The IRC 45 foot Concubine designed by Mark Mills and built by Premier Composite Technologies is ready to be shipped out, after an eight month build programme. It will arrive in Adelaide in good time, to be launched and worked up, ahead of its first big offshore race, the Rolex Sydney Hobart race this December. This lightweight 45-footer has been designed to perform extremely well under IRC and will hopefully help the team to continue their winning ways in 2016 and beyond. The boat is the first Mills IRC 45′ design, built by Premier Composites Technologies.
The yacht will be based at the Cruising Yacht Club of South Australia in Adelaide and is set to compete in all the main inshore and offshore events in Australia.
The brief was originally for an aggressive IRC racer, fitting above the IRC 40’s and below the IRC 52’s, incorporating a moding optimisation package to make the boat a competitive all-rounder in whatever racecourse or venue its clients intended to compete. The finished product however, ended up being longer, wider and a more powerful development of the original design, with a more aggressive performance to rating profile.
The hull & deck are constructed of carbon infused epoxy laminate & core cell foam under vacuum and cured in an oven. The Mills 45 also features additional optimised carbon infused reinforcements around all deck fittings and other highly loaded areas. Internally, the hull and deck liners are also lightweight, infused carbon/epoxy over foam core with uni-directional fibre reinforcement and a gelcoat finish. The yacht also incorporates a retracting propulsion system. Tight weight controls and measurements are maintained throughout the build process, to ensure that the boat achieves its target displacement weight of 5,500kgs.
The design target IRC rating was 1.3 TCC and all of the design trials are within a couple of clicks within that target. The boat is expected to be at the fastest end of Division 2 or still quick enough to be able to hang on to the Division 1 boats, depending on the class rating splits at different regattas.
