Marples DC-3 Trimaran
Description
The Marples DC-3 Trimaran is a 27-foot (8.2 m) folding-wing wooden cruising trimaran designed by John Marples (a veteran multihull designer and collaborator with Jim Brown on Seaclipper/Searunner series). It won the WoodenBoat Magazine Professional BoatBuilder Design Challenge III in 2011 for a "Fast Expedition Sailboat" in the wood category, beating 49 entrants. The design emphasizes practical offshore capability in a trailerable package using the Constant Camber wood/epoxy construction method (self-jigging plywood hulls for faster amateur builds), a central cockpit for heavy-weather safety, split fore-and-aft cabin layout (sleeping at least 2 comfortably), swing-wing akas (folding crossbeams for road-legal trailering), and a short, manageable rig. No production boats were built—it's plans-only, with a few amateur builds completed (e.g., one named Kaimana launched in Southern California around 2019–2020, logging over 1,500 nm by 2022).
Construction Details
| Designer | John Marples |
|---|---|
| Builder | Home Built |
| Length | 27.000 ft |
| LOA | 27.000 ft |
| Beam | 17.250 ft |
| Displacement | 2400 lb |
| Year Built | 2011 |
The standard boat dimensions
| i | 28.80 ft |
|---|---|
| j | 11.20 ft |
| p | 29 ft |
| e | 12 ft |
| p2 | - |
| e2 | - |
| i2 | - |
| j2 | - |
| I | J | P | E | P2 | E2 | I2 | J2 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 28.80 ft | 11.20 ft | 29 ft | 12 ft | - | - | - | - |
Sails
Marples DC-3 Trimaran - MAINSAIL
| Luff | * 29 ft - (8839 mm) |
|---|---|
| Foot | * 12 ft - (3658 mm) |
| Leech | * 30.75 ft - (9373 mm) |
| Tack Angle | * 88 ° |
| Diagonal | * 31 ft - (9449 mm) |
| Head (inches) | * 5.25 in - (133 mm) |
| Area | * 179.44 ft² |
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Marples DC-3 Trimaran - JIBSAIL
| Luff | 29 ft - (8839 mm) |
|---|---|
| Foot | 10.7 ft - (3261 mm) |
| Leech | 24.7 ft - (7529 mm) |
| Percentage LP | * 83.08 % |
| Length Perpendicular | * 8.89 ft - (2710 mm) |
| Deck Angle | * 10.4 ° |
| Area | * 128.9 ft² |
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Marples DC-3 Trimaran - ASYMMETRICAL
| Luff | 30 ft - (9144 mm) |
|---|---|
| Foot | 17.75 ft - (5410 mm) |
| Leech | 25 ft - (7620 mm) |
| Perc LP | * 165 % |
| Area | * 399 ft² |
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Disclaimer. Boats are not all the same -- even when produced in the same factory of the same model. Sailrite does its best to publish accurate dimensions, but we often find it worthwhile to have our customers measure their boats carefully before we produce kits for them. You should take the same precautions, especially when the data is not from Sailrite. The information on this site is not guaranteed to be accurate. Sailrite offers this content as a service to our community, but takes no responsibility for the reliability of the data provided.
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