Ship Motion develops state-of-the-art Retractable Propulsion System

Ship Motion Group has been focusing on the development of a lightweight Retractable Propulsion System (RPS) for several years and has now launched this state-of-the-art product as a system product, with the potential to be customised to the specific design of the vessel.

Wouter Kloppenburg, technical director of Ship Motion Group explained, "There is a need for lightweight Retractable Propulsion Systems, especially for high performance sailing yachts and fast motor vessels as auxiliary propulsion. Most important consideration to place our Retractable Propulsion System in your yacht is the enormous reduction of the yacht’s total resistance. This results in vastly improved sailing performances in all sailing conditions".

The Ship Motion Group RPS is suitable for carbon and aluminium hulls and is mainly manufactured of high-grade titanium and carbon reinforced fibres. In 2012 this new type of Retractable Propulsion System was first installed in S/Y Visione, a 147 ft sailing yacht with extreme high sailing performances. 

Jan Bruggeman, commercial director of Ship Motion Group said, "This sailing yacht is using our system now for over 1,5 year and has competed very successfully in several major regatta’s. The owner is very satisfied with both the performance of our Retractable Propulsion System and his sailing vessel".

Ship Motion Group field engineers have completed the installation of the next Ship Motion Group RPS in a new sailing yacht project at Baltic Yachts in Finland. This sailing yacht is designed for comfortable cruising with the minimum of crew or racing aggressively, fully crewed, in the major maxi regattas and will be launched soon.

Jan Bruggeman revealed, "Lately we have put a lot of work and effort in developing an animation of our prestigious Retractable Propulsion System. This way we can show our clients in detail what happens when they decide to place our Retractable Propulsion System in their yacht".

Features of the Ship Motion Group RPS are:

• Lightweight
• Proven reliability
• Extremely high propulsion efficiency, which makes it possible to reach equal boat speed with highly, reduced engine power. Consequently it is possible to use smaller engine, fuel system etc. what will result again in displacement reduction of the entire vessel
• Excellent maintainability, because the vessel can stay in the water during maintenance purposes
• Suitable for carbon and aluminium hulls

The Ship Motion Group RPS, which consists of the propulsion parts, including the flexible coupling and the retraction system, comes as a complete package which includes structural parts to integrate in the hull structure, hydraulic manifold and control system, support to the yard and installation by the Ship Motion Group field engineers.

The use of Retractable Propulsion Systems has been put on the Super Yacht Design Symposium 2014 topic list. The ‘drag reduction by using retractable propulsion for sailing yachts’ will be discussed during the Greener, Faster Sailing Specialist Workshop.

For more information visit Ship Motion Group.