The Ideal Cruiser - a long range passagemaker

Discussion in 'Projects & Proposals' started by D'ARTOIS, Sep 9, 2005.

  1. yipster
    Joined: Oct 2002
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    yipster designer

    stewi,
    yes and no, multihulls have more displacement but you forget the gains and yes no yes no on. better than i can reply you read the primer on multihulls at http://www.hypermax.com/multihullsmag/

    ---------------------------------

    A Multihull Primer
    © 2004 by Steven K. Roberts
    Nomadic Research Labs

    There is a great philosophical rift in the nautical world, a guaranteed argument-starter analogous to the perennial Mac-vs-Windows debate that has ruined many an otherwise benign social encounter. (Um, surely you don’t have to ask, but for the record, I’m a diehard Mac user—more so than ever now that the OS is wrapped around Unix to give us a lickable GUI atop a proper kernel. But I digress.)

    I’ve noticed that multihulls are to monohulls as recumbent bicycles are to diamond frames: they're faster, more intriguing, and annoying to old-timers. They also cover a wide quality range from exquisite to junk (a few ancient famous examples of the latter conveniently serving to support the arguments of traditionalists). Both multihulls and recumbents attract wizards as well as nutcases, leading to odd alliances against Old Methods; both have been banned from sanctioned races after blowing everyone else off the course. And they are both so undefined that designs have yet to converge upon established standards, but instead show up in ever more radical configurations as marine architects are drawn to the challenge of pushing the envelope.

    In short, both are where the action is.

    Of course, it’s not like we modern high-tech sailors can lay any claim to the multihull concept; the idea of making fast, stable, shallow-draft boats dates back many centuries. Single-outrigger canoes, called proas, were first observed by Europeans in 1521 during Magellan’s voyage through Micronesia. These zippy little native craft routinely achieved blazing speeds of 20 knots, and embarked on open-ocean voyages covering thousands of miles. Not only were they highly seaworthy boats, but their navigators possessed skills that we are still trying to understand, passed from one generation to the next in song—integrating celestial observations, clouds, and complex wave patterns to make distant landfall with a level of precision rivaling today’s computerized methods. As you can imagine, all this was astonishing to sailors on slow lumbering ships that could barely beat to windward and were in danger of breaking up if they ever felt the bottom in any but the most benign conditions.

    Nifty though they may have appeared at the time, multihulls didn’t have much effect on European boat building traditions—although a fellow named Sir William Petty built a crude 30’ catamaran (two hulls) in 1662, easily beating all other entrants in a race hosted by the Royal Society and thus annoying them to no end. A couple hundred years later, another creative chap built a most curious vessel with a trio of 25-foot long, 30-inch diameter hulls, rigged her as a schooner, and proceeded to make an eastward crossing of the Atlantic in an unbelievably quick 51 days (it has recently been done in less than 7, but sailing was different back then). Heads were starting to turn, but when Nathanael Herreshoff soundly thrashed the competition in a New York regatta with Amaryllis, his 25-foot catamaran, he was banned from all future races. This sort of attitude can put a damper on creativity…


    The nondescript, half-Catamaran [sic], half-Balsa and wholly life-raft constructed by Mr. Herreshoff, of Providence, whether ruled out by the judges or counted in, can justly claim to be the fastest thing of her inches under canvas that floats, and it is doubtful if there are any steamers of her size that could out-speed her in a straight reach with the wind abeam. Whether she is ruled out of this race or not need make but little difference to her owner, as he can justly lay claim to a medal and diploma of the Exposition as presenting the fastest sailing craft in the world: That she is this every one of the many thousand that witnessed her performance yesterday will admit.

    Source: Anon. (R. F. Coffin?). "A Yachting Wonder. Sudden Development of the Fastest Craft in the World. The Reveille, Susie B., Amaryllis and Victoria Win the Second Centennial Regatta." The World, June 24, 1876, p. 2.


