The Ideal Cruiser - a long range passagemaker

[Vega]

Originally Posted by dougfrolich

Keep in mind what can happen if you do not consider grounding see photos of a Bravaria 42.
I saw a J-35 hit a rock off Angel Island .... No water entered the hull, and the keel was still attatched soundly (considering). The damage required considerable repair but the boat was never in danger.

Yes, there are well built boats and badly built ones. They are really not even sure if that B. Match 42 had hit the ground. There are several other Match 42 with keel problems and those have not been grounded. Inexpensive mass production performance boats are in my opinion boats that can have problems (light and strong means expensive).

Several Nordic light weight small production boats have the keel bolted to a steel frame that is molded in the boat. I believe these will not lose the keel so easily and can behave in a collision as well or better than that J-35 you are talking about.

[dougfrolich]

A metal framework can be a very effective way of handling keel loads, Boats like the Mumm36 and Farr40 come to mind.

[D'ARTOIS]

All in all, running two threads having more or less the same content, makes it a bit difficult to maintain this one going.
The pro's and contra's for heavy vs light are known and Mike for example explained extensively that, although a light boat definately has it's advantages, one should consider that a long range passagemaker cannot be a light boat. First of all, she should be capable of enduring forces that the every day's boat will not endure. The passagemaker should be build out of an repairable, easy repairable material and that phases out complicated laminates and the like, where woodcore is the - as far as one can go - option, otherwise it will be aluminium, steel, wood or Ferrocement.
The utmost easy repairable boat will be the steel one.

So, for long range passagemaking, the light boats are out of discussion. Wether they are suitable or not, they just do not feed the bill of requirements, needed for people that are staying longer than a month or two on their boat.
My personal posessions that came from my last boat weighed more than 400 kilo's. Clothing, books (many) tools (150 kgs) kitchenware, and a lot of other small stuff.
Put this in a light boat and where are we?
And I am just a single person!
I am not talking about extra sail, spares, equipment to make sailing long distances easier.

I know a guy that sailed in a Kolibri (just a bit more than 5 mtrs length to Curacao, from Holland. It can be done. But who will do it?

Some of the members of the Forum are able to plan the building of their own ship, either over some span of years, or that they buy a boat of their liking.
The first, to build your own boat, is a painstaking process. I am the first to know because we have build so many boats for clients and each time you will experience the same symptoms of impatience, uncertainty and sometimes even agony if they want to change something in the middle of the building-process and the yard refuses to do so.

Vega, Paulo, does not believe that you can build a one-off for the same price as a production-boat, and that is good otherwise there were no clients for production boats and it is of course much easier to go the way of the production boat, because nothing is more simple than to tell a customer "here is the boat and that is the price" - rather than going through the difficult process of searching the design, builder, interiorbuilder, elecricity, plunbing, fitting, mastbuilder, sailmaker etc.
I have to add that Holland is most probably the best country in the world to build a yacht.
All expertise to do so is concentrated in a very small area comp[ared to those in the US and elswhere, where parts have to travel 100's of miles before they arrive at place - if they arrive at all.
A 60 or 70 miles maximum is what I need to get everything together, where, repeated, the best yacht technology one can find is concentrated in a small area.

In Spain, to haul a boat out of the water will cost me Euro 600,-- the same will cost me in Holland 100 Euro's - a very small example of difference in prices.

METS, the largest suppliers to the Marine Industry exhibition, alike IBEX, is held in Holland eac year.
Although Holland has lost it's commercial shipbuilding to the Asian countries, yachtbuilding is a profession that was invented overhere and Holland is still a source for the best build yachts of the world.

We have even designers that do design onlypassagemakers, long distance sailinyachts!
The most known I have brought in the footlight although there are ohers who do the same and with good results.

Another very good source is England and where you may find same expertise along the shores of the Solent. Being it that yachtroduction is concentratd on the use of FRP's rather than metal.

With a colleague from the Navy, I have given a long time ago a few seminars for the amateur yachmen (and women) who were interested to build their own boat and who needed some guidance in the course of the process.

What hasn't been discussed yet is: electricity and not to forget the auto-steering devices without nobody can do!

