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MY Ady Gil (Earth race): Is this the Weirdest Yacht Ever?

Previously referred to as the Earthrace, MY Ady Gil is a triple hulled yacht ( trimaran ) which surpasses the conventional style of yacht design. The vessel was built in the year 2005 mainly for the purpose of setting a new record in compassing the world. But while it did establish a new record, the amazing yacht failed substantially to sustain its continuance as a vessel.

Earth  Boat Details

Built in New Zealand in the shipbuilding yard of Calibre Boats, the designing of the trimaran was carried out by the company LOMOcean Design. The main priority of the designers was to ensure that the yacht offered superiority in speed without affecting its constancy in water. As per specifications, the vessel offered a speed of about 32 knots with a length of 78 feet and a beam of 23 feet.

Another very important feature of the boat was that, along with being a triple-hulled yacht, it also doubled as a sub. The weird boat was capable of functioning at a depth of seven feet under the surface of the water – without any problems to the aspect of speed.

The Earthrace was designed to function on both diesels as well bio-diesel. Bio-diesel is refers to the combining of oils derived from vegetables. The equipping of such a technological aspect enabled the vessel to achieve such high rates of speed. In entirety, the trimaran was powered by two engines, generating power of 540 horsepower each to manoeuvre on water.

Circumnavigation

The vessel was officially put into operation in the year 2007. But constant technical snags prevented the vessel from taking on the challenge of creating a new record for the world’s circumnavigation. Finally when these technical crises seemed to have been solved, another crisis emerged for the vessel. The Earth boat collided with a fishing vessel near the coast of the Latin American country of Guatemala.

Following this mishap, wherein one member of the crew was speculated to be dead – the person’s body was never to be found again – the boat was detained. This detainment further prevented the boat from achieving its purpose.

Following these skirmishes, the boat once again made an attempt in the same year to re-start its circumnavigation. New date and time lines were announced but the trip was aborted because of a leakage in one of the vessel’s triple hulls.

The vessel recompensed by making a successful circumnavigation in the year 2008 in spite of the debacle that it suffered during its intended maiden voyage in 2007. But while the boat’s trip was successful, it was not without problems. Like in its previous year, the vessel suffered technical problems which led to delay in the vessel’s completion of its circumnavigation voyage. In spite of all the odds, in the end, the Earthrace did succeed in its mission setting a new record of 60 days, 23 hours and 49 minutes.

Post-Circumnavigation

The amazing yacht after its circumnavigation joined hands with the Sea Shepherd Organisation in the year 2009. The core purpose of such a mergence was to protest against the profession of whaling in Japan. During this time period, the vessel underwent a lot of changes with respect to furnishing and was consequentially re-christened as the MY Ady Gil.

The Ady Gil entrusted with the new role of aggressively protesting against the whalers’ vessel jarred against the Japanese protection ship, the Shonan Maru 2 in the year 2010. And while immediate proactive measures were employed to salvage the vessel, the process only hindered the stability of the vessel. For this reason, the vessel was decided to be purposefully sunk so that it wouldn’t be additionally hampering.

Present and Conclusion

The cost of the weird boat was enormous and it truly was a novelty factor at the time of its existence.

Just recently, there had been reports circulating that the Sea Shepherd Organisation was planning to launch an Ady Gil 2 and thereby commemorate the original vessel’s participation in their struggle to counteract degradation of the marine environment. Though, ultimately these reports turned out to be untrue, it is a well-known fact that the loss that the yacht encountered was staggering – about US$ 1.5 million.

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About Author

Sharda is a freelance writer with a post graduation in journalism and mass communication. Working as a senior writer with Marine Insight, she likes to explore and write about maritime history and incidences of life at the sea. In her free time she likes reading and browsing sports channels.

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Earthrace Conservancy reveals plans for 60m trimaran Earthrace 2

Marine conservation organisation Earthrace has revealed plans for a new 60 metre trimaran, which is being developed under the project name Earthrace 2.

The radical new design by Auckland Naval Architects LOMOcean Design is based on the original Earthrace trimaran Ady Gil , which currently holds the record for fastest circumnavigation of the world by a powerboat.