    In 1937, a Frenchman built a 35’ double canoe in Hawaii and made an epic 264-day voyage back to his homeland via the Indian Ocean, and through the next couple of decades there were a few more notable experiments—always accompanied, of course, by the vocal ridicule of the yachting community. But it wasn’t until the late 1950s that the groundwork was laid for the explosive growth of the field: James Wharram crossed the Atlantic in a 23-foot Polynesian-style catamaran that he built for $420, then made a circuit from the Caribbean to New York and thence to England in a 40-footer named Rongo. Shortly thereafter, the legendary Arthur Piver made a crossing in a simple homebrew trimaran, launching a nautical phenomenon that coincided perfectly with the ‘60s.

    It was a time of exploring radical lifestyle alternatives, and an alluring meme spread quickly among the counterculture: one could build a boat with little money and no experience, then homestead the ocean and travel freely. All that was needed was a set of plans, a stack of plywood, a few buckets of goo, and a bit of scrounged marine hardware—people who had never even sailed a dinghy set up shop in garages and derelict industrial spaces, partying into the night while building their boxy and often fanciful escape pods. Enclaves of stoned boatbuilders popped up in the San Francisco Bay Area and elsewhere, yielding a few beautiful successes, some spectacular failures, and a lot of unfinished projects.

    Still, the technology’s time had at last come, and since then the field has gone mainstream. The fast Hobie and Nacra “beach cats,” low-cost rotomolded polyethylene WindRiders and their speedy hydrofoil descendants, exquisite folding trailerable trimarans from Corsair, big luxury cruising catamarans, and those gonzo “maxi-cats” that race nonstop around the globe and seem to break records every season…there’s no going back to an all-monohull world. But there are serious design issues to consider, and it’s not hard to build something that sails like a pig or is even prone to disaster.


    Why a Multihull?
    Given the fact that I’m not getting any younger and this project has taken ten years, I should address one question before we go any further: why not just grab any of the thousands of inexpensive single-hulled vessels out there, slap on a computer, and get on with it? The technology is well-established, they are easy to find, and they are most certainly simpler: if the objective is to stuff some electronics on a boat and go play, it would seem sensible to take a low-cost, off-the-shelf approach by starting with a capable beach cruiser or trailerable daysailer. What’s the big deal with multihulls, anyway?

    The fundamental difference between the two broad classes of boats is the method used to provide righting moment, which balances the heeling moment applied by the wind’s force on the sails. If you just took a canoe and attached a mast with a big piece of cloth, it would sail downwind just fine… but trying to sail “off the wind” would likely lead to immediate capsize. Monohulls solve this problem with a heavy keel (usually made of lead to maximize the ratio of weight to surface area and resulting hydrodynamic drag); multihulls solve it with additional buoyancy located away from the centerline of the boat. Catamarans have two hulls connected by some kind of structure, which in large boats can include a spacious bridgedeck; trimarans have a center hull flanked by two smaller ones, supported by crossbeams (see Figure 1). Obviously, either approach increases complexity and incurs the fabrication costs of more hulls. Beginning with this, let’s run through the issues that give monohull and multihull advocates an endless supply of material for their ongoing argument.

    Figure 1: Monohulls, catamarans, and trimarans (sketch by Don Elliott)

    Complexity and cost
    A single-hulled sailboat is basically a tub shaped to fit the intended application, a stick poking up in the air with a sail attached, a weight hanging off the bottom to keep it from blowing over, and suitable accommodations. This is not a fundamentally complex piece of hardware, although you can spend any conceivable amount of money on one (a fact that has led to no end of nautical clichés: everyone knows that a boat is a hole in the water into which you pour money, and you can simulate sailing by standing in a cold shower and tearing up $100 bills—or $1,000 bills if you want to simulate racing). Still, inflated boat bucks notwithstanding, monohulls are pretty simple machines.

