Such big foils, so little time

Meeting deadlines is important in any business, but it seems particularly so when it comes to creating composite parts. Especially when the parts are needed in order for a 70-foot trimaran to compete in the Nassau Cup Ocean Race in less than three months. 

Oliver Moore says that they were approached around the middle of August by Argo’s captain to change the shape of the tips of each foil in order to up the boat’s speed average. The foils were originally designed by VPLP Design– the French design company– and built by AVEL Robotics SAS. The plan was to cut the lifting tips off each foil, make new ones to a new design and reattach them.

Simple, right?

All Moore Brothers Co. needed were the new designs from VPLP for the tips and they could get started. 

There was just one problem. It was August.

Most French residents go on vacation in August. “We were having calls with the designer from his vacation on a boat in the Med,’ says Oliver with a laugh. It took some back-and-forth for both sides to come to an agreed upon build approach. The Moore brothers needed to be certain that they could both execute the project, as well as ensure that the foils were structurally adequate and could withstand the conditions that they would be up against.

“We came to a compromise,” says Oliver.  “We started with needing a 10 millimeter deep scarfing laminate on the outside that would go across the seam,” he continues. “But it took some thinking about how we were going to connect the remaining 60mm of spar in the middle nicely.” They finally settled on a 200mm ”bird’s beak” tenon between the existing spar and the new tip.

Moore Brothers Co. didn’t get the final designs until the first week in September and started machining parts on September 8th.

Now, the race was only two months away. 

Were they nervous to get this done in time? “Oh yes,” says Oliver. “I think the level of skepticism from the rest of the shop was significant,” he continues, but he does point out that the most skeptical of the crew were the ones that were doing overtime to make the deadline.

The ply cutting machine at work.

Moore Brothers Co. has worked with Argo for years, but this project was definitely one that was pushing the limits of the company.  “A lot came together to make this happen,” says Oliver. 

Next up in the design process was to decide how to build the new tip.  “You canmold up both sides, figure out how to make and cure those halves and then glue them together,” says Oliver, “but you have to figure out how to make the mating surface perfect, and you end up with a secondary glue bond that is difficult to control the thickness of, which is critical.” he continues.

Or you do it another way.

“We like to call it the open face sandwich approach.”  Says Oliver, “you mold one side and build the foil up beyond where it needs to be, then go back and shape the other side of the foil with a CNC machine.”  This reduces the bondline control issues and reduces the tooling needs.  

The principal issue with this technique is you have to put the foil back into the CNC machine multiple times. “The problem with prepreg is you need to get things hot and the various materials all change shape depending upon their different properties,” says Oliver.  “If you put it back on the CNC machine, and the machine doesn't know that the thing has changed shape,” he continues “now you have lost your accuracy.” 

So the key is stable carbon fiber tooling. The traditional method is to make a plug and a carbon tool from the plug.  The problem comes with then getting the structure on the tool perfectly such that when you turn it over and put it back on the machine the tool surface is exactly where the machine thinks it should be.  “We applied the same open-faced sandwich technique to the tool.  We molded the back side of the mold, added structure and then direct machined the final tool surface.”  

They could have used high-temperature tooling foam, but it is expensive, has availability problems and large volumes of it can split if not processed very carefully. “We have had issues with the tooling foam in the past so we came up with this technique of direct machining a carbon tool using recycled carbon felt,” he says.

Around the same time that they had gotten the Argo job, Moore Brothers Co. had bought a ply cutting machine, allowing them to 2D cut prepreg carbon in complicated shapes. “What you can do is you can take your solid shape you're trying to make and you break it up into slices in design software and then turn it into a contour map,” Oliver says. “Then you take those shapes, lay them out flat and each ply of material is turned into this 2D shape. “You end up with a lot of them.” He continues.

The ply cutting machine then creates stacks of material which the Moore Brothers Co. crew then laid out in the mold, building layer upon layer. 

“It takes all of the guesswork out of the lamination process,” Oliver says. Basically, it makes the lamination process more of an assembly job. “Which ultimately makes it more efficient,” Oliver says. 

Each part went through two lamination cures and 4 rounds of CNC machining. The first half of the laminate was cured and then one side of the mortise was machined, a plant was added, the top of which was then machined to the other side of the mortise.  The second half of the laminate was cured over the plant, machined foam was added around the solid carbon spar and then the tension side surface was machined with reductions and rebates for the scarfing laminate and skin.  

