Where sea meets space

The weird-looking, three-hulled boat by the Newport Harbor Patrol dock looks like it could be from the future, or from outer space.

To Thomas Kardos, the boat’s owner, those descriptions are both appropriate. Seven Sisters is a trimaran designed to cut through waves, make and store its own drinking water, and power itself by motor, sail, solar energy or kite.

“She’s one of a kind,” said Kardos, 49, of Aliso Viejo. “This is the kind of boat that a family could live [on] out at sea indefinitely.”

Kardos and Seven Sisters arrived in Newport Beach on Tuesday after sailing and motoring the boat from Seattle. He first saw the boat five years ago but only learned of the unique explanation of its origins when he finally bought it in 2005.

Built in the late 1990s by Jim Dworack in Hawaii, Seven Sisters was named for the constellation of that name, also called the Pleiades. What Kardos found out later was that Dworack “felt that he was putting in certain design features that were told to him by friendly aliens” — namely, the Plajerans, a race of humanoid extraterrestrials reputed to live near the Pleiades.

The boat’s design certainly seems far out. Its three hulls help keep it level during extreme weather, and six solar panels on top of the cabin can run batteries to power the boat and its amenities.

It’s equipped to desalinate seawater or capture and filter rainwater, and it can be sailed with a surfing kite, which doesn’t require a mast.

“You can operate a laptop with the solar panels and make your water and catch some fish,” he said. “You can live out there and function and never touch land.”

The environmentally friendly features drew Kardos, an electrical engineer, to the boat from the beginning. But when he first saw Seven Sisters in 2001, the $200,000 price tag was too high.

Dworack had hoped his boat would be the prototype for a fleet of self-sustaining ships, but he became ill and had to sell it, Kardos said. A fisherman bought it but wasn’t doing a lot with it, so when Kardos went to Hawaii last year for business, he bought the boat and lived on it.

Now he hopes to moor it in Newport Beach, and he said he wouldn’t mind if movie producers wanted to use the boat — say, in a James Bond picture or a “Waterworld” sequel.

“My hope for the boat is to get it onto some movies to recoup my investment,” he said.

He’s taken his three children out on the boat, but so far he hasn’t convinced his wife to forsake land and live at sea.

A wave-piercing trimaran, Earthrace, that runs on bio-diesel was featured earlier this month at the Lido Yacht Expo.