Hot on the heels of the Cardinal sin Project, Dave Chisholm announces that Desperado Boats the marine projects arm of http://www.carbonology.com are starting a project to build a production Cherub. Here is a sneek preview to give some idea of what might be happening.

“Having been at the 2006 Nationals we decided that a quick and well built production Cherub would be nice to take along to the 07 champs, and a worthy project to get our teeth into - little did we know it would generate so much interest from some big names!”

“After a few emails and phone calls, Paul Bieker - the designer of the Bieker 5 International 14 has agreed to tweak that very same hull down to fit the UK Cherub Rules and to work at 12ft (the dynamics are subtley different apparantly - but it will still look just like an 85.7% B5 14!)”

“Tooling will be in progress as soon as we have the drawings and the first B5c (as we hope Paul will allow it to be called) will be built in carbon/foam sandwich from female moulds with prepreg bulkheads/structure and resin infusion technology hull and decks. We hope to be testing the prototype before the end of 2006. The boats will be built by Desperado Boats, the marine projects department of carbonology.com, at our main site in Woodbridge, Suffolk. 2005 PoW Cup winner, Mike Lennon from Hyde Sails will be working with us on the rig design, using their successful 2006 series i14 sails as a starting point.”

“The top 5 at this years 14 Worlds in Long Beach were all B5's - a shape which is the product of hundreds of hours of hull and foil development starting in 1999 when the Bieker 2 was one of the first designs drawn to the 'modern' 14 rules allowing racks, taller rigs and the development of T foils. There are certain advantages with working within the Cherub rules too - the maximum beam of the 14 and Cherub are the same [1.8m], so in effect the B5c will have proportionally wider racks - which of course may extend behind the transom, while the minimum hull weight at 50% is significantly less than 85% of the 14's 74kg minimum.”

We don't have any pictures of the boat yet, but if you're wondering what a B5 looks like, check out the pictures of a Jason King's Beiker 5 from the International 14 website.

For more pictures of the B5 look here: http://www.i14.org/news/b5/

We'll keep you posted as the project develops!

• Dave Chisholm

Technical Director http://www.carbonology.com