Having the first Infiniti roll out of the shed at Composite Builders was a great sight after more than a year of collaboration between Waypoint Racing & Infiniti Yachts.

The design brief was for a lightweight 52, capable of sustained offshore sailing with pushbutton control for all functions (hydraulic and winches). While something like this is this is quite standard on the superyachts, it’s one of the first boats that I know of, in this size range, to actually make it practical on a 52 footer. Waypoint Racing designed the system specifically for this project, from the ground up and tested the components extensively at our shop in San Diego before the final installation in Michigan.

This boat has a heap of innovative features that we hope will make it a great performer and a pleasant boat to sail - at speed. The most obvious bit is the DSS foil; a sliding foil that adds righting moment and creates a more stable ride; think no more nosediving! By generating so much righting moment from the foil, it also allows the Infiniti 52 to get by with a much smaller bulb than similar boats. The foil retracts into the hull for light air or docking and is also fully removeable for inshore racing. Quite unique!

On the electrical side, the big goal was to avoid the failure prone custom PLC that is standard on larger yachts with system like these. Anywhere possible, we used ‘off the shelf’ components in a unique way, so that we have the reliability of proven marine grade hardware and still deliver the functionality of a higher cost / more complicated system.

All of the hydraulic function can be controlled from the 6 Czone keypads mounted on the deck, any of 3 B&G MFD touchscreens, or the wireless remote unit. The winches can be controlled from the standard foot buttons, or using Waypoint’s crossover box, the trimmers can run the winches from foot buttons on the opposite side of the boat.

Waypoint worked closely with Diverse Performance Systems supplied the loadcells, hydraulic pump & manifold and Harken who supplied the rams & winches to make sure all the systems would work seamlessly with each other.

The next issue was how to keep power these winches & hydraulics without running the engine 24/7. Using two of Mastervolt’s new AlphaCompact alternators, the Infiniti is able to charge the 24 volt Mastervolt lithium battery bank at a massive 300 amps / 28volts. With this charging capability, the Infiniti will charge just like a traditional boat, and is expected to keep up with the current draw in roughly 1 hour of charging every 12 hrs. of sailing – like most unpowered boats! The MLI is equally impressive as it can discharge at 500 amps – enough easily to spin all winches at the same time.

Navigation electronics are from B&G; using the new Nemesis 12” displays on the mast and the H5000 CPU as the brains. All devices are connected on a Pepwave ethernet network so that any device (depending on our firewall rules) is accessible from the navigators tablet, the B&G link app, Navionics, or anything else the team requests.

Hull #2… should be coming online around Thanksgiving. Short of a few different display locations – the base system will be identical.

Digging In To Our Infitini 52 Electronics Masterpiece