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  • production Strider 24

  • plywood Romany 34

  • lightweight 14ft Zeta mainhull

  • Strike 15 trimaran at speed

  • 28ft Skoota in British Columbia

  • 10ft 2 sheet ply Duo dinghy

  • 24ft Strider sailing fast

  • 36ft Mirage open deck catamaran

No, is the short answer. It's just too heavy. A typical 10m catamaran might be built in 9mm ply. This weighs about 1lb/sqft. In comparison, 4mm steel plate - the thinnest you can use for boatbuilding, weighs about 7.5lbs/sqft! Clearly a boat built in steel will be far too heavy for any normal boat. However, some large catamarans (say over 45') have been successfully built in aluminium.

Having said that, most people want a wood interior while condensation is a problem on all metal boats. Thus significant extra non structural weight is added to the shell which compounds the problem. Also don't forget that the cost of the hull shell is only about 30% of the total cost, so any material savings will only have a small impact on the total budget.