Design
Moore Brothers Company is carrying that heritage forward by creating bespoke composites, all built on site by a hand- picked 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
T
brothers and a couple of workers now employs 25 people,’ OliverMoore 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. Tomeet Regent’s production goals andmaintain 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 high- speed 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
here’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
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
the chief engineer of vehicle performance and Andrew is the structures lead. ‘Bryan was with Oracle and then Team
‘Everyone knows our name now, but they don’t understand how much we can do.’
orders for their full-sizedmodels. 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 namedMonarch. These have ranges of up to 160 nautical miles using current battery technology. That’s amajor upgrade in transportation efficiency, whether it’s along a crowded coastline or for island-hopping. 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
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 AmericanMagic 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
84 SEAHORSE
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