The Hilu outrigger is a personal size, beach launched sports boat in the

sailing canoe Canoe sailing refers to the practice of fitting an Austronesian outrigger or Western canoe with sails. Austronesian sailing canoes The outrigger canoe was one of the key technological innovations of the Austronesian peoples. Although there is ...

style. Hilu was AMF's production version of a boat variety more commonly found in designs hand built by outrigger aficionados. Hilu utilizes fiberglass pontoons and carries a single

polyester Polyester is a category of polymers that contain the ester functional group in every repeat unit of their main chain. As a specific material, it most commonly refers to a type called polyethylene terephthalate (PET). Polyesters include natural ...

lateen

sail A sail is a tensile structure—which is made from fabric or other membrane materials—that uses wind power to propel sailing craft, including sailing ships, sailboats, windsurfers, ice boats, and even sail-powered land vehicles. Sails may ...

mounted to an un- stayed aluminum

mast Mast, MAST or MASt may refer to: Engineering * Mast (sailing), a vertical spar on a sailing ship * Flagmast, a pole for flying a flag * Guyed mast, a structure supported by guy-wires * Mooring mast, a structure for docking an airship * Radio mast ...

. Unlike most of the sailboats in their catalog, the Hilu was commissioned by and expressly designed for AMF. ''Hilu'' is the Hawaiian name for the Black Striped

Wrasse The wrasses are a family, Labridae, of marine fish, many of which are brightly colored. The family is large and diverse, with over 600 species in 81 genera, which are divided into 9 subgroups or tribes. They are typically small, most of them le ...

, a species of reef fish, apparently alluding to the Polynesian heritage of the sailing canoe. This added yet another species to AMF's creel of sailboats named for oceanic wildlife. Disambiguation Note: After AMF acquired Alcort, Inc. in 1969 they named their sailboat product line the "Alcort Division", spring boarding off the strong name recognition Alcort, Inc. had built up over its twenty-four year history developing and marketing beach boats.

Characteristics

The Hilu is a tacking outrigger. The hulls are of unequal length and

displacement Displacement may refer to: Physical sciences Mathematics and Physics *Displacement (geometry), is the difference between the final and initial position of a point trajectory (for instance, the center of mass of a moving object). The actual path ...

, the mast is stepped in the larger of the two pontoon hulls. The Hilu is sometimes mistaken for a

catamaran A Formula 16 beachable catamaran Powered catamaran passenger ferry at Salem, Massachusetts, United States A catamaran () (informally, a "cat") is a multi-hulled watercraft featuring two parallel hulls of equal size. It is a geometry-stab ...

or a proa, however it is neither. A

has two identical hulls, a proa shunts rather than tacking and jibing to come about. Hilu

tacks TACK is a group of archaea acronym for Thaumarchaeota (now Nitrososphaerota), Aigarchaeota, Crenarchaeota (now Thermoproteota), and Korarchaeota, the first groups discovered. They are found in different environments ranging from acidophilic ther ...

and jibes as a normal sailboat, it has permanent fore and

aft "Aft", in nautical terminology, is an adjective or adverb meaning towards the stern (rear) of the ship, aircraft or spacecraft, when the frame of reference is within the ship, headed at the fore. For example, "Able Seaman Smith; lie aft!" or "Wh ...

ends rather than a permanent windward and

leeward Windward () and leeward () are terms used to describe the direction of the wind. Windward is ''upwind'' from the point of reference, i.e. towards the direction from which the wind is coming; leeward is ''downwind'' from the point of reference ...

side, and it does not " shunt" to come about so is more akin to the Malibu Outrigger of the 1950s. Due to the asymmetric sailing behavior, Hilu is not quite as easy for the novice sailor to master as some of AMF's other beach boats.

History

To create the Hilu, AMF commissioned an industrial design/commercial art group in Farmington, CT who had no prior experience with boat design. Upon its debut, experienced sailors were not impressed by the way the Hilu sailed. Hilu never received the same level of acceptance by the sailing public as other AMF boats, particularly the Sunfish. This may have been due to its design not being quite so novice friendly, it may have been the experimental nature of AMF's attempt to bring something different to the commercial side of beach boating. With demand falling far below the popularity of its AMF cousins, the Hilu lasted only a few years in the market place.AMF Hilu Blog http://www.rvharvey.com/hilu.htm

References

External links

* https://web.archive.org/web/20100722150720/http://backbayboatworks.com/outrunner.php - Similar boat available today * http://www.tacking-outrigger.com/ninja_pro2.html - Similar boat available today * http://www.signaldesign.net/different22.html - Similar boat available today Multihulls 1970s sailboat type designs