quattro 16 catamaran

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Quattro 16 by Woods Designs

16ft twin trapeze beach catamaran.

URL: http://sailingcatamarans.com/index.php/designs/1-beach-cats-and-dinghies-/7-quattro-16

Description:

The QUATTRO 16 is a twin trapeze high performance racing cat that has proven faster than the Hobie 16 or Dart 18. The hulls are rounded V built using the "stitch and glue" plywood technique which results in stiff, light-weight hulls (two adults can carry a fully rigged Quattro up the beach).

Small skegs help tacking and pointing and protect the hull bottoms when beaching. A forward beam is used to stiffen the forestay. Like the PIXIE , the QUATTRO 16 is sold by the prestigious Wooden Boat magazine, the only catamaran plans in their portfolio.

Catamarans about same size as Quattro 16

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Quattro 16 Plans Download

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About Woods Downloadable Plans

Specifications:

Sheet Ply LENGTH O.A. 5m LENGTH W.L. 4.85m BEAM O.A. 2.45m DISPL (empty) 135Kg TWO CREW SAIL AREA 18 sq m

The QUATTRO 16 is a twin trapeze high performance racing cat that has proven faster than the Hobie 16 or Dart 18. The hulls are rounded V built using the "stitch and glue" plywood technique which results in stiff, light-weight hulls (two adults can carry a fully rigged Quattro up the beach). Small skegs help tacking and pointing and protect the hull bottoms when beaching. A forward beam is used to stiffen the forestay. Like the PIXIE, the QUATTRO 16 is sold by the prestigious Wooden Boat magazine, the only catamaran plans in their portfolio.

"A very easy to build, fast and successful racing catamaran" Boats and Yachting Magazine.

"I live in Toronto, Canada and I recently began building a Quattro 16 in my garage. So far it is going well. I have included a few pictures of the boat so far. I will send more as the boat progresses, and I hope you like them!"

Although I never heard from the Canadian builder again, I did receive the photos, below, from a builder in France. He's a violin maker by trade, so the build quality is first class!

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Quattro 16 Beach Catamaran

PDF plans £95

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Product Description

The Quattro 16 is a high performance twin-trapeze racing cat that is lightweight and easy to build. Designed by renowned multihull sailor and designer Richard Woods, the Quattro 16 catamaran has proven faster than the Hobie 16 or Dart 18.

The rounded-v hulls are built using the stitch-and-glue plywood technique which results in stiff, lightweight hulls that two adults can carry up the beach fully rigged. Small skegs help tacking and pointing and protect the hull bottoms when beaching. A forward beam is used to stiffen the forestay.

A very easy to build, fast and successful racing catamaran.

Boats and Yachting Magazine

The Quattro is built in a similar manner to the Pixie . Again, the gunwales are straight to simplify making the hull panels. Once the panels are joined and cut to shape they are wired up and four bulkheads are inserted in each hull while the hull is held in a simple jig.

The Pixie uses a simple wooden slot together beam system. The Quattro is more sophisticated but still simple: it uses aluminium crossbeams that fit into vertical bolts.

Once the beam boxes are installed, the decks are joined and the hulls are sheathed in fibreglass cloth. Total build time ready to paint is about 150 hours.

Many people build a Quattro and then, to save time and money, use the rig from an older beach cat.

• LOA: 5 m (16′ 2″)
• LWL: 4.85 m (16′)
• Beam, overall: 2.45 m (8′)
• Displacement, empty: 135 kg (300 lb)
• Sail area: 18 m² (195 sq ft)

The Quattro 16 catamaran plans include detailed specifications for building and rigging the boat. The quality and clarity of the plans ease the construction of this boat, though you still need to be confident of your plans-reading ability.

A complete materials list is supplied with the plans. All dimensions are in metric units.

An electronic version of the plans in PDF format that can be viewed using Adobe Reader. After credit card authorisation the file will be sent to the email address put on the order form.

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16' Quattro Catamaran

Description.

High performance beach cat which is striking to look at and exciting to sail. Well-detailed plans of the hulls which are  simple and rugged stitch-and-glue plywood. Spars are detailed in the supplemental drawings... and are aluminum. Tramps are shown with measured drawings, but sails are drawn with basic luff, leach, and foot measurements, and approximate sail area. Panel dimensions are not specified, so you'll want to use a professional sailmaker. 

