New Rules Set Carkeek Off on TP52 Yacht Design Quest

Carkeek Design Partners are to fully utilise their recent work in the light high performance HPR/IRC arena and their winning track record in the class since its inception in Europe to develop a turnkey competitive TP52, aiming at success on the 52 SUPER SERIES.

“We are quite excited by the direction that the 52 rule has taken because it now allows us to really play to our unique strengths,” explains Shaun Carkeek. “For a variety of reasons, by necessity, development in the 52 Class has largely been limited to massaging existing hydro and aero concepts and in a largely typeformed design space over recent years.

But now the new 2015 rule update will produce a slightly faster, more exciting TP52 that is closer in performance to the high performance designs that we have been fortunate to work on, like the C60, C47 and the C40 Mk1 and Mk2.

In fact for example all our new designs for their length and displacement offer a proportionately better, faster all round performance and have effectively leapfrogged the 52s. But this new iteration of the 52 rule brings them up to date and closer to the arena we have been working in for the last three years.”

Carkeek Design Partners say they are at a very advanced stage in their TP52 Research and Development programme having spent months working on the CFD and VPP optimisation in combination with venue weather and race modelling. They will take full advantage and build on the existing working alliance with Premier Composite Technologies to offer a two or three TP52s build series using common build features to lower costs.