Boats with suspension?

Nauti-Craft Pty Ltd is a small research and development company focused on the design and development of the Nauti-Craft marine suspension system.

This technology separates the vessel’s hulls from the deck and superstructure via a ‘passive reactive’ interlinked hydraulic system which enables a significant departure from conventional boats and provides increased levels of ride comfort, control and stability whether stationary or travelling at speed.

Watch the video below and take a look the Nauti-Craft in action.

Nauti-Craft said that the latest prototype vessel 2Play is on its way to the Seawork 2014 commercial-marine expo from June 10-12 in the UK.

2Play is an eight-metre catamaran. At its core is the Nauti-Craft marine suspension system combined with the company’s unique Deck Attitude Control System (D.A.C.S) which actively adjusts and maintains the vertical attitude of the deck to allow crew access and transfers in rough seas. Together, these technologies provide improved levels of ride comfort, control and stability, the company says.

Nauti-Craft has also built and successfully sea trialled an eight-metre quadmaran prototype it calls 4Play. Following this, an 18m commercial catamaran was designed and a 1:10 scale model of this was built to test and further prove the viability of the system for potential offshore service vessels.

The Nauti-Craft technology is a hydraulic suspension system for multihull vessels. The improvements to stability and maintaining a level attitude can be further enhanced with active control of the suspension system. The company says this has great potential applications for commercial, military and recreational vessels.

Based in Dunsborough, Western Australia, Nauti-Craft calls itself a flexible “skunkworks” style R&D company with a small highly experienced team of engineers, technicians and naval architects who specialise in taking radical new concepts from proof-of-concept stage to commercially viable prototypes. Nauti-Craft has an IP portfolio of five international patents families dating back to 2002.

Nauti-Craft says it is not a boat builder. It says the Nauti-Craft technology is available under license to the global marine, ship and boat building industries.