“All of that is a hard thing to do,” says Oliver. “And our ability to do that nicely was predicated on us getting that ply-cutting machine, and our stable tool.  We were machining the peel ply texture off of the part.” he continues.

As far as having experience with the ply-cutting tool, everyone kind of learned on the job. According to Oliver, it was similar enough to the CNC routers to figure out quite quickly.

“This is a good example of using our in-house design capacity.” Says Oliver. “We were able to design the whole process using our machines and accuracy so that the assembly time of the actual part was really efficient.” He continues. “Mark Raymond led the design effort and when he took his already scheduled, but unfortunately timed vacation, Simon Day stepped up to the plate and I jumped in to help with machining the existing parts.”  

While they were building the tips they had to machine the existing struts precisely to mate with the new parts. So they designed a custom fixture to hold the existing parts and machined the tenon and scarfing laminate rebate into the solid carbon spar.

Another fixture was then designed and built to hold the two parts accurately together while they were bonded.

Another round of ply cut laminate followed making up the scarfing laminate and the tension side skin.  Each step along the way was checked for defects by Alex Wadson using phased array ultrasound NDT.  The team has Alex check all their structural components after each event and this allowed him to build a comprehensive baseline to compare to in the future should any issues arise.  

Kenny Madeiro and Sean Lane put the first plies in a mold on Friday September 23rd and 3 weeks later the last vacuum bag came off on Friday morning, October 14th. They were painted over the weekend with help from Argo’s crew members as well as the Itchiban crew. 

Six weeks after the start of tooling the foils were in the boat the following Monday and they were sailing with them on Tuesday. 

“A lot of stuff came together to make it happen,” says Oliver. On November 4th, ARGO set sail from Miami and crossed the finish line in Nassau with a time of 09:03:01, beating the previous record for that race of 13:31:30 set in 2012. Safe to say, the foils worked. 

How We Got Here

Since they were boys, Sam and Oliver Moore have been into making things. “We built a cradle on rollers to hoist mom’s lobster boat up onto the shore,” says Oliver, about one of their many projects as kids.  “There was a lot of problem solving like that,” he continues. 

The brothers grew up on Ram Island located within Sippican Harbor in Marion, Massachusetts. One of their earliest memories is building styrofoam rafts to cross the bay.

They were also surrounded by friends and family members that were boat builders and entrepreneurs. Their uncle, Stephen Clark, was co-owner of Vanguard Sailboats and made it into one of the most preeminent boat building companies in the world.  He was also the owner of the famous Red Herring, one of the first canting keel monohauls. Their grandfather built c-class catamarans and owned a marine company of his own.

The brothers started spending their summers building boats and naturally, they got into racing. “We started racing faster and more custom built boats,” says Oliver. “And we were breaking them more and more and had to fix them,” Sam adds. 

Oliver working in the original home for Moore Bros Co., which was their garage.

Oliver went on to study physics at Williams College. Sam would go on to study at the University of Vermont. When Oliver graduated he went to work for a composite company and ended up running a Computer Numerical Control (CNC) machine. Sam went to work in habitat restoration in South Georgia. 

They soon realized that they wanted to work for themselves and Oliver found a house to rent with a large garage, “and that’s when it all started,” says Sam. 

Their original idea was to build skis. Oliver felt that the CNC machine had a much larger role to play in the whole manufacturing process. He noticed that “it was a totally underutilized tool,” and  wanted to change that. 

Within hours of buying a CNC machine, they already had jobs booked, although none of those jobs involved skis.  “We got very distracted very quickly by other people paying us to do other stuff,” says Oliver. 

By 2017 they had moved out of the garage and into a building that was dedicated solely to composite work. 

From there, they went on to get projects for boats like Topaz, Bellamente, and Oracle. Jeff Kent of Composite Solutions Inc. had taken a shine to the brothers and wanted to sell his company to them. Jeff had an impeccable reputation and was known as one of the best in the composite industry. This led to the Moore brother inheriting an incredible client list. 

And they did not disappoint those clients. In fact, they exceeded expectations at times. 

Since then, they have taken on clients like America’s Cup American Magic and aerospace projects that they can’t even talk about due to NDAs.

One aerospace project that they can talk about, however, is REGENT, a company that hopes to revolutionize transport between coastal cities with a seaglider that will fly a few meters off the water and travel at high speeds. 

Moore Brother Co. has already created the prototype and it has successfully completed sea trials. If it continues to go well, the actual seaglider will be built in the next couple of years. 

