Sea Ray 290 Sundancer

Sea Ray 290 Sundancer Carbon Fibre Hardtop

This was a very big project undertaken here at Rae Line. The brief was relatively simple - replicate an existing hardtop structure but make it less than half the weight to provide the performance required and make the boat a lot more stable on the water. Putting this to practice was a whole other beast though. First we went about making molds of all the existing parts to replicate the shape. This involved adding normal flanges, reverse flanges and creating split molds in order to get the required shape. Once the molding process was completed, we designed up a light weight laminate that involved using carbon fibre double bias, carbon fibre unidirectional weave and fibreglass double bias. Once designed, we went about hand laying both the inner and outer molds using epoxy resin & adding in a foam core to provide stiffness. With both parts laminated, we finished the lamination process by bonding the inner and outer sections together. When de-molded, we fully inspected the laminate for voids or issues and once they were all sorted we went about painting the full hardtop in a 2K Polyurethane marine paint. To finish this whole project off, we created some finished carbon fibre twill weave inserts to go on the inside of the hardtop. With the accent lighting added to the centre, this ended up being one classy looking hardtop. It was a hell of a lot of effort, but with reducing the weight to approximately a 3rd of the original hardtop, the goal was accomplished!