What is an advanced composite?

Our design workshop was fortunate to have Dan Newland, President of Pegasus Aeromarine, Inc., to give us a presentation on "Advanced Composite Material, Design and Repair". Dan is extremely knowledgeable and an innovator in this field. I actually walked out of the presentation thinking that I now understand this stuff! For someone that is focused on the traditional building methods of boats it doesn't take much to see that this is not future...it's already here.

So what is an advanced composite? It can be a fabric, fiber, resin, core or process. The first three are somewhat self-explanatory (not really). Processes can be one of the following:

• Open mold (hand layup)
• Vacuum bagging
• Autoclaving
• Infusion (aka SCRIMP)
• Prepegs

Sailboat racing champ Dan Newland to talk at squadron meeting

Posted: Wednesday, March 12, 2008 12:00 am

Boat racing champion Dan Newland talks about designing and building his ultra-light racing sailboat Pegasus XIV. Newland won the Singlehanded Transpac in 1992 aboard Pegasus XIV. Since then, he and wife Linda, a racing champion in her own right, have had many divisional and overall wins, including the 2006 San Francisco Offshore Ocean Racing Series, in which they won every race they entered.

At only 6,000 pounds, the ultra-light, ultra-high-tech 37-foot Pegasus is the lightest boat of her size, with an interior that is intended to do long distance and overnight races with a full crew.

The Newlands put about 23,000 miles on Pegasus during their first seven years of sailing her, including two round trips to Hawaii, two to Mexico, and several to California destinations, including Monterrey, Santa Cruz and San Francisco.

The boat is made of carbon fiber, Kevlar and "S" glass. She has sustained 19.9 knots in flat water and somewhere around 30 knots or so while surfing. In her ideal conditions - 20 to 40 knots downwind with the spinnaker up - Pegasus is almost unbeatable. She is also very fast upwind in a breeze going boat for boat with other boats much heavier and more stable. Pegasus has carried the big spinnakers in more than 40 knots true wind speed. Dan has often released the helm while doing 17 to 18 knots to demonstrate how easy Pegasus is to handle and how well she tracks straight and true on her own.

Dan, the president of Pegasus Aeromarine Inc., has over 38 years of experience building composite parts. This includes designing and building sail fabrics and carbon/epoxy parts for America’s Cup yachts, advanced rudders, satellite vents and 3 ton bomb canisters. He has built composite parts in carbon fiber, fiberglass, aramid and other high strength and high modulus fibers from the age of 12. These have frequently used advanced resin systems such as toughened epoxies, vinylesters and of course all the other more common resins such as isopthalic and ortho resins. Additionally, he has used all of the major core types such as foams, balsa and a variety of honeycombs.

For most of Dan's life, he has been building in composites. Quite simply it is what he loves to do. He built his first boat at age 11 then started building surfboards at 12. Dan then continued to build boats and parts in all types of materials and processes. These have included projects like 6000 lb. bomb canisters for underwater submarine research, carbon fiber hot tub covers and vents for satellites. Dan has a great deal of experience designing and building rudders for a tremendous variety of boats. Many of these rudders have been emergency rudders, or sometimes they have replaced a broken primary rudder, but most often it was to improve handling and reduce weight or improve the lift/drag ratio of a race boat.