Rowing Sailboat/Sailing Rowboat Race Rule

[alan white]

Speaking of Herreshoff 12 1/2s, or likely Havens, I hope to play at racing against those boats this coming Summer. Most are built locally, and godawful expensive (how's 40k sound??), and so those boats are relegated to the rich in almost every case.
The boats around the coast here are indeed strong and heavy. one reason is that our boat season is pretty short unless the boat can be made comfortable in the spring and fall seasons (which nearly collide somewhere in July). In fact it's said of Maines seasons that we get 11 months of winter and one month of bad sledding.
Another reason is deep water near shore. All things considered, old timers had no need to beach boats of any size. They built working sail craft on the same principles of the British pilot cutters. When you make a living from the sea, you fish in all kinds of nasty weather, and so you build a husky boat. Chesepeke fishermen built sharpie types, but then they seldom worried about being carried out to sea or encountering giant swells. Instead, they built light shallow boats.
Those old designs had a large influence on local yacht design. The designs came to be loved for their time-tested qualities.
Those same qualities still serve today. Avoiding the granite boneyards of the 3500 islands off Maine entails a design with a long, deep keel and a weatherly rig, not to mention the ability to survive the occasional grounding, which is invariably craggy rock.
Did I mention fog? Or tides of 11 ft? More reasons for strong and heavy boats, able to stay out when they are sailing blind or against the current. GPS and radar are available today, of course.

[frosh]

Hi Messabout and Alan and others. Heavy boats like a Herreshoff 12 and a half are almost non-existant in Western Australia. However I can appreciate that for some folks this might be the epitome of the desirable qualities that they want from their own sailboat. I naturally assumed that if Sharpii2 is proposing a form of race, especially since an unknown proportion would be human powered by rowing or paddling that an extremely heavy boat creates many more problems than it solves. I could be wrong, but speaking for Aussies, the idea of the hybrid racing craft is very unlikely to appeal, and if it included a rule that minimum displacement was to be 400lb. it would become a complete anathema.

As far as marine ply available in Australia, we used to be able to buy 3 ply at a total thickness of 1mm. Nowadays the thinnest that I can source is 1.5mm which I have used a few times. My 23 ft. OC2 is a round bottomed cold molded two layer 1.5mm marine ply construction which is frameless, apart from 2 bulkheads mainly to provide sealed buoyancy chambers in the bow and stern, and a tiny section internal keelson of WRC.
It probably was strength overkill but I also sheathed the hull in one layer of woven carbon, followed by one layer of very thin woven fibreglass to protect the carbon from abrasion damage.
It is not my intention to go into the engineering of how to build flat panelled boats with very thin ply skins, but I believe that the Gougeon brothers were pioneering the methods decades ago, and have published books on the subject.
Cost of thin marine plywood was mentioned also. We can buy here a sheet of 8ft. x 4 ft. marine ply of superb quality of 1.5mm or 2 mm or 3mm made from Australian hoop pine a medium weight timber with a good surface hardness for around $75 per sheet Aust. dollars. Compared to the cost of boat hardware in Stainless steel, rigging costs including a quality tapered mast in T6 aluminium or in carbon fibre the cost of a few sheets of marine ply is really a pittance.
Also there would be no compulsion to use marine ply for the hull skin. What about WRC strip planking, or a foam/fibreglass epoxy composite. These methods completely overcome panel stiffness issues with minimal engineering.
Regards--- Sam

[sharpii2]

Originally Posted by frosh

Hi US compatriots. What is it with the weight problem? I don't mean to offend but what is freaky about a grown man weighing a normal 154lb?
Most people I know weigh considerably more than 150 lbs, myself included. QUOTE
Also what is the 125lb gear? Are we taking tents, gas bottles. pots and pans and canned food for a week?
It is only a race for a few hours, is it not? I would have thought a protein bar and an energy drink (total weight 2 lbs) would be ample.
Honestly I don't get it. Sure I can build a small boat out of half inch ply, but it becomes harder to transport, costs more to build.And it wiill paddle or row with a huge effort, making you tired in about 15 minutes. And it will sail about as fast as an Optimist dinghy. In my book none of this is much fun. Anyway it is purely theoretical for me, as Aussies would never go for this type of event IMHO
Best of luck with it; seriously.

What I have in mind is more like a 'Water Tribe' challenge which could last for a couple of days to a week. And yes you will need to bring pots and pans, canned stores and some kind of cooker, as well as some spare changes of clothes.

I find it hard to believe that the land that produced Steve Irwin would not eventially go for such a thing. I have always thought of you Aussies as tougher and more hardy than us pampered Yanks.

Yeah, and a lot of us ARE carrying around some extra weight.

Maybe events like I propose could help change that.

Better than spewing 5 gallons an hour worth of hydro carbons into the air. (your typical 60hp 'personal watercraft'. Which is only fun at full throttle).

Part of the idea here is to help develop good seaworthy small boats for those of us who cannot afford proper cruising auxilliaries and all the trappings that go with them.

Bob

[frosh]

Hi, I have said my piece already and more is the pity that the land that produced Steve Irwin will not take on the type of challenge you have described in this thread. The chance that I have misjudged the people of Australia (by saying that although I like the concept it won't catch on here), is highly unlikely.