Smyth goes after Everglades Challenge... Again

[Chris Ostlind]

Well, folks, it's that time of the year once again when otherwise intelligent people push themselves away from the beach at Ft. DeSoto near the mouth of Tamba Bay, Florida and begin their wild ride down the coast towards Key Largo. ;-)

The Watertribe Everglades Challenge launched this morning right on time and one of the wildest collections of coastal adventure cruising boats ever seen in one location has begun the journey of 300 miles.

Back from last year on the former, Frontal Lobotomy self-made trimaran, is none other than World Champion multihull sailor and former Rolex Yachtsman of the Year, Randy Smyth. Well, at least I think it's Randy, even though the entry name is now listed as Sew Sew. For sure it's Randy's boat and the dude in the photo looks like Smyth, so I'll go with that until better info emerges.

Last year, Randy was leading the race by a decent margin over the eventual all-time race record winners on a Tornado cat, when his boat lost structural integrity and he had to drop out. I'm guessing that he went back and figured out what had happened that took him out of the event. Let's see what happens this year.

[Chris Ostlind]

Smyth now well past Checkpoint 1 and leading the race down coast.

www.watertribe.com

There is a Google Map viewer on the site where you can see the progress being made by each entry. There is also a string of entries on the Discussion Forum http://www.watertribe.com/Default.as...n/Threads.ascx

Smyth is out front and being trailed by the two man Tornado of Bumpy and Lumpy, last year's winners. Sitting in third is the Inter20 entry of jRock and crew. Light air for the early portion of the event.

According to "foghorn" on SA Smyth is out:

Apparently Randy has been rescued by the Coast Guard.
From the race log-in page:
"Though we do not know the whole story yet, SewSew(Randy Smyth) turned over off of Naples and was unable to recover. He was calm, had on life jacket with VHF in hand and was able to give the Coast Guard his exact position. He is safely at the Ft. Myers Coast Guard station and his shore crew is on the way to pick him up. We'll let Randy fill in the story later. "


More: http://www.watertribe.com/Default.as...trNumReplies=1
"Bumpy and Lumpy have come across Sew Sew's(Randy Smyth) boat floating upside down,they are aproximately 50 miles from CP2. They stopped and called me to check on him. Thanks for the posting I was able to tell them that the captain of the boat is okay and has been picked up already. They are going to continuing on to CP2. Light winds but very choppy conditions. "

------------
Too damn bad!

[Chris Ostlind]

Randy shot a video on board the scissors tri early in the event. SewSew sailing Scissors. You can get a very small idea as to the business on the boat while underway.

http://www.watertribe.com/ChallengeV...erContent.aspx

[Chris Ostlind]

And the winners are... Lumpy and Bumpy on their Tornado. This is the second win in a row for the cat team and another total horizon job on the fleet.

There is a brief race report with photos in this morning's Duckworks Boatbuilder's Magazine http://www.duckworksmagazine.com/index.cfm

"Monday, March 9th - 8AM

I checked Lumpy and Bumpy's track (see link above) this morning and found that they had already made it to the finish line so I called Gary and he was there greeting them. So, Lumpy and Bumpy win the 2009 Watertribe Everglades Challenge.

Gary says Lumpy and Bumpy's secret weapon was a borrowed red, white and blue foresail of some kind that allowed them to go fast in light air - even upwind! They certainly did that. The next boat is not yet at checkpoint 2.

Randy Smythe has recovered his boat with no loss of anything. He even got his grainola bars back. Aparently, he had a problem and had to climb out on one of the amas to do some work and a wind gust caught him, capsizing the boat. It was supposed to be possible to right the thing, but an unexpected leak in a hatch and the resulting extra water weight in the boat made that impossible."

[johnelliott24]

The video and times show how fast Smyth's boat is. I hope my new boat proves to be fast like this in light air and that it foils well in heavy air. In displacement mode my Precarious! tris are very similar to Smyth's boat. To avoid capsize my amas are triangular in cross section and they have a "planing deck" which is just a curved deck that overhangs the amas so that they create a lot of lift if the ama gets submerged. I also have Hydroptere like canted foils that increase in lift as the ama gets lower and the amas are designed to be out of the water anyway. So far I have been able to keep the amas out of the water in displacement mode except for the sharp V bottom "kissing" waves.

