How long have you been constructing boats?
I work with boats since twentysome years. In contrast with Attila Déry, my associate, I have not sailed as a child, still, I have been interested in sailboats since I was very little. When I had to choose what to study at university, I focused on, that my studies should meet my sport sailing interest. I wanted to orientate towards glass fibre and carbon fibre reinforced composites – preferably boats. So I contacted Tibor Czigány for being my supervisor for a TDK paper (Tibor Czigány is a full professor, former head of the Department of Polymer Technology, and former dean of our faculty, while TDK is the national student science conference - Ed.) He advised me natural fibre reinforced composites as a topic, giving motivation for my future thesis, and even for my PhD studies. And in the summer holiday, every year I joined a boat construction or a composite workshop, in order to be able to practice as well.
What are the natural fibre reinforced composites?
Materials reinforced with fibres of animal, plant or mineral origin, of which I made researches with flax, hemp and sisal fibres. The latter is the fibre of the agave plant, a coarse, tough fibre.
At the Budapest Boat Show four awards were given to the boats. What novelties do they have?
We are not working on a mainstream, but a niche market, due to interest-wise, emotional and market reasons. While most of the boat construction companies construct the most popular tour boats, we construct racing sailboats from the beginning. With this, we limit the amount of our potential customers, due to the fact, that our boats require massive sailing skills, except for our smallest model. Moreover, the construction of our boats is pretty complicated. A cruising boat can be overdimensioned, so the negligence of the staff, the uncertainties in the chemical reactions can happen without any consequences. At race boats there is no opportunity for this, so they need much more attention: every gram of the boat is measured. At the same time, these challenges are opportunities for us as well, because if we had to compete with the huge multinational boat building concerns, we could only loose.
Our boat which won the first prize was inspired by a solo ocean race boat category, the Mini-Transat. Mini-Transat is a category in the ocean solo sailing, like go-kart for the car racers. Small, relatively inexpensive, entry level for the bigger classes. These boats are only constructed for a sole task, they are not ideal for universal usage (especially on lakes). But this category was only an infspiration for our boat, which is not built according the class rules. Ours is a version for leisure sailing, being much lighter, since no cabin was needed. And not only good performing in strong wind, but also in lighter wind as well, even in upwind sailing.
The third prize was given to our special workboat, Flaar 5.7e (left) with electric propulsion, and built in carbon fibre reinforced epoxy resin structure for the lowest possible weight. It can be used for dynamic boating as well, even available for towing wakeboarders, although it is not its mainpurpose, but predominantly for sailing coaches and for supporting sports events, and also available for emergency or police reasons.
How could you describe Mini-Transat?
Mini-Transat is the transatlantic contest of the so-called Mini 6.50 category sailboats, starting from France, with one single stop at the Canarian Islands. Its finish varies between the Caribbean and Brazil (currently it is Martinique). This is a solo race, so only one person can sail the boat. There are series-produced minis, an alumnus of our university, Áron Méder (solo circumanvigator) also attained this category. For me, the category of prototypes is more interesting and innovative. The models only have to meet a so-called box rule, which only specifies a maximum overall size for boats, as well as features such as stability.. Due to the small size, it is the test areaof novel solutions, even crazy-like ideas. If an idea is successful, then it usually appears in bigger racing boats 1-2 years later.
What makes your Mini-Transat inspired boat, Flaar 20 (left) greener?
Everyone associates green sailing with electric boats. But an electric boat cannot be more environmentally friendly than a sailboat – the battery production makes a significant environmental impact, and if we do not charge that from a green source, it is polluting, too. In the environmental award, probably the boat’s low weight was honoured too, as it explains the capabilities for it outstanding performance. The hull is only 120 kg. At a boat, we not only have to think about recyclability, because with cross-linked composites there is no efficient recycling method. Rather, that there should be no excess material usage, and with proper design, technology, construction supervision and quality management, we still can ensure avoiding the decline of reliability and life expectancy. The consciousness of this boat is demonstrated in e.g. the small quantity of resin, used in the production, which is one-fifth of the boats with similar size.
What further plans do you have?
Ideas just keep coming and coming to our mind, but now, we should rather not expand our product line, but we should increase the number of our current types. Since we have launched our company, we developed an almost unrealistic number of models. Fortunately, we can see the results as well: our model ‘37’ was the first Hungarian boat nominated for the prize ‘European Yacht of the Year’.
We also like doing experiments. At the Department of Polymer Technology, there were robust researches about basalt fibre. Although, this is an excellent reinforcing fibre, is still not widespread in boat building. because the reason is that boat building standards does not include basalt fibre, and it might not be used in analogy with the standards for glass fibres. I am currently looking for those aspects, where basalt can be implemented in the current regulative system. Reaction injection moulding also grabbed my attention, it is a technology with a significant potential, and we do a lot of experiments with it.
How can we imagine reaction injection molding?
We inject material into a closed cavity, like in injection molding. However, in this case, we do not use thermoplastic material, but reactive materials with twoor more components, like polyurethane. The advantage of this technology is, that it has lower viscosity, so there is no need for such high pressure, saving significant amount of energy. With processing abilities even at ambient temperature, there is also no need for 150-350°C temperature. Herewith, the raw material is more expensive, so the popularity of reaction injection moulding can emerge, but compared to injection moulding, only with size growth and declining pieces. These two technologies are not the alternatives of each other, but rather supplements.
László Benesóczky
Photo: bme.hu, Ildikó Takács
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