Sea Eagle wins prestigious award "Best Sail above 500GT" at the "International Superyacht Society Awards of Distinction" gala. The impressive and already iconic superyacht, was built by Rondal's sister company Royal Huisman, and designed by Dykstra Naval Architects and Mark Whiteley Design. Read what makes her so special for us.
Her three carbon composite equally tall masts are equipped with advanced Rondal furling booms, which are styled and shaped to match the design of the yacht. At Rondal we call this our style-to-order concept. Additionally, the aft and main mast are equipped with staysails for reaching courses.
The yacht is designed with the maximum air draft of the Panama Canal in mind for an easy passage between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. The total sail area is distributed over the three masts to provide the freedom of various sail configurations for diverse weather conditions and courses.
THE RIG
The masts are designed for an optimal balance between strength, stiffness and weight, and are manufactured from carbon composite. An impressive feat and exclusive to Rondal, is that each mast is highly customized and built from a unique mould to achieve an uncompromised mast tube shape and diameter. Also, each Rondal mast is built as one piece. This means that 80% of the mast thickness is constructed with full length, uninterrupted carbon fiber laminates, giving the mast exceptional properties with an advanced strength distribution. This results in a beautiful even bend, without ‘hard spots’.
INTEGRATED SAILING SYSTEM AT SEA EAGLE
A vital role was played by Rondal in realizing the Integrated Sailing System. This unique approach delivers optimization of sailing components and systems through an expert process of design and engineering. The Integrated Sailing System comprises the three carbon masts with their furling booms, hydraulic boomvang, headsail furling systems, staysails, deck winches and equipment, captive reel winches and continuous solid carbon standing rigging by Carbo-Link, all equipped with load sensing capabilities.
PERFORMANCE
The powerful rig and optimized sailing systems ensure that the full potential of the hull is reached so that spectacular speeds over 21 knots can be achieved. This is done in the ultimate sustainable way by powering up SEA EAGLE’s Rondal rig, which can carry over 3500 square meters of sail area. The complete sailing system is controlled by 34 Rondal hydraulic winches, of which 12 deck winches and 22 captive reel winches. The largest captive reel winches - for the yankee, staysail sheets and mizzen sheet runners - are capable of a tremendous 18 tons (18.000 kg!) pulling load. To Rondal, SEA EAGLE represents a full scope project with Rondal acting as a building partner - not only to realize the sailing system, but also to supply various entrances, custom deck hatches and large carbon composite tender hatches.
LOAD SENSING RUDDER
SEA EAGLE's rudder was also constructed by Rondal. Not just “a” rudder, as this is the largest carbon composite rudder in the world. Building the rudder from carbon composite, Rondal achieved a significant weight saving of 1750kg compared to a steel rudder. This accomplishment presented an interesting technical challenge as there was no pre-existing engineering data on composite rudders of this scale. For that reason an R&D project was started together with engineering partner Gurit and fiber optic specialist Com&Sens. During the construction of the rudder, optical fibers were embedded, allowing for measurements of torque and side loads during the build process as well as during sail trials. This
real world data not only verifies but also advances future rudder projects.
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