Proa Questions: Atlantic vs Pacific

"For structures such statistics exists ... made with models on breaking waves, in tank. Results are also published."

They may well exist though they are presumably fairly general. You mentioned earlier the teak aboard your boats which would not find a place on mine, though I have a little purple heart. If clients drive bad choices then the numbers will reflect those. My point though was that practical experience has tended to be the leader in these maters. Spectacular failures in the field are often part of the process of evolving these standards. The boats came first the standards later.

I wonder what the standards would say about boats that are flexible structures that are in some kind of dynamic state of adjustment. Would they meet current standards?

 

Yes, we do the measurements also, both on full-size boats and models.

Definitely there is still a niche for amateur boat designers, without engineering education. But once boat (pleasure or special craft) needs to be competitive one can't get it without professionals involved.

 

Suggest to study those research first...

We are living in consumption society with car mentality brainwashed by glossy magazines, where newcomers in boating are obsessed by driving full throttle, sleek shapes and luxury finish. There is thin category of 'sailing snobs' whose sailing culture has evolved from young years; this category is so small so do not define weather on the market. Probably You are one of them (I am also of this sort originally, but now have to be more flexible)

Most of 'sailboat designers' during last years have to either concentrate on powerboats, or sit without orders hardly getting commissions for 1-2 sailboats designs per year.

We as commercial designers have to be in mainstream. I do not agree that we are one of 'lazy designers' (as Rob said) copying what others do. We work hard, we deliver 20-30 designs per year, launching average 10-12 new models/custom boats per year from our drawing board. The range of designs is from houseboats and airboats to trailerable sailboats and 50-knot interceptor craft. With this variety each design is a challenge! But following the standards is part of mainstream... unfortunately yes, this is market demand. All these boats are designed to comply either with ISO, or with LR SSC, GL or other rules - 'must have' item for design success today.

 

Alik, your arch conservative, mainstream, "professional" knowledge has all been built on and gained from the minds of innovative, inventive, free thinking, amateur individuals (they're just cranks, lets exploit them, heh, heh) working on their own, creating their stuff, how long ago? .... three, four, five decades ahead of anything the "establishment" regurgitates and makes money from today. <removed> .... trying to compensate lack of free thought by hiding behind legalities.

 

< mod note: some reported posts or sentences in posts above have been removed which I felt were starting to attack other members; please let's keep this thread friendly and idea-based >

 

Why are proa's not included in the PDF? Are they banned from such events? If so - for what reasons?

 

Alix,

Looks like we agree to disagree on:
whether boats should be engineered from first principles based on actual loads and scenarios or blindly built to non relevant standards whose primary role is to "keep customer reasonable in his requests, and for (avoiding) responsibility issues")
Whether comfort is how people feel on a boat or an ISO standard.
Whether a movie of a gps and a boat sailing is more likely to be correct than computer generated polars suggesting half the speed.
Whether safety on a boat is real ife scenarios (being able to pick up a man overboard quickly, reducing sail without having to luff, etc) or a book of rules stipulating equipment,

Looks like we agree on:
Cruising harryproas have excellent cruising performance
Apart from this, you know nothing about proas (Jeff, I appreciate that this is harsh compared to "sniffy and righteous", but it is a direct quote from one of Alix's earlier posts)
Your polars could be different to reality as they are only estimates and do not include a lot of performance features exclusive to harryproas, nor have they ever been validated by actual testing against a harryproa.

You carry on designing boats to keep bureaucrats employed and your fees rolling in. I will carry on designing boats for people who want to sail in commonly held or provable, standards of comfort, safety and speed.

Alex,
The rules "don't apply" to proas as proas are already safe. ;-) What the rule writers mean is that proas are excluded from racing under ISAF.
30 years ago a bunch of Atlantic proas capsized, hit ships and had rigs fall down and ISAF has yet to realise that it is possible to build proas that not only don't have these failings, but are actually safer than cats and tris, even with all the specified safety equipment on board. Out of touch rule makers are as much a nuisance for modern proa owners as out of touch designers.

rob

 

So enjoy Your proas. I have made my conclusions and most of thread readers did also.

 

The rule folks continue to be right in expecting that proas will be oddball somehow, and for them that may be enough.

 

Alik, without being seen as a savage attack upon you as being "sniffy and righteous," you surmise far too much (perhaps similarly from your inaccurate reading of suspect polar figures) that most of the thread readers here agree with you.

 

I know nothing about proas, so I am looking for some info since there seems to be a LOT of conversation about them on the internet.

I have been walking docks and boatyards for almost 40 years. I have never seen a proa with my own two eyes. I have been all over the USA, on coasts and lakes in various parts of Europe and Asia, in Australia, and in New Zealand. Yet I have never seen a proa.

So I guess my first question is how many proas are built in any year? Are there any production proas, or are they all custom boats? Is there a hotbed of proa activity somewhere in the world?

I noted a claim that ISAF has outlawed proas. I have not ever heard about this and did not know ISAF ever outlawed any specific type of boat. Is there a link to this information? If I was to build a class of One Design proas that were represented by thousands of boats in most sailing areas across the planet would ISAF not recognize the class?

 

Proas are with a few exceptions all talk. But then the ratio of talk to building boats is probably 100-1 on the internet, and gets steeper the more expensive the boats are, not to mention the more suspect. There isn't a hot bed of proa construction anywhere really you can see the distribution of the HarryProas across the globe on Rob's site, not sure how many of those are finished.

http://www.harryproa.com/a_map/Map.htm

I don't doubt proas, like snowboarding, would with enough popularity make even the Olympic games. Been involved in a lot of sports that were once oddball, and then became mainstream, but proas seem a fairly safe backwater for individuality that will not be discovered any time soon.

I do like the idea of them. There are a lot of people interested in multihulls these days, My interest goes back to about '78, but it is interesting to speculate how many people who are now passionate about them would have answered the call if they ran into Dick Newick, or James Wharram in the 50s. That is what is happening now with proas. The only indicator that actually maters is whether they are growing. Are proas more convincing, more worked out, more interesting today, than 5 years ago, or 10 years ago. Hard to argue with that in my mind.

 

Thanks. I had searched the 'net and didn't find much in the way of real, current (last 5 or 10 years) launchings.

I did see the Harry site. Seems maybe less than half of the boats shown on the map are sailing. Seems maybe that is the biggest group in the world as well.

I think the Harry guy was also the one who was going to sail a proa in the Transpac a couple of races ago. Claimed he would set the record easily I think. The boat never showed up for that race, or for the next one.

If it does show and can beat things like ORMA 60s to Hawaii maybe proas will get the recognition some want to see.

 

Rob Denny is the Harry guy, and he is here all the time. I think it is unlikely he will break any records, but I do hope he will get a chance to try. If it showed well it would at least show some people the pottential, but rob is on a shoestring budget of time and money, and it would be a miracle if it all came together. I don't read anything into all that. And I don't personally care if proas show well in races, but it is certainly one arena that many people are concerned with.

 

I only mentioned the racing aspect because of some of the comments about performance on this thread.