Smyth's amas look somewhat like a Moth hull so when they submerge it seems that they can continue submerging. To make matters worse I think his amas will dramatically slow his boat when submerged, causing the boat to pitch forward, which in turn makes the submerged ama point downward; thereby quickly dragging the boat over even more as the ama tries to head for the bottom.

Hydroptere uses a hydroplane design. The only reason I did the deep V bottom was to improve performance if they need to touch the water and because they were easy to build (took a few hours), but Hydroptere might have the best setup.

In any case based on my brief experience so far in the first Precarious!, Hydroptere and Smyth's speed, this configuration shows promise for speed in all conditions and ease of use. One area that is going to need lots of testing is the ama and foil design.

[rattus]

One of the most interesting aspects of Smyth's design is that the crossbeams are arranged in a parallelogram that can swivel so that the amas can move fore and aft; while pushing it he could rotate the leeward ama forward to counteract pitchpoling tendencies, without dragging along the rest of a conventional ama to cover all contingencies if the crossbeam were fixed.

Don't carry more bouyancy than you need - just put it where it's needed! Brilliant.

Mike

[u4ea32]

Not only is the buoyancy just where you need it, the entire boat has very minimal surface area, so its LIGHT. The boat weighs less than Randy, and all up, including all gear and food and water for the race, the boat has more than one square foot of sail area per pound of weight.

Certainly one of the highest power-to-weight ratios of any sailboat boat.

Consider a windsurfer with sailor, they don't come close.

Also, its very beamy, with most of the total weight (Randy) 20 feet from the leeward ama, and 10 feet from the hull that's really taking the load.

Those amas are really just trailing wheels, they aren't supposed to take much weight.

[rattus]

Um, you're not related to Randy, are you? ;-)

Mike

[u4ea32]

Originally Posted by johnelliott24

...To avoid capsize my amas are triangular in cross section and they have a "planing deck" which is just a curved deck that overhangs the amas so that they create a lot of lift if the ama gets submerged.

Sounds like a very low aspect foil, which means very high drag for the lift generated. High drag amas are a good way to flip!

Smyth's amas look somewhat like a Moth hull so when they submerge it seems that they can continue submerging. To make matters worse I think his amas will dramatically slow his boat when submerged, causing the boat to pitch forward, which in turn makes the submerged ama point downward; thereby quickly dragging the boat over even more as the ama tries to head for the bottom.

They are very fine at the deck, nothing like a boxy moth hull. Wave piercing.

They don't provide much buoyancy, that is why he flipped!

Wide decks, as you've described for your boat, however do act as you've described. Hopefully the foils are powerful, or just be agile.

There is no question that Farrier tris with production decks (sound kinda like your "planing deck") are much worse in a seaway than Farrier tris with smooth hull-to-deck joints as on F-33 and F-25C and a few other (custom) Farrier builds. You really need the buoyancy of the ama to make as little muss and fuss as possible. Drag way to leeward has a horrible influence on stability.

25+ years ago, we did detailed studies into a Hydropter-like boat. Obviously, it was never built. The angled surface piercing foils are both very high drag (so you can't foil upwind) and prone to blow-out (which lead to the Hydropter crash and capsize a few months ago).

On your boat, you might want to consider Moth T foils with wands that control foil angle-of-attack (lift). Like on the old Hobies.

[Gary Baigent]

hey Dave Smyth Rocket Scientist, have you still the studies of your Hydroptere-type? Like to see them. I have done similar things. Also have a 20x20 foot foiler that is over 30 years old - very good in some conditions but a bit of a bastard in large waves - small floats, angled foils ... which can lose grip and crash - yes inverted T's are a better way to go.

[Paul B]

Originally Posted by rattus

Um, you're not related to Randy, are you? ;-)

Mike

David is Randy's brother.

[Chris Ostlind]

I'd really like to see Randy continue to tweak this design until it can be sailable, as well as durable enough to complete the the Water Tribe Challenge. This looks to be a winning solution and it will set the collective heads a-spinning enough that they just might get off the dime as to interesting, experimental craft for this event.