    Multihulls, on the other hand, consist of two or three hulls linked by something strong enough to withstand the substantial forces that result from trying to keep a sail upright in a stiff breeze (carry around a sheet of plywood on a windy day if you don’t believe me). Most sailing rigs are stayed, meaning that they are held in place by the balanced tension between rigging wires that run fore and aft as well as athwartships; to keep these from slapping around and coming apart in feisty conditions, the underlying structures have to be extremely stiff. Some trimarans add additional complexity by being foldable, allowing these relatively light boats (by monohull standards) to be hauled out and trailered. Small wonder that these things have major geek appeal, but it comes at a stiff price: all other things being equal, a multihull is typically twice the cost of a similarly-scaled monohull.


    Speed and acceleration
    Without the lead keel, a multihull weighs but a fraction of what a comparably scaled monohull does—translating into less wetted surface to cause drag through the water as well as faster acceleration when motive force is applied. A heavy boat has to push more water out of the way as it moves (an amount equal to its displacement, to be precise), and this means bigger waves and more friction. When a boat moves through the water, it creates a bow wave and a stern wave, and at some point it gets trapped between the two and can go faster only with great difficulty; this is known as the boat’s hull speed. As it turns out, the value can be determined with a simple formula: 1.34 times the square root of the waterline length for a typical boat, although that becomes inaccurate for skinny hulls. Unless it has enough power to plane above the water, a heavy monohull is pretty much stuck in its own wave trough (watch an unencumbered tugboat cruising at maximum speed sometime), but it’s important to note that the length of the waterline may change considerably when a sailboat is heeled over in the wind—many racing hulls are deliberately designed to do exactly this as a sort of rule-bending hack, and the difference can be substantial.


    In a sense, hull speed is related to going supersonic—exceeding the wave propagation limit of the medium you are traveling through. This is really a statement about how fast you can go before you must push water aside faster than it can get out of its own way.

    —Bryan Willman, posting to the “Human-Powered Boats” mailing list, February, 2002


    But multihulls manage to sidestep the whole problem. Because they are so light, they don’t make very big bow and stern waves, and their long skinny hulls can easily climb out of the little hole in the water. As such, a 30-foot catamaran can go a lot faster than a 30-foot monohull, even with the same size sail.

    But there’s a downside to this lightness: multihulls are more sensitive to overloading than monohulls, since a given mass of cargo represents a much larger percentage of the boat’s overall weight. Many once-speedy cats have turned into dogs because their owners have stuffed them full of cruising gear (and yes, the sleek little Microship trimaran is much heavier than it should be, significantly reducing its alacrity). Even though cruisers may have no interest in racing and would thus discount the importance of this, there are still safety issues—fast boats stand a better chance of getting out of dangerous situations, whether crossing a busy shipping lane or outrunning bad weather. Of course, crashing into something at high speed is worse than doing so at low speed, so as usual there is a counter-argument.

    I should make one other comment on speed. Multihull sailing involves a somewhat different set of skills from monohull sailing—traditional methods will backfire. It’s sometimes smarter, for example, to beat to windward by sailing farther off the wind and taking advantage of the higher boat speed to offset the additional distance traveled, while allowing more successful tacks. This process, tacking, is fundamental to sailing, and is how you make your way upwind. Tacking a multihull can be a bit tricky, as long skinny hulls are harder to turn and the lighter weight gives us less inertia to carry the boat through the wind if we screw up and find ourselves in irons, sail flogging as the bows point directly into the wind and we’re going nowhere but backwards, slowly. Usually this is just a matter of skill-development, but some multis are notoriously hard to tack (like Hobie cats) and sailors must resort to tricks like grabbing the boom and pushing it into the wind to force the bow around, or (in my case) surreptitiously deploying the pedal drive and giving ‘er a few cranks to power through the “eye of the wind” if I haven’t timed the tack just right.