Pete Bethune, CEO of Earthrace, said: “We’ve worked in a number of countries now targeting illegal fishing by foreign vessels, but the real work in open waters has been limited because we lacked our own long-range vessel.

“This new vessel will be used in blue water patrols, mostly assisting local units to catch poachers.”

Earthrace 2 would have a maximum cruising range of 10,000 nautical miles and a top speed of more than 20 knots. Her Sealegs amphibious tender would allow for quick deployment of troops onto remote beaches.

The layout can accommodate a grand total of 26 people, and the vessel is designed to run continuously at sea for up to 28 days.

Previous successes by the Earthrace Conservancy include catching several vessels undertaking illegal fishing in Central America, Asia and Africa.

To fund the final designs of Earthrace 2, the conservancy will be setting up a Kickstarter campaign to raise $50,000.

Several yards are being considered as build partners, including an Indonesian facility that specialises in composite military vessels. Construction is expected to begin before the end of the year.

The original Earthrace trimaran, 24 metre Ady Gil , was launched in 2006 with a pioneering biofuel propulsion system. After several setbacks, Bethune’s 2008 attempt set the current circumnavigation record of 60 days, 23 hours and 9 minutes.

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'Earthrace’ – around the world in 60 days

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24m Earthrace Trimaran

Length: 24m

Construction: Composite

Draft: 1.6m

Power: 2 x 530 hp Cummins

Fuel: 12,000 L

Cruise: 25 knots

Sprint: 30 knots

Range: 3000 Nautical Miles

#0501 24m Earthrace Trimaran

History was made on 27 June 2008 – the wave piercing trimaran Earthrace (more recently known as Ady Gil ) designed and engineered by LOMOcean took out the UIM world record for a power boat circumnavigation by over 13 days.

Earthrace (later Ady Gil ) was powered by twin Cummins QSC 540 diesel engines and propellers pitched specifically for the record attempt. With this configuration and fully fuelled and provisioned, the boat motors at a maximum speed of around 28 knots, although it could be configured to go faster with lighter fuel loads. At slower passage making speeds, the boat has sufficient range for large stretches of open ocean involving up to 2500 nautical miles between refuelling stops – the slender central hull and tuned sponsors offering excellent fuel efficiency.

Construction of the craft was in keeping with its styling and pedigree; advanced composites included carbon fibre and aramid reinforcements, toughened epoxy resins and lightweight foam cores.

As a part of an ongoing research and development program into this relatively novel hull type, the Earthrace project had the LOMOcean Design team working hard on optimizing fuel efficiency to minimize re-fuelling stops and also on designing for ride comfort, allowing the crew to maintain high average speeds in adverse sea conditions.

Common to all of the power trimaran design work from this office, the entire boat is intended to wave pierce, minimizing pitching motions and preventing slamming or pounding of the bottom shell. Tests conducted on a 6m manned and powered test model fitted with pitch/heave/yaw accelerometers show significant improvements in ride quality in comparison to conventional monohull designs, representing a major step forward in yacht design technology.

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Pictures: First look at new 60m trimaran, Earthrace2

• Katy Stickland

Earthrace2 will be used in conservation missions around the world and will have a range of 10,000 nautical miles. Construction is expected to begin later this year.

The radical looking Earthrace2 has been designed by Auckland Naval Architects LOMOcean Design.

It is based on the original Earthrace, the 100% biofuel eco-boat that still holds the world record for circumnavigating the globe in a powerboat.

See a video of the original Earthrace below

In 2008, the trimaran completed the journey in 60 days 23 hours and 49 minutes, smashing the previous record by almost two weeks.

The new Earthrace2 will serve as a base of operations for the Earthrace Conservation team and will be pivotal for increasing the organisation’s work in addressing illegal fishing.

Side view of Earthrace 2

The vessel, which will allow the team to run missions almost anywhere on earth, will have a range of about 10,000 nautical miles, and a top speed somewhere between 20 and 25 knots.

It will accommodate a crew of 26 and can run continuously for up 28 days.

Earthrace CEO, Captain Pete Bethune said that although a build location is yet to be decided, it is looking at options.

