Rafnar UK

Rafnar is the brain child of an Icelandic businessman, Ossur Kristinsson.

A keen boater, Ossur wanted to fix the problem of high speed boats bouncing and slamming when underway in anything other than calm seas.

Typically, high speed boats use a principle called planing to lift them from the water in order to reduce drag and allow for speed and efficiency. The downside to this design is that what goes up, must come down, often with a heavy landing. Traditionally, in order as to reduce this slamming effect in harsh weather, planing hull craft need to reduce speed to maintain any level of comfort.

For users in a rush, or for tactical users such as the Police, Military, SAR teams or Coastguard services, slowing down because it is rough is not really an option.

The result can be a broken boat, or even broken crew.
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Ossur recognised that there had been limited innovation within planing hull technology for several decades. Naval Architects had created more speed, by increasing airflow with steps or they had created a slightly softer landing by deepening the vee of the hull, but the principles still remained the same.

Instead of trying to improve on existing planing hull technology which, he believed was flawed from the start, Ossur looked at wholly new hull concepts and in 2005 the idea of the Rafnar hull was born.

Ossur discovered a principle not used in power boats and felt it had some merit. He went about investing approximately forty five million euros of his own personal wealth studying, prototyping and ultimately building what we believe to be the worlds finest high speed boat hull based around the “arc of circle”.

In 2012 the Icelandic Coastguard and also Iceland’s search and rescue service got involved with the project and in 2015 the Leiftur 1100 and Flengur 850 were born with these two organisations becoming the first clients.

Since 2015, Rafnar hulls have been gaining notoriety as something of a game changer with tactical users. In addition, the superyacht sector, in particular explorer yachts, are realising that another “limo” is not needed and instead a “go anywhere in anything” vessel is more suited to the role.