West Coast designer Jim Antrim has been busy. His firm does not restrict itself to designing only full throttle monohulls, but blow-you-hair-back monohulls are right in their wheelhouse. Check out two of Antrim’s designs that are (were) built by Cree Partridge at the Berkeley Marine Center.
The photos above are of the Antrim 40, XL, commissioned by Nick and Antony Barran and the boat has already turned heads on the west coast. It’s light and stiff and has a deep fixed keel with a torpedo bulb to keep the boat flat. It also has pretty pronounced chines that keep the program surfing as long as possible. If you’ve got some time to kill, check out the time lapse video of the construction project– http://www.berkeleymarine.com/xl/ The shop used a web cam to capture the entire build process in 15 minute intervals. Just use the arrow at the bottom of the video to speed up the process even more. Pretty cool.
With the success of the XL, Partridge and his Berkeley Marine Center team are busy building a bigger, badder, faster, canting keel/twin rudder version aptly dubbed the Antrim 49 RT (Rapid Transit). As you can see, the hull has the same pronounced chine, and the canting keel will help the boat simply scream downwind (a single centerline rudder keeps the boat tracking upwind). Plans are for the RT to compete in the upcoming Transpac, Sydney-Hobart, and Chicago-Mac races.