These include using a yard in Indonesia that builds composite military vessels.

He did confirm that construction of Earthrace2 is expected to begin later this year.

One of the renderings of the new trimaran

Bethune said the new trimaran will assist countries with pressing conservation issues.

“We’ve worked in a number of countries now targeting illegal fishing by foreign vessels, but the real work in open waters has been limited because we lacked our own long-range vessel. So this new vessel will be used in blue water patrols, mostly assisting local units to catch poachers,” he said.

LOMOcean Design has continued to develop the trimaran wave piercer concept since the original Earthrace.

Designer Craig Loomes said the hull form has several key advantages over conventional monohulls.

Firstly, the vessels are extremely efficient, allowing for greater range from a given amount of fuel.

Secondly, they offer outstanding seakeeping in rough seas, especially when at speed. This makes them especially suited to military and fisheries enforcement activities.

The original Earthrace

The original 24-metre Earthrace was launched in 2006 and was fuelled on biodiesel made from waste cooking oils.

In 2010, the vessel was involved in collision with the Japanese whaling security vessel, the Shonan Maru 2.

A month later, Bethune successfully boarded this vessel from a jetski in the middle of the night and presented the captain with a $3 million bill to replace Earthrace.

Bethune was taken back to Japan where he was convicted on five charges, including disrupting the whaling programne. He was jailed for five months before being released.

Earthrace is running a Kickstarter campaign in a couple of weeks to raise $50,000 to assist the team in completing the designs for the Earthrace2.

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Earthrace designs unveiled

Photo: Earthrace Conservation

The Earthrace Conservation Organization has unveiled concept designs of a new 60m Trimaran to be used for conservation missions around the world. The vessel, designed by Auckland Naval Architects LOMOcean Design, is based on the original Earthrace that still holds the world speed record for circling the globe.

Earthrace CEO Captain Pete Bethune says the new vessel is pivotal for the team to increase its work in addressing illegal fishing. “We’ve worked in a number of countries targeting illegal fishing by foreign vessels, but the real work in open waters has been limited because we lacked our own long-range vessel. So this new vessel will be used in blue-water patrols, mostly assisting local units to catch poachers.”

Since 2011 Earthrace has been assisting countries with conservation missions, many of which were covered in the television series, The Operatives. In this, Bethune and a team of former military personnel assist countries with pressing conservation issues. The team works with local units in catching criminals involved in environmental crime.

The new vessel will serve as a base of operations for the team and will allow them to run missions almost anywhere on earth. It will hold most of the existing assets, including the Sealegs, which gives the team a high-speed pursuit option. Bethune says the vessel will have a range of about 10,000 nautical miles, and a top speed somewhere between 20 and 25 knots. It will accommodate a crew of 26 and can run continuously for up 28 days. There are also plans to film a new television show.

Earthrace will be launching a Kickstarter campaign to raise $50,000 to assist the team in completing the designs. The original Earthrace vessel was launched in 2006 and was fueled on biodiesel made from waste cooking oils. In 2008 the vessel set a new world speed record for circling the globe of 60 days, 23 hours and 9 minutes. In 2010 the vessel was involved in collision with the Japanese whaling vessel.

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Solving the World’s Toughest CFD Problems

Earthrace: Speed, Fuel Efficiency and Safety

Earthrace is a wave-piercing 78 ft. trimaran powerboat designed to circumnavigate the world fueled exclusively by biodiesel. Earthrace, which aims to demonstrate the viability of biofuel to to power a ship around the world, found  FLOW-3D  invaluable for simulating and optimizing their design performance.

 (We) were able to see how the boat was likely to perform in the different types of seas we were likely to come across on our global voyage. We were then able to modify the design to ensure that not only speed, but fuel efficiency and safety were taken into account. — Pete Bethune, skipper of Earthrace

Validating Hull Designs

One of the primary goals of the Earthrace design is to minimize fuel consumption. To achieve this, a unique hull design was conceived so that the boat pierces through waves instead of going over them. This design allows Earthrace to maintain a nearly constant speed regardless of how rough the sea conditions are.