    Sailing attitude and comfort
    This is a subjective area, but on one topic there can be little disagreement: when the wind is blowing from abeam (one side or the other), multihulls sail flat and monohulls sail heeled over. For most people, the former is much more comfortable; life is easier when things aren’t sliding off tabletops and the cockpit is not tilted at a 45° angle. Of course, that can be exciting, and the pure visceral rush is part of the appeal of sailing. We have to be careful not to make value judgments here, lest we get drawn into religious, rather than rational arguments.

    But the attitude of the vessel relative to the earth’s surface is not the only comfort issue… the physical motion of the boat is perhaps the most significant factor affecting the pleasure (or pain) of sailing. Certain kinds of kinesthetic input coupled with uncorrelated visual data can have a rather profound affect on the vestibular system, and some boats have the amazing ability to extract lunch from even the hardiest souls. Under feisty conditions, the motions of monohull and multihull couldn’t be more different: the former has a pendulous, rounded sort of character, combining movement in all axes with X, Y, and Z translations—but it does it with a sort of measured grace, low-pass filtered by the mass of the keel. Multihulls, lacking a big lead weight and rounded hull, tend to dance around on the surface, kicked to and fro by waves. Since they’re also usually moving faster, this can at times be dramatic, with violent deceleration as the hulls go airborne and then collide with waves. “Underwing slamming” is an issue with both cats and tris, where waves rise between the hulls and slap the supporting structures (which, in larger boats, are likely to contain accommodations, and thus humans who may be trying to sleep). On the Microship, this phenomenon mostly impacts the solar panels, but those can fold out of the way.


    Draft
    This one’s easy. Because of their keels, monohulls extend deep below the surface of the water—sometimes many feet. This makes them more likely to hit bottom, an event whose impact can range from embarrassing to catastrophic, and generally limits them to dredged channels and waters that are known to be safely deep. In tidal zones or those prone to siltation, this can require considerable attention.

    Of course, finding oneself “on the bricks” is a bad thing in any boat, and just because the draft, or depth, of a multihull is considerably less doesn’t mean that we can ignore the problem. In fact, some multihulls have appendages (daggerboards and rudders) that are much more fragile than the big lead keel of a monohull, so there’s no reason to get cocky here… grounding is grounding, and something will probably break.






    Figure 2: “Shoal Draft” implies the ability to explore shallow waters without hitting bottom.
    (Natasha Clarke cartoon)


    But the good news is that shoal draft (an inexact term referring to an amount of draft that allows entering shoal, or shallow, waters) is amazingly liberating. Many of the most interesting places to explore are near shore or otherwise in thin water, and multihulls are generally better suited to such poking around, a pursuit known as gunkholing. This greatly reduces the need for a dinghy for every trip to shore, and wee boatlets like Microships are easily beachable… as long as we don’t get careless and land on sharp rocks or forget to pay attention to tidal cycles and find ourselves stranded until the next flood.


    Beam
    But what multihulls lack in depth they make up for in width, although that can be convenient. In my case, the 11-foot beam provides space for relatively huge solar arrays, and catamarans of cruising scale have palatial accommodations compared to monohulls of comparable length. Still, this comes at a price: wide boats are harder to park, more difficult to tack, and less likely to fit in tight little spots whilst happily engaged in the aforementioned pleasure of gunkholing. The “parking” issue is particularly significant, and the larger cruising-scale multihulls are usually restricted to relatively scarce end ties at marinas—those open spots at the very end of each dock. Marina operators recognize the rarity and convenience of these spaces and often charge more for them, yet they are exposed to more wakes from passing traffic.

    Still, I consider this a win for the multihull, as there’s nothing like lounging about on the nets between hulls while underway. In the Microship case, we have the best of both worlds: these boats are so small (11’ beam) that docking is not a problem, as a pair of them can fit end-to-end in a standard 12’-wide marina slip, in addition to being readily beachable. They can also drop their own anchors if necessary, or simply deploy landing gear and roll up onto land.


