Virus Boats

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Virus Boats is a manufacturer of human and sail powered small, day use, recreational craft and they pride themselves on being the best-of-breed, in their respective class. Based in the Etel, Brittanny province, France, they have good access to Atlantic coastal water for testing.

Contents

[edit] History

(The history of this builder needs to be filled in)

[edit] Development

This company started by making rowing sculls, which they eventually developed into their Turbo Skiff product, which includes a light-weight planing hull that even the average rower can get up, and keep, on plane.

Their first foray into the sailing market was based on their 16-foot Yole open deck rowing boat hull form. They simply added aka's and amas, along with simple gaff rigging, to make a sailing canoe, proa, or out-rigger trimaran. The design being flexible enough to allow any of the above configurations with the same basic boat components.

After establishing that product, the next step was a more targeted and purpose built Magnum 21, based on the Turbo Skiff hull form. It was fairly succfessful and the company claims 400 sold. However, there were some performance complaints and they developed a modification called the Magnum 21.S, retaining the same hull forms but spacing the amas wider apart, on longer akas, and increasing the sail area by over 20%, with a taller mast and outfitting racing type Pentax sails.

[edit] Models

[edit] Rowing boats

  • Yole
  • Turbo II
  • Turboskiff

[edit] Trimarans

  • Magnum 18 - 5.5m (18 ft.) x 4.30m (13.9 ft.), 220Kg
  • Magnum 21 - 6.3m (21 ft.) x 4.08m (13.6 ft.), 330Kg, 6 persons
Cutter Rigged, gennaker, spinnaker
  • Magnum 21.S - 6.3m (21 ft.) x 4.88m (15.9 ft.), 340Kg, 6 persons
Cutter Rigged, spi, gennaker, genoa; Wider akas with more sail area and taller mast

[edit] External links

  • Virus Boats Mostly French but some Franglais.
  • Ahoy Boats British site, more comprehensive than the mfg's site.