[Vega]

Originally Posted by D'ARTOIS

The passagemaker should be build out of an repairable, easy repairable material and that phases out complicated laminates and the like, where woodcore is the - as far as one can go - option, otherwise it will be aluminium, steel, wood or Ferrocement.

So, for long range passagemaking, the light boats are out of discussion.

Vega, Paulo, does not believe that you can build a one-off for the same price as a production-boat, ...

So, about the material, I suggest you make a pool to see what is the material of choice for the majority.

About light boats, you have to define light. For some people light is what for others is ultra-light; yet for others light is what other consider medium weight. And then you still have medium displacement and heavy.
Of course all this has to do with speed and size of sails, even if some say that weight has nothing to do with speed. About that I think that the majority will desagree.

So another pool for size, L/D SA/D, even if I would rather prefer a pool for the average speed of the boat (I know that there are a lot of guys here that given a hull, weight and sail area can calculate that).

Yes, Paulo is not yet fully convinced that you can build a first rate aluminium boat for the same price of a top class production sail boat (same size), but he will be the first to rejoyce if you can prove otherwise.

Go ahead with this project and for that the right way is to make pools to know exactly in what direction the project should go, inside the guidelines you suggest.

Cheers

Paulo

[FAST FRED]

"Yes, Paulo is not yet fully convinced that you can build a first rate aluminium boat for the same price of a top class production sail boat (same size), but he will be the first to rejoyce if you can prove otherwise."

The cost of the hull of a boat is only 10% or 15% of the total cost.

A production builder in the US will get the "OEM" (Origonal Equippment Mfg) pricing ,on parts & much equippment normally a discount of 50% + 10% , so an item the "lists" for $100 will cost a builder $45.

Unless one goes thru the hassles of BECOMING an OEM the cost of a non production boat gets out of hand rapidly.

One way is years of finding "close enough" used equippment.

FAST FRED

[Vega]

Stewi, I want to send you a PM regarding this: "If we agree on one design and build a small building community, we could also save quite some money....”
but you have chosen not to receive PMs, so say how I can contact you.

[stewi]

Thank you for your interest.
stefan@wittemail.com

[D'ARTOIS]

Fast Fred,

Your numbers are not correct in the first place - a boat's calculation is not made by guessing percentages but by actual prices of the market. You cannot, for that reason, compare the prices in the US with those of Holland.

From the comments I get on this subject, only a few know actually how to calculate a boat. Understandable, they are no professionals, and, let it be, so the shipyards will have some clients.

[cyclops]

I finally found a yacht that is stunning enough to be given away next summer to 90 children at our museum. It is a Feadship, The EXCELLENCE II. Ships of her style motivate children to be a success in money matters for life.

[D'ARTOIS]

That one only?
From left to right: Excellence II, Cedar Sea, Virginian - all made by Van Lent, De Kaag..... excellence in optima forma!

[cyclops]

I just received the Excellence II brochure from the very helpfull Feadship office in Florida. I can now understand why some people are so driven to amass large sums of money for a toy. The interior of the ship is far more impressive. Most lobbies of excellent hotels look like storage closets by comparison. Between the running models and the brochure I will sway a few to higher ambitions.

[Bergalia]

Originally Posted by safewalrus

Hey Bergalia was that the 'town' or the 'plane?

Sorry Walrus - must have slept through your query. The town sir, Canberra the town (though it's claimed to be a city - capital of Australia). Laid out by a pro architect - Burley Griffin (an American, who uncharacteristically did a decent job) It's what came after. Concrete slabs heaped up by your three-foot man's twin - only the twin was not only 'vertically disadvantaged', but visulally and aesthetically impaired. Which is why no one but politicians and bureaucrats inhabit the place

[Packeteer]

Originally Posted by Bergalia

Which is why no one but politicians and bureaucrats inhabit the place

except a mate of mine who just moved there for work

meanwhile, I'll stay in Sydney for the time being thx

[Packeteer]

btw, anybody ave some details on the Global Challenge yachts

all I really know is they're 65ft steel yachts that take to some of the roughest seas in the world (for the fun of it!)

[Bergalia]

Originally Posted by Packeteer

except a mate of mine who just moved there for work

Except a mate of Packeteer's who has just moved there for work.....