Technology
When the best begat the best
Forty-five years ago Royal Huisman went looking for a new spar building partner, ideally one also able to supply the latest superyacht sail handling and hydraulic systems... In the end they did not have to travel very far
How do you source the rig and sail- handling systems optimised for that paricular superyacht? It boils down to a binary choice between two very different approaches. You can commission it piecemeal from a dozen suppliers or more and then knit it all together as a full custom rigging project. Or, if you want the convenience, performance and reliability of a high-end sophisticated, fully integrated, sail-handling package with the interface to the yacht, you can give the whole job to Rondal. Until quite recently, most of the top sailing superyacht shipyards made their own masts and built their own winches. Over the last 15 years or so, the speed of innovation has led to leading experts in spar making, rigging, deck hardware, hydraulics and various other specialisms migrating from major shipyards, where they used to work in house, to specialist suppliers that serve the whole industry.
New build projects now tend to involve a whirlwind of design loops with many external suppliers chipping in. It’s a challenge to manage and massively increases the inherent risk of delays, cost overruns and reliability issues caused by incompatible components and various forms of human error.
70 SEAHORSE
The root of the problem is that no supplier takes full responsibility for the whole sailing system and the integration of all the different bits becomes a major job in itself. But there is an alternative. While most of its rivals were
shedding their in-house expertise in peripheral fields such as rig and winch production to focus on their core business, the leading Dutch shipyard Royal Huisman made a strategic decision to go a different way. A sister company was formed to design, engineer, manufacture, integrate, project-manage, install and service all-inclusive rigs and sail-handling systems for superyachts. More than 45 years on, and Rondal now has extensive long term experience in supplying all types of hardware. For the last three years, uniquely in the marine industry, they have started to take full responsibility for the entire sail-handling package – everything from the deck up, all the under-deck control systems and the programming logic that drives them, resulting in a more high end and seamlessly integrated system. They don’t make everything in house, but they do make sure it all works seamlessly as a comprehensive, semi-custom package – the Rondal Integrated Sailing System.
Above: Rondalʼs huge spar production shed builds carbon fibre masts and booms for many of the largest sailing superyachts in the world. Rondalʼs Out Of Autoclave construction method is unique within the marine industry – Rondal is the only company that can build a 60-metre mast in one single piece
Royal Huisman’s shrewd decision back then has created a powerhouse of a business that leads the industry today, working not just for its parent shipyard but with other builders too including Baltic Yachts, Vitters, Perini Navi, and more.
For a typical new build, Rondal is
directly involved in design loops from the beginning of the design process, working collaboratively with the naval architect, the shipyard’s in-house team and the client’s chosen sailmaker, all the way through to the end of the engineering phase and beyond. The starting point for rig design is to turn the sailplan and deck plan geometry into a full rig model, factoring in the mechanical properties of all the components involved. This is done in Sailpack/ Aravanti, which is the same fluid structure interaction (FSI) software that’s used by sail designers at most of the world’s leading sail lofts for CFD analysis. After modelling a full spectrum of load cases and optimising the rig package holistically, the results are translated into specifications for spars, rigging and sail-handling systems. A less obvious advantage of this holistic approach is neatly explained by Rondal’s Bart van der Meer: ‘When a superyacht owner asks his
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