As the client list keeps growing, so does the need for the Moore Brother Co. to follow suit. What Sam and Oliver want to continue to create at Moore Brothers Co. is a culture of innovation and collaboration.  “There's always a collaboration between every level of the shop to make sure that the experience and knowledge from every level gets brought into the project,” says Sam. “We're open to innovating different techniques that will allow us to either make a nicer product even nicer, or to come up with budget solutions to get most of the way to what the ideal product would be.” He continues.

“We take great pride in delivering the highest quality products and using the integration of traditional craftsman mindset with modern CNC driven technology,” says Oliver. 

Most importantly, both Sam and Oliver consider everyone that works with them as family. There is always time in the day to ask how someone is doing and if something is happening at home, then work can wait.  

For anyone interested in working with Sam, Oliver and the rest of the team, send an email to office@moorebro.co.

Building Cool Stuff Right

Originally published in Seahorse Magazine, October 2022

Aviation buffs and better read naval architects will already be up to speed about the Soviet Ekranoplan ground effect craft programme which ran from the early 1950s to the late 1970s. Out of that programme emerged the famed Caspian Sea Monster which had military analysts around the world scratching their heads. Now the same ground effect flight concept is back in modern guise and with the benefit of today’s materials and design tools to a completely different new level of refinement, delivered through ambitious design allied with the best composite engineering and build craftsmanship. Carol Cronin paid a visit to a well-known maritime town and the famous boatbuilding family who still call it home.

There’s a long-standing tradition in Bristol, RI, of building both boats and their high-tech equipment right—and right at the leading edge of technology. Today, the Moore Brothers Company is carrying that heritage forward by creating bespoke composites, all built on site by a handpicked staff from the highest echelons of grand prix sailing that’s more than doubled in number since 2020.

‘The business that used to be just two brothers and a couple of workers now employs 25 people,’ Oliver Moore explains, when he finally sits down at a desk completely hidden under several layers of line drawings. ‘We currently have 18 composite technicians on the floor. To meet Regent’s production goals and maintain our own business growth we need to be up to around 25 in the next year.’

You can imagine in the Seahorse office we see a lot of “cutting edge” projects – but REGENT (Regional Electric Ground Effect Nautical Transportation to be precise) stopped us in our tracks.

Building boats that fly
Regent builds all-electric seagliders, a new category of maritime vehicle designed to operate exclusively over water for highspeed coastal transportation. Seagliders operate in three modes: float, hydrofoil and flight in ground effect, moving passengers and goods from one coastal destination to another. In the spring of 2021 the company commissioned Moore Brothers to build their quarter scale technical demonstrator vehicle. The remote-controlled prototype was launched in December 2021.

‘It was the first whole vehicle we’d ever built,’ Moore says, adding that the size was a Goldilocks-style compromise between being small enough to incorporate commercially available components and large enough to be a valid testbed. ‘That's how they ended up with an 18-foot wingspan for their technology demonstrator. That dimension is critical because as a WIG (Wing in Ground effect) vehicle it flies within a wingspan above the surface of the water’.

Regent already has a $7B backlog of orders for their full-sized models. Their models include a 12-passenger and two crew seaglider called the Viceroy with a 65-foot wingspan and a next generation 50+ passenger seaglider named Monarch. These have ranges of up to 160 nautical miles using current battery technology. That’s a major upgrade in transportation efficiency, whether it’s along a crowded coastline or for island-hopping.

The 1/4 scale technical demonstrator (above) enables Regent to prove their blown wing aerodynamic design and landing hydrodynamics for their seaglider and inform a realistic and robust engineering schedule with safety embedded throughout the development lifecycle. Building a test prototype at this large scale also allows many potential full-size build issues to be resolved at an early stage saving cost, time and material wastage later

Oliver Moore introduces key team members on the project: ‘Bryan Baker and Andrew Gaynor both came straight out of the America’s Cup world. Bryan is the chief engineer of vehicle performance and Andrew is the structures lead.

‘Bryan was with Oracle and then Team Ineos in the last cup. He is one of the few people in the world who has designed both electric aircraft and high-performance racing yachts. He did a stint at Aurora Flight Sciences which is where he connected with a handful of the Regent team, so he is a cross-over link between the America’s Cup and aerospace worlds.

‘Andrew was with Oracle for several cup cycles where he connected with Bryan and then was lead rig designer for American Magic in the last cup. Andrew and I have sailed A-class and C-class cats together for 12 years and we worked together during the last American Magic build.’

