Alternative to marvelous Buccaneer 24

[bruceb]

Gary, what sort of useful wind range should it have? We only have one small tri foiler around the club so my experience with them is very limited. Bruce

[Doug Lord]

Gary, on my new movable ballast boat the wing pivots to trailer it. On the proto the wing will be close to 14' and the boat 17.6'. The wing has a slight curve-up at the ends- with very small buoyancy pods and the system will work with a "pivot and slide" feature to clear the daggerboard and rudder when they are retracted. I think if you can pivot your system without having to pivot the amas you'll be far better off-very simple. And the increased beam will only help the foils work better though if the wing is slightly curved(up at the ends) you might not need the xtra beam-at least to clear the mini-amas.

[Gary Baigent]

Bruce, with the two conservative (slight joke) wing mast versions and the reefable mainsail, the boat would be capable of handling most wind and sea conditions - albeit, probably very uncomfortable. On my old 32 foot catamaran with a quite large chord (30 inche) wing mast, we were once caught out in williwaws of 60 -70 knots, sea swirling white as the catabatic blasts came down off Moehau ... and we sailed with no sail up, just with the wing mast ... and the boat handled it very well averaging 17 knots for half an hour to reach a slightly safer mooring area up the creek in Colville. My point is, a wing mast (as long as you have good spanner controls) is a very safe rig in savage winds, no flapping soft sail and other craziness. In the hardest blasts I turned right downwind and stalled the rig out, even so I estimated we were doing well over 20 knots. Later we had to beat, in really hard stuff, 35-40 knots wind, under wing mast alone, and the boat sailed magnificently, pointing really high with easy steering control. Again no flapping and sail distortion.
So, most sane people will keep out of stuff like that but in the scissor foiler - hopefully it would be capable of getting you home.

[Gary Baigent]

Doug, the dagger, IT rudder and the wing mast, (eh, naturally) with the male bearing at base, will have to be removed to pivot the beam - and there will be dihedral in the beam and cabin unit - so there will enough clearance to swing clear of the forward and after decks. But there would be no way to swing the floats and foils over same, that would be too extreme a dihedral. Bruce suggests unbolting the floats (but I want to avoid that) and Greg's idea of a longer beam makes perfect sense, leaving floats integral with the beam.

[Doug Lord]

The longer beam is a great idea-it'll unload the foils a bit and make the ama buoyancy a bit more effective. Are you going with that?

[Gary Baigent]

The platform is now 7.5 metres by 8.1 beam - and it is a tight fit to get the floats "round the corner". I had to put a total of 5degrees dihedral in the beam and was saved, in getting the floats athwartships (ahem) the trailer, by the sloping transom and inverted bow.

[Doug Lord]

Damn good solution!

[Gary Baigent]

Changed my mind a little - if the foils are J shaped and removable (from ama bottom), I can increase main hull length to 7.62m (25 feet) and reduce the beam to less than 7.9m or so - and that makes the over square platform not so extreme.

[Doug Lord]

You're not using any wand system ,right? Will these "J" foils work like surface piercing foils?

[bruceb]

Gary, thanks for the details. I am paying attention, I just don't have anything to add. The J foils look easy to deal with, how hard are they to build? Bruce

[Gary Baigent]

Here is Scissoring Sid with 7.62m length and beam just under 8m - plus J foils down. I've never built J foils before but imagine, with wooden core construction, you just strip laminate bending the curving around a fixed corner ... then when epoxy cured, start sanding, arty-farty stuff where the curve is, done by eye and feel; the straight parts will be ... straight forward. No I'm not having wands - the foils will be set at 3 degrees angle of incidence. Keep it simple.

[Gary Baigent]

Beam and J foils (extended here) fit to hull when beam scissored.

[oldsailor7]

Jeez Gary,
This is exciting stuff. Keep going.

[captainsideburn]

just to keep the juices flowing can you put up some more photos of your existing foilers?

[Gary Baigent]

Here is a sketch I did 20 years ago for a raving sailing enthusiast (monohulls and dinghies) who wanted to try a 25 foot foiler ... and then changed his mind when he saw the drawing and I answered one of his questions about tacking - told him light multihulls are slow to tack - and that was just the excuse he wanted so he could flee from another crazy. Boat was too radical for him. Actually I still think it would be a good boat, simple straight beam, simple construction - but the hull cross sections need to be more rounded, semi circular.
The other shots are Groucho Marx and Flash Harry.