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: Changing 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?