Bryan Baker takes up the story: ‘Recent advances in America's Cup hydrofoiling have been critical for Regent. The company is developing a fully electric Wing-in-Ground-Effect (WIG) vehicle, coined the seaglider. Limited only by today's battery technology, Regent aims to develop a vehicle capable of reaching 180mph on the aero-wing. To achieve this performance we have to develop a streamlined hull and reduce our take-off drag. Most float planes achieve take-off by generating speed on a planing hull form which produces significant drag. The planing hull form requires relatively flat water and significant thrust to achieve take-off speed.

‘At Regent we aim to reduce this thrust demand by incorporating three modes of operation: from the hull (float) to the hydrofoils (foil) to the aero-wing (flight). This transition affords us a two-stage drag reduction. The vehicle first reduces wetted area from the hull clearing the water and further reduces all hydro drag as it takes off onto the aero wing. This transition directly impacts our power demands keeping us in a favourable range and weight for current battery technology. Akin to the take-off of an AC75, we concentrate on reducing hull drag via length-to-beam ratio keeping our hull form at a low Froude number. Our front foil positioned closest to our centre of gravity provides the majority of our hydrodynamic lift.

‘We control this lift by actuating symmetric flaperons on the foils which provide lift and, if articulated at different angles, can control roll. In the most recent America's Cup, several concepts were attempted to add flaps to the hydrofoils. The hinge position, stiffness of the foils, fairness of joints or skins and hydraulic actuation all played a pivotal role in drag reduction, avoiding cavitation at higher speeds and aiding controllability. At Regent, these lessons learned are critical in developing a safe and reliable hydrofoil system. On landing, we rely on the hull to provide our deceleration as the foils will be retracted into the hull body. Again, lessons learned from retraction systems developed on the AC50 provide guidance in reducing mass and delivering a reliable retraction system.’

Aero and hydro: two mindsets
Baker and Gaynor bring maritime experience to an impressively experienced and talented team of aerospace engineers. Founders Billy Thalheimer and Mike Klinker are both MIT graduates who worked with chief engineer Dan Cottrell at Aurora Flight Sciences, a research subsidiary of Boeing.

‘The meshing of the aerospace and AC engineers has been really interesting to watch,’ Moore says. ‘In the marine world we are very comfortable iterating designs with real world testing. We stopped putting test pilots up in experimental aircraft to see what would happen a long time ago and for very good reasons. As a result the marine engineers have a deep pool of real-world experience to draw upon but the aircraft engineers have an exceptionally diligent design process of validating their models and simulations to make sure that chances of failure are within very clearly defined acceptable ranges. It was impressive to watch the two mentalities mesh and the result was a very quickly executed vehicle that has been very successful in its mission so far.’ The collaboration has created a system that is agile with strong checks and balances that ensure both safety and repeatability.

It’s a boat, not a plane
Ground effect aeroplanes have been around for a long time but Moore notes that Regent is combining new technology with a fresh approach. ‘Flight control systems have been developing so rapidly in the last few decades. We’ve all seen it in the drones we buy for our kids. You're not actually flying the craft, the computer is, and you are telling it which way to go. The electric propulsion also adds an interesting element. It allows you to use many small propellers instead of a few big ones. This distributes the flow from the thrust evenly over the wing creating a blown wing effect like apparent wind in sailboats giving more lift earlier and allowing for slower take off speeds.’

Given that Regent’s design is a WIG that lands on her hull, she is technically a boat and therefore governed by the US Coast Guard. This leads to fewer regulatory hurdles than the electric planes other companies are developing. ‘The FAA requires you to carry 30 minutes reserve fuel in the daytime and 45 at night, so you can always make it to an airport, which, when we are talking about short distance flights and batteries, is a major weight penalty. Because this is a boat and it can always land on the water, the Coast Guard doesn’t have those requirements.’

There are plenty of wild ideas on the leading edge of any industry, Moore admits, but he believes Regent has a great shot at success. ‘The seaglider is differentiated. It uses existing technology and has demonstrated customer demand – it makes sense.’ Design for the first full-sized seaglider is well under way and the build is scheduled for 2023. Regent is tracking to a 2025 vehicle delivery.

And of course, sailing’s top engineers always enjoy being stretched. As Baker says: ‘This project is a ton of fun. Working with Moore Brothers has been crucial in the rapid development of our 18ft technology demonstrator. In nine months we went from blank sheet to the vehicle hitting 38kts foiling. We are leveraging both aerospace and maritime knowhow to push electric propulsion technologies. I've been fortunate to work with super-talented people in both these worlds in the AC and on eVTOL projects (eVTOL - Electric Vertical Take-off and Landing Plane). The seaglider is a supercool marriage of these technologies.

