2008 64' Lightning Sportfish at FLIBS -

The captain who I brought along on my latest voyage down the coast moved this boat to the show.

I think I sanded all the fingerprints off my hands sanding her! While she did get what I would call a pretty complex interior, to me the more important part is all the composites we used to build her and the performance gains from them. The Divinycell cored bulkheads, honeycomb decks, Carbon-reinforced beams and Aramid hybrid cloth skin gave us a finished full wet weight of 65,000# and with 1650hp CAT C32's she topped 44 knots WOT. Did you get a chance to go aboard Carl?

Thanks Carl! A couple small pics of what you didn't see OK? Mostly of the business end for guys like Marmot and K1W1, even though it's small compared to their usual haunts, I do prefer easy to work on engines!

That diamond plate looks to be a high gloss rubber matting made to look like "brite" finished aluminum diamond plating. You can see the "ripple" going across it by the fwd motor mount. I've used it in a few engine rooms and had good results in lieu of the high maintenance of brite tread plating plus its easy on the knee's.

You spotted it captholi! I like that synthetic a lot more than the aluminum plate, not only easy on the old kneecaps but it doesn't corrode either.

Who needs a salon with an engine room that nice.

You had to let the cat out of the bag Carl, now everyone will be copying our once trade secret building material! It does help when your boats have owners and captains who take care of their babies.

Wonder how they get a glossy finish on that rubber type material?

It's a slightly blurry picture Brian but I peeled back the top skin on a sample I have on my desk. It's composed of a 1/8" sheet of rubber with that skin laminated on top.

Thanks for that posting.

Then it is a 'metal skin' laminated onto a rubber backing, .....is that correct?

Perhaps somewhat akin to that 'metal tape' the AC and heat guys use? ...adhesive backing (rather than rubber) to very thin metal skin??

It appears to be a foil of some type Brian but I can't tell exactly what it's made of. We get it from Novicon Industries but I didn't see specifics in their literature.