Simulation plays an important role in validating new hull designs, since flow characteristics around the hull affect many aspects of the ship’s performance. However, simulating Earthrace poses challenges because traditional flow simulation tools assume the flow past the hull is relatively calm. In heavy seas, Earthrace is likely to experience significant wave forces all around itself as it pierces through waves.

FLOW-3D  was chosen by the Earthrace project because of its ability to simulate general 6-DOF motion of the ship hull while fully coupling its motion with the wave motion. The sea state is computed from a solution of the fully non-linear Navier-Stokes. The sea state is coupled with the ship hull’s motion, which is treated as a rigid body subject to 6-DOF motion (surge, heave, sway, pitch, roll and yaw) including the thrust generated by the ship’s engines.

XC Engineering , Flow Science’s associate in Italy, ran the simulations for Earthrace. The simulations produced an accurate prediction of the hull’s resistance including form drag, skin friction and interference drag. These results were validated against scaled model tests. As a result, the Earthrace team was able to hit the seas with confidence in their design’s ability to break the world circumnavigation record.

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Earthrace, the hi-tech trimaran of record-breaking circumnavigation

• January 7, 2023
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Earthrace’s New Conservation Vessel Is Part Frigate, Part Batboat

Earthrace is a conservation outfit that has been going around the world to stop illegal fishing, hunting and wildlife trading, and it uses a boat, trimaran boat aptly called Earthrace, as its base of operations since 2006. But the original vessel is outdated and besides, an unfortunate crash with a Japanese whaling ship back in 2010 leaves them with vessel. So, in order to keep doing what they do best, they need a new and updated ship and this is where Earthrace-2 Conservation Vessel comes in. Hearing the word ‘vessel’ may bring about the impression of it being a research vessel lookalike, however, as you can see, the Earthrace-2 Conservation Vessel is anything but.

Designed by LOMOcean Design , this new boat is also based on a trimaran configuration, but this time, it is larger and sports a much angular look, which based on the design render, looks like part frigate, part Batboat. The proposed vessel won’t be breaking any sea speed record, but it will be more up-to-date to suit Earthrace growing needs and that means holding up to 26 people aboard (though overnight crew capacity is limited to just 12), along with an onboard theater for 30 pax, and a pair of tenders, including a 29-foot (7.7 meter) Sealegs Amphibious Vessel and a Zodiac Milpro 470 Dinghy, hidden away inside and ready to be deployed if the operatives need to board other boats or land on shorelines. In addition to renewable fuel, Earthrace-2 will also be equipped with Skysail Kite System for auxiliary power to further minimize the boat’s carbon footprint.

Other noteworthy details include a sandwich composite construction, a 10,000 nautical mile range, a top speed of 25 knots, and a maximum capacity in port of up to 200. The plan is to patrol the world with Earthrace-2 for eight months a year, leaving the rest of the time carrying out awareness tours where the 200 pax in port cap and the theater will come in handy. Earlier this month, Earthrace successfully concluded a Kickstarter to complete the designs of Earthrace-2 and if all goes as planned, construction of the new trimaran will start in January 2017.

Images: Earthrace / LOMOcean .

Earthrace via Gizmag

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Getting the Best from a FLIR Thermal Imager

• April 29, 2021 April 29, 2021

It was 2006 when I first discovered FLIR.   We had just completed construction of our futuristic trimaran Earthrace that was about to attempt the round the world speed record, and we were in Portland for a couple of days of promotions.   Andrew Cox from FLIR was checking out the boat, and he started asking a few questions.   We were open to the public in any case, and Andrew was just another punter interested in what was a very cool boat.

At the time I knew nothing of FLIR.   Andrew explained how their technology works.   Unlike most camera or vision systems that rely on ambient light, FLIR works on temperature instead.   It gives you an image based on temperature profile of what is within the field of view.   And at times it can be quite remarkable in its ability to show things hidden from eyesight, or traditional low light systems. Never the less I wasn’t really convinced I needed one of these fancy gadgets.   I explained to Andrew our budget was tight and we didn’t really need one.