Making it happen
Regent originally sought out Moore Bros for their composite expertise, but they’ve also come to appreciate the company’s get-it-done attitude. ‘When they started with us,’ Moore says, ‘they had the general concept reasonably sorted but it was a blank sheet of paper on how we were going to build it. We dived in and helped them design around available materials and with processes that matched our capabilities. It was an ambitious undertaking but we developed a very strong working relationship to the point that their lead engineer had his own office in our building. Once we had the parts built we transitioned into helping to support their integration testing operations. It didn’t matter what the problem was. Brake lines on the trailer? We’ve got a local trailer guy. Space on the waterfront for testing? We connected them with Halsey Herreshoff and got them up and running here in Bristol. In our world we are used to the idea that there is a date for the first race and it is going to happen whether you are there or not. Schedule creep isn’t an option and we brought that same mindset to the Regent build. They figured out early on that we were going to do whatever it took, so now they lean on us for a lot. It's been a big challenge but also a really fun partnership.

As Regent is designing the full-scale vehicle, Moore Brothers built a full-sized test wing that has working flaps and is covered with pressure sensors to validate their CFD work. ‘It's a constant R&D project,’ says Jacques Swart, head of sales for Moore Brothers. ‘As soon as Regent comes up with something new, we get it built so they can continue with their testing. The synergy with the team to provide what they need, within their time frame is pretty big.’

Picking up personnel
In order to keep up with the Regent project while also maintaining their regular workflow, Moore Brothers are actively recruiting. ‘We need to hire several more floor techs,’ Moore says. ‘The people we've picked up already have some serious experience. Kenny Madeiro brought a crew to us from Hall Spars and the guys we've had with us forever, like Jeff Kent and Mark Raymond are still here. We've been working very hard to organically build a strong and dedicated crew, and we've put a major focus on a supportive work environment – because in the bespoke composite world, a manufacturer is only as good as the guys on the floor. It doesn’t matter how many machines or fancy tools you have; when you’re building custom composites, you can't robot your way out of a problem, you need to have some creative problem solvers in your team.’

Finding the right personnel has been their biggest challenge, Swart admits. ‘We’re always very selective because synergy is so important. If the right person comes along, we’ll find a spot for them. That’s going to pay off in the long run’.

One stop composite shop
In addition to building boats that fly, Moore Brothers have become New England’s go-to place for all things foiling. ‘We’re working on a new foiling motorboat,’ Swart says, though he can’t disclose any details. ‘There’s a surge of R&D right now, all kinds of weird stuff and we’ve been involved right from the beginning.’

The reason? Swart credits their unique approach. ‘We have a group of engineers that are composite experts, but they also have an entrepreneurial, can-do attitude. So people start coming here not just to have the work done, but to get input into how to improve on what they had in mind. We’re sometimes finalising engineering details right on the floor. That draws people, because it turns a company like this into a composite solutions shop.’

That applies to non-foiling parts as well. ‘Structural composites; that's where I see people starting to catch on. Someone comes to us for a wheel, but they also need a rudder or a mast.

‘As we develop a relationship, they realize that we have a lot broader scope than they first thought. Everyone knows our name now, but they don’t always understand how much we can do.’

Masts, repairs and production parts too
When Hall Spars closed their Bristol facility five years ago, it left a big hole in the region’s marine industry supply chain. Moore says that “everyone and their mother” told them not to become a spar manufacturing company, but it was hard to ignore such a gaping need. ‘So the way we let ourselves get into it was this: we're not a mast company, we’re a composite company that can build you a mast if that’s what you need. We don't want to try and compete at every price point; we’ll only take on projects if we think we can do a great job.’

Alongside the Regent project, Moore Brothers are now shipping out pretty much anything that can be built out of composite—rudders, foils, beams, and yes, even masts—to boats and businesses around the world. ‘There are not many companies that can do that,’ Moore says, with justified satisfaction. They build many of Brooklin Boat Yard’s prepreg carbon parts, he adds, pointing to one of the many line drawings covering his desk; specs for a new rudder that will undoubtedly improve the performance and feel of another classic sailing boat.

‘Oliver gets super-excited about each project,’ Swart adds, ‘because he’s personally invested. And that's intoxicating. Especially since we are going to continue to bring more people in and grow manufacturing here in Rhode Island.’ By constantly breaking new ground with bespoke composites, Moore Brothers are continuing a long and successful Bristol tradition: building cool stuff right on the leading edge of technology.