Designed by Richard & Lillian Woods

LOA - 16' 5" LWL - 15' 9" Beam - 8' Draft - 10" Weight - about 300 lbs. Sail Area - 205 sq. ft. Construction: Stitch-and-glue plywood over bulkhead frames No lofting is required Skill level: Basic Plans include 2 sheets, plus 19 pages of additional notes from the designer.

Click MATERIALS list to see basic materials needed.

Customer Reviews

I expect to be able to build Quattro 16 hulls without difficulty with these plans and accompanying documentation. The manual and instructions provide enough information to be able to manufacture and assemble the metalwork spars and mast as well as the rigging. The Woodenboat Store staff was immensely helpful in guiding me to these instructions. I have tried to contact Richard Woods through his website and phone called his business in England requesting return communication to no avail, The home builder, I suspect therefore, will have to improvise some of their own solutions to problems as they encounter them, no surprise if you have built before from plans. If it were not for inability to contact knowledgeable staff at Wood's office to discuss questions, I would have rated the plans and instructions, along with the corrections and updates which ARE AVAILABLE at Wood's website, a 5 star achievement, but 4 stars will have to do.

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Building a Quattro 16, new to Cats  

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Building a Quattro 16

by Peter Williams From-Maltese Boats and Yachting Magazine,May 1994

One of the cheapest and most cost effective ways of owning your own small sailing boat is to build it yourself! I know that the thought of building a boat immediately puts a lot of people off, thinking that the complete scope of tooling up, lines plans and actually building their own boat is a task only for trained people with vast experience. Well, I have now actually built two small sailing boats which have proved themselves and yet before I started, I really thought that I was treading in an area which I should leave to the experienced boat builder.

The particular boat which I would like to tell you about is a very new design catamaran from the board of the world-famous designer Richard Woods. It is a 16 foot twin trapeze racing catamaran called THE QUATTRO which has a rotating mast, fully battened main sail, the jib being fastened to the forestay by an ingenious zip method. The control lines are laid out so well that all sail adjustments can be made while helm and crew are out on the trapeze. The main is controlled using two triple blocks giving 7 to 1 purchase and the jib sheet is also run on a double block mechanism thereby giving the crew an easy time with a 3 to 1 advantage. All blocks fitted are hi-tech, full ball bearing type with ratchet fittings for the main control lines.

The tillers are of the Akerman type, IYE equipment being specified by design, but to save money plans are available to build your own. The mast is completely sealed so that when the boat tips over, it does not pass through the 90' position as the mast floats.

The boat has three crossbeams, contrary to popular belief that the front crossbeam can add to factors leading to the boat pitch-poling, many hours of testing in wind tunnels have proved this theory wrong. In fact, the addition of a front cross beam stiffens the boat up completely and helps prevent the two hulls being pulled out of alignment when everything is sheeted in tightly. The superb design of this boat actually gives the boat lots of lift in the bow area to help prevent the bow dipping under a big wave. One final unusual item on this boat is the skegs on both hulls, which eliminates the need for dagger boards thereby making sailing and beaching much easier. The skegs are very long and quite deep which adds to the very good up windward performance of this craft.

The proof that not only is the design of this boat second to none, the plans are so simple and easy to follow that two Quattros have been built by inexperienced people here in Malta and succeeded in finishing first and second in last year's (1993) Malta National Sailing Championships in the Handicap Class, a class which is very much favoured to small lightweight dinghies and not catamarans due to the very gentle summer breezes which are so common in Malta.

The building of this boat only takes about 100 hours, short enough to build over the winter when many sailors do not sail. There are no special tools required. The only serious tools required which would not be found in every household toolbox is a jigsaw and a planer. I must at this point emphasise that the boat is not built from a kit but from actual plans thereby making the boat even cheaper to build. The total materials required to complete the job are 7 sheets of 4mm ply, 1 sheet of 12mm, 5 - 7 kgs of Epoxy Resin and enough cloth to sheath the boat to give additional strength.

