Brief

Galactica Star: Changing the Rules of Yacht Design

This was an exciting feature for me, as it was my first opportunity to write on yacht design. And what a yacht to start on! Galactica Star was (and is) a revolutionary development in the field of yacht design, and I was delighted that Heesen Yachts asked me to write an article on her.  After publication of the feature on OnboardOnline, I received word  that the owner of Galactica Star had liked the article very much- so it was a happy success.

Galactica Star Yacht Design

Galactica Star: Changing the Rules of Yacht Design

What travels faster than a nuclear submarine, Usain Bolt on a good day, or a dolphin?  What’s the same length as a jumbo jet, but is built with aluminium three times as thick? The answer is Galactica Star, a 65 metre motor yacht from Heesen that has changed the rules of yacht design.

What makes this yacht revolutionary is the shape of its hull. Galactica Star boasts the world’s first Fast Displacement Hull Form (FDHF), a hull so fast and fuel efficient that during tank-testing at the Wolfson facility in Southampton, the results were so spectacular that they assumed there’d been a mistake, and ran the tests again…

What they were onto, quite simply, was the most efficient displacement hull design that had ever been tested, a yacht which performs 30% more efficiently over the 15-30 knot range. With a maximum speed of 28.8 knots, this thing is both fast and significantly more efficient, something few expected from a yard so well known for its perfomance aluminium yachts.

In an industry where a 5% gain in efficiency is considered a triumph, 30% is something again entirely. So, how does it work?

Read full article here.