“I tell ya what” said Andrew, with a confident smile on his face.   “I’ll give ya one to trial for a month.   If at the end of that time you still don’t think you need one, send it back.   No questions asked”   I agreed to the proposal, thinking I’d play with it a few times and drop if back to them.

Well that was in 2006.   I never gave the system back.   And since then I’ve deployed with a whole range of FLIR systems in various capacities in Africa, Asia, Central America and Antarctica.   I’ve also now trained various jungle and marine Ranger teams in night patrols, and it’s made me think really carefully on when its best to use a FLIR system, and it’s strengths and weaknesses.   So I thought I’d share a few of these with you. The first lesson is that FLIR systems are a key part of running operations safely at night, but they are not the panacea of night operations.   Rather they are another valuable asset that complement the various tools a Captain or Operator should have at his / her disposal.   On ships for example, other elements such as Radar, AIS, GPS, eyesight, Binoculars and VHF all remain part of your arsenal in navigating safely at night.

There are however many cases where the FLIR is truly invaluable   We do regular “Man Overboard” drills, and at night, the FLIR system is simply outstanding in its ability to detect a head in the water, and in any light conditions.   If there’s a decent moon showing, and your target is in the right angle, you can get away without the FLIR.   But take a cloudy night with little ambient light, and it’s a much harder challenge. The FLIR works regardless of light conditions, and it doesn’t make much difference in the target direction in relation to moon, lights, wind, current etc.   Also, it doesn’t matter if you also have a spotlight working a search area, the FLIR continues giving you the same great image

The difference is even more pronounced when you have strong heat generation in what you are targeting.   We’re run a lot of enforcement campaigns targeting illegal fishing in Marine Protected Areas.   You put a small boat in an MPA with an outboard motor and I can detect it on my FLIR from a mile away.     Humans show up reasonably well, but a hot outboard motor sticks out like a pair of dog’s balls.   On big boats it is even more pronounced.   We can pick up a smokestack on a ship at a distance of many miles..

Another consideration for us is we can film targets without them knowing.   Consider an illegal fishing operation – We would normally look to gather video evidence for prosecution purposes.   We can pull in close to a vessel fishing illegally, and as long as we don’t turn on our spotlight, they will very often continue fishing.   This allows us to zoom in on our FLIR and film them actively engaged in fishing, and this will stand up in a court of law.   Turn on a spotlight of course and the fishing usually stop straight away.

All up I see FLIR as a really valuable asset that can make both maritime operations and jungle patrols safer and more effective. There are of course   a few limitations and I’ll touch on these now. Consider firstly a MOB where the water is choppy.   The water splashes over the persons head, and now the body surface temperature, as seen by the FLIR at least, is similar to the water.   This reduced contrast makes detection harder.   A lesson for all crew then is if you fall overboard, do your best to keep your head dry and above water, so the FLIR operator has the greatest chance of seeing you,.

I’ve also found over the years that in rain, the contrast with objects reduces.   I saw this in The Philippines where we were navigating a narrow channel, and it was all too easy until a dump of rain came down, and for a period, it was necessary to slow down in order to see what was around us.   I’ve also found   that early in the night there tends to be the greatest contrast.   This is because different objects dissipate heat at different rates, depending on their heat emissivity, and also on their thermal mass.   Concrete structures for example retain heat for considerable period, and they will continue to be highlighted well into the night.

If you have a particular mission or application, it is worth breaking it down into expected temperatures.   What is the temperature of the target, and what is the temperature of the surrounds.   The greater this difference, or the greater you you can make it, the more effective FLIR becomes.

The final thing I’ll touch on here is service.   I’ve had a few technical challenges with these systems over the years, and FLIR have always been quick to sort it out.   In one instance all I needed to do was upgrade the firmware, and the tech support guided me though this in no time.   In another   instance,   we were wanting to film from a hand held unit that didn’t come with the filming option.   Because of our conservation work, FLIR engineers modified our system and gave us the capacity.

Because of all this, I really rate FLIR technology and their support.   Their hardware certainly gives us an edge in maritime and jungle operations.   It helps keep our teams safe, and makes our operations more effective.

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