have the moulds for the Manuards
Tip Tip II/III which enables us to build it to a very competitive price and in relatively short time, but we can make moulds or plugs for any other design relatively quickly. The Tip Top serie moulds were actually constructed here in a partner company of ours.
In the mast area we are now developing rigging parts for the Compotech mast tubes and we also supply bowsprits (used by 7 protos so far) and booms for the minis.
The appendices can be made from custom CNC miled moulds and made in prepreg. With new autoclave all the small parts will be autoclaved soon.Actualy small parts and appendices are going werz strong right now with more and more minis using our stuff.But as i said we can also build much bigger boats so that advancing mini sailors can also be served in that area.
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What kind of composites and building methods can you offer ?
We basicaly are used to many diferent methods form basic vacumbaging to autoclave manufacture,from pvc core to nomex ,we mainy use SP Systems materials for which we also do distribuition in Slovenia .
Curently we also have an 6m oven for making bulkheads this will be joined with our 2 new Autoclaves 8x1,8 m big able to work on 7 bar up to 250C and a small 3x0,8m autoclave for small parts. This autoclaves will give us a big edge as the Autoclave technology currently represents the very best in quality and only very few boat yards in the world actualy have them as they are very,very expensive. |
One last question:
How does it feel to see such a light construction taking on such a beating ?
As you said the boat hulls are built very light with thin skins and thick core ,the beating the boats recieve during sailing is what the boats are designed for so the structure has no problems with that ,the loads are spread over wide surface ,actually Manuards designs have quite high structural strenght as a result of the cleverly designed internal structure.
The loads that are more problematic are the actual handling loads which can
occour during transport or handling in the marina. This loads are point(form sharp or hard objects) loads which can not be spread o other parts of the structure and are hapening on very small surface.
Best Whishes
Matjaz CONTACT DETAILS:
Yep its an email in a picture, so you have to RETYPE it :) to beat spam harvesters.
They will have a website soon. Here some latest news
We are preparing to build a next generation Manuard proto molds
As we believe that each next boat needs to be faster than one before it we are preparing an package of performance and ergonomics upgrades together with
Sam (the designer of the TipTop- Leo) for the new boats so that boats will be even faster and more ergonomical than current generation and additionally cca 30kg-50kg lighter depending on the configuration without any reduction in hull strength .
Water ballast system on the Slovenian minis and on 551:
In terms of water ballasts we looked at all the problems that water ballast systems have and tried to solve them one by one so the development was progressive.
First problem we encountered was the scoop which is not organic part of the boat(it is normally a huge pvc thing that you glue in and hope that it stays water tight(it is not a problem if you use the flange ) but as we wanted a flush composite piece we developed a new full carbon scoop.
Which is lighter (1/2 the weight), has much higher flow rates (+35%) and can be laminated flush without flange in the hull, the piece can also be
disassembled for cleaning. The scoop itself is a manufactured with very high quality carbon tube which has special inside treatment that is normally used for carbon hydraulic cylinders. The scoop can operate without any O-rings and still be watertight.
Next step was sturdier and ergonomical pipe system, cca half of the piping is in carbon tubes on which you can step without any fear, and are integrated in the
boat structure so that the complete system is cca half the size.
Next step is a fully rigid system where all tubes will be rigid and in carbon, but for that we still have to build composite valves.
The last but not least is the fact that in sailing conditions most waterbalasts never get completely filed up because of the air vent position stops air from escaping. So what we did is a super light weight carbon piping for air transfer
from one tank to the other which has many benefits 1st the tank can always be filled to the top regardles of boat position, 2nd most work can be done by the scoop (less pumping work) , 3rd water transfers speeds from balast tanks increase as the air is actialy forced from the filing tank to the emptying tank, 4th all other water movements are faster.
A very certain step in the future will be new carbon valves .Which will enable a
troughly light and fully watertight and very robust system which will be half the size whith same flow ,remember that all PVC parts use very thick walls compared to that used on carbon .
The whole water ballast stuff is for now exclusive to our boats (509,510 will replace their current system with new fully rigid for next season.) and can be used on manuards without Modifications.
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