Nau, from the annex to the sports catamaran with the same boat!

The Nau's crazy project is to succeed in offering 5 very distinct uses with the same boat only by adapting modules. An innovative boat (or boats) to discover at the 2015 boat show.

François-Xavier Ricardou Published on November 26, 2015

Take a 2.50 m dinghy, add a small sail and you have a leisure craft for your children. If you add two 4m long floats on each side of your dinghy (it then serves as a cockpit), you turn it into a boat that you can motorize. Why not add a 6m mast to make it a family dinghy. And if you are looking for a sportier boat, remove the central basket and replace it with a trampoline.

A simple concept: a watercraft that adapts to your needs.

The prototype of this unusual boat will be visible at the boat show on the Morbihan stand (Hall 1, stand H22). You will be able to discover this attachment system which allows easy assembly and disassembly. Today, due to lack of time, this first prototype has not yet sailed but the first tests should be done at the end of Nautic 2015.

It remains to be seen who will be its user?

The NAU was developed to meet the needs of families who do not necessarily have the means or the space to afford several boats. The transformations also allow to follow the evolution of the practice of the children: from the Optimist to the sport catamaran . But we can also imagine this concept in a community (camping, leisure baseâeuros¦) to adapt to the demand.

If the basket weighs 60 kg (the same as the dinghy), the floats are 40 kg each. It is easy to handle them with 2 people and to come and hang them on either side. All parts are made of rotomolded polyethylene. The dinghy has been worked with "partitions" that can be used as storage boxes or stored against the transom to install the benches in the direction of travel (to fish on the side for example).

As far as pricing is concerned, nothing is yet definitive, but the base, the tender, should be offered at less than 1,000 euros. The Dinghy version, the one with the most parts, should come in at less than 6,500 euros. Of course, it will be possible to buy only a basic version and to upgrade it later.

The visit to the Paris Boat Show has two objectives for Nau. First, to test the concept with visitors, both in terms of aesthetics and design, as well as functionality, before validating the product and launching production for the 2016 season. But also, to make itself known, notably by participating in the Nautic Start Up Contest, a contest on the Nautic website that asks for the participation of Internet users.