The first thing is to join 2 sheets of ply together to get the 16 feet length of the boat. The two outer edges of the ply become the gunwales and the shape of the keel is then drawn onto this joined ply. After cutting the correct shape the 2 halves of the boat are joined together using the most simple of all building methods - stitch and glue. The great advantage of this building method is that after 4 or 5 hours work, you end up with a shape which actually looks like a boat. This gives the builder a psychological push to complete the boat as he can see definite rewards after such little effort.

The next task is to cut out the bulkheads. Due to the small size of the boat, this task is completed simply and easily. The bulkheads are then inserted, "sewn" in place, and finally glued. Once again, the stitch and glue method is used to hold the bulkheads in place until the glue has cured. Then two "beam boxes" are made. These are the reinforced areas where the two main cross beams which hold the two hulls together will be attached once the boat is completed.

Once this stage is reached the second hull is brought to the same state and then the two main cross beams are fitted to align the two hulls. At the same time the two skegs are fitted simultaneously and once this is completed both the hulls are sheathed with cloth and epoxy. The longest job of all is the sanding and filling to achieve a good finish. I was extremely careful when I reached this stage and now most people think that I own a fibreglass boat as the finish on the hulls is to as high a standard as most factory new GRP boats. The two hulls are then dismantled from the main cross beams and turned over so that the decks can be fitted. Some of the fittings are installed before decking, for example the chain plates and rudder fittings, and once the decks are completed the final job is to fit the front cross beam, and there you have a very easy to build, fast and successful racing catamaran.

A question I'm asked many times is why build out of wood. The answer is simple - the weight to strength ratio of wood is by far better than any other cheap building method, especially GRP. This 16 foot racing cat can be easily hand carried by 2 adults when the boat is fully rigged - just try doing that on your Dart.

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Quattro 16 in 2020

Discussion in ' Boat Design ' started by gbuild , Apr 1, 2020 .

gbuild New Member

Hi everyone, I'm talking here about a self built catamaran. Is the quattro 16 an outdatted design in 2020? Is there another beachcat of similar length that you would suggest instead? I'm simply having a look at different self build options. Thanks for your time!  

fallguy Senior Member

I emailed the designer and he will probably want to know what you are looking for exactly in a cat; so feel free to post more details about your wishes. Richard is a straight shooter.  

JimMath Junior Member

Quatro 16 is as modern a design as any ply beach cat design , I have the plans , nice lines , smart designer who sailed the Q16 & built it .  

Thanks for the replies. I'm only asking because I saw a thread where someone was saying the design was outdated and I simply wasn't sure where such a comment stemmed from. What I'm looking for is simply a light catamaran that is quick/fun in any breeze that can be sailed by two adults. Ease of build is of course a plus. The quattro 16 seems to fit the bill. I had considered a Hitia 17, but it doesn't seem as responsive or "fun" if that makes sense. What are your thoughts? Also, one of my concerns with the Quattro 16 is where to get the rigging, mast, sails etc... I'm based in Malta in the Med if that helps.  

One is a racing Cat , if you rig it that way , and has 4mm ply if you can access that, used beach cat rig will do fine . Other ,more cruising Cat , imagine 6mm ply , should be responsive and fast if you have wind , mast can be made of wood ,wing sail etc .  

Richard has time. Email him. He will not steer you wrong. He will even compare his models against each other.  

ziper1221 Junior Member

If you don't mind not having boards, it looks fine to me. I think you would be able to find an old beachcat with soft hulls around, just chainsaw the hulls and keep the rest. You should probably do that before you build to hulls so that you can make sure to build it to fit the cross beams. If you were looking for a more difficult build using tortured ply, you could build a (scaled down) tornado. Construction Methods - Tortured Plywood https://smalltridesign.com/Trimaran-Articles/Construction-Methods/Tortured-Plywood-Hulls.html  

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ziper1221 said: ↑ If you don't mind not having boards, it looks fine to me. I think you would be able to find an old beachcat with soft hulls around, just chainsaw the hulls and keep the rest. You should probably do that before you build to hulls so that you can make sure to build it to fit the cross beams. If you were looking for a more difficult build using tortured ply, you could build a (scaled down) tornado. Construction Methods - Tortured Plywood https://smalltridesign.com/Trimaran-Articles/Construction-Methods/Tortured-Plywood-Hulls.html Click to expand...

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