The 75m luxury sailing yacht M5 (ex. Mirabella V) project was designed by Ron Holland, launched in 2004 and is currently undergoing an extensive refit at Pendennis Shipyard. She recently broke another record when Carbo-link unwrapped the largest composite forestay ever built. The sloop rig is already an engineering exploit towering an impressive 88.5m above M5 yacht’s deck.

Working on M5 yacht at Pendennis

Weeks of work and one day of curing with electricity completed the new forestay which is built with the same cutting edge fibre-optic technology used only on America’s Cup boats. This will be the first time a superyacht has been fitted with a solid carbon cable with unidirectional fibre and a fibre Bragg grating (FBG). These are optical fibres that reflect the loads through particular wavelengths. Data of all the tension and loads on the rig at any given moment can then be visually monitored centrally via computer systems.

Luxury sailing yacht M5 is undergoing refit at Pendennis Shipyard

Sensors are also wrapped around the forestays. Once the forestay is finished and the carbon foils and furler motors are fitted, access between the two will be extremely limited, making it almost impossible to detect chafing between the stay and the furler. That’s where the surface damage sensors come into play: if there is chafing, they will simply stop reflecting, triggering an alarm.

Luxury yacht M5 under refit at Pendennis

The build of the new forestay is part of the substantial 18 month refit and 3m stern extension that superyacht M5 is undergoing at Pendennis Shipyard.

Superyacht M5 under refit at Pendennis

Specifications Pre-Refit (to be updated as refit works completed)