    Safety and capsize
    This is perhaps the biggest issue—the one that always dominates arguments between proponents of the different broad categories of boats. Ask any monohuller what she thinks of multihulls, and you will probably hear, “well, they can capsize.” This is true.

    A catamaran or trimaran has two stable states: right-side up or upside down. Being in the latter state is not much fun. On a tiny boat like a Hobie Cat or Microship, there is actually some hope of re-righting without outside help (if you’re thinking clearly and not flailing around in hypothermia-inducing waters while fumbling with boat parts), but anything much larger is pretty much stuck in the turtled position until a power boat happens along to help “tow it over” or drag it ignominiously to the safety of land, the rig scraping bottom or lost entirely, topsides trashed, naked hulls gleaming in the sunlight and glinting in the eye of every monohull sailor in sight who is then obliged to nod sagely and observe, “yep, now that’s the problem with those things.” There have even been some gripping sea stories of life aboard a capsized multihull, such as the Rose-Noëlle that drifted around the South Pacific upside-down for 119 days while her crew clung to survival—at last breaking up on a rocky Australian shore while the scraggly humans swam for safety.

    Now. The less-publicized other side of this grim reality is that monohulls also have two stable states: floating on the surface of the sea or lying on the bottom. There are dozens of books (most notably Callahan's excellent Adrift, linked below) that relate epic survival in a life raft after a collision at sea holed a trusty sloop that sank within minutes, dragged down by thousands of pounds of lead. Given the choice, I’d rather fight for my life on an inverted trimaran that still carries most of my stores and tools than suddenly find myself becoming shark bait when my boat sinks out of sight below me, taking everything with it.

    There’s another safety issue here that affects monohulls and multihulls more or less equally: dealing with heavy weather. I’m not even going to begin to get into this argument; sailors vastly more experienced than I have compiled entire books on the subject, and successfully surviving a storm is a function of not only the boat, but seamanship, tools, and luck. Any boat can be trashed by some combination of wind and wave, and although you may be able to tip the odds with knowledge and preparation, sometimes it’s better to not be there in the first place. To this end, multis might have the advantage since they can escape more quickly, but evil conditions can materialize with frightening speed and it would be arrogant to suppose that there’s always a way out.


    A sailor with no schedule always has fair winds.

    —Source unknown


    One of the saddest sights I’ve ever seen is a pile of boats stacked like cordwood in the aftermath of an east-coast hurricane, hulls gored, rigs snarled, dreams shattered. Hauling out involves large machines and facilities, and in most places isn’t even an option—skippers must instead scramble to deploy lines, anti-chafing gear, and ground tackle… while fervently hoping that their marina neighbors have done as well. Then one yacht breaks loose and is driven before the storm into the others, breaking them loose, until the whole snarled mass of lead and fiberglass ends up being ground to bits on the granite riprap of a breakwater. The multihulls don’t fare any better—some even become airborne, landing in a broken heap on shore. Force 10 winds and 20-foot shore breaks atop a wicked storm surge are just too big to fight.

    So it’s better to avoid the situation entirely. In the Microship system, we have the luxury of small scale, and this opens a new option best expressed by the classic line:


    Run away!

    —Monty Python and the Holy Grail


    Assuming we aren’t stupid enough to be bobbing along some vast exposed rocky coast, blithely ignoring NOAA weather broadcasts as heavy weather looms, we should be able to deploy the landing gear and haul out with our own straining muscles—either finding a launch ramp and hoofing it down the road as far from angry water as possible, or dragging the boats up a beach and tying them off to trees while hoping for a merciful storm surge. Hey, at least it’s a fighting chance.

    So you can see that the whole multihull-monohull argument is rife with trade-offs and matters of personal preference. In the Microship application, the scales are tilted strongly in favor of a multihull: shoal draft and light weight making the system amenable to operation by a single human without needing external vehicles or special shore facilities. The broad beam gives us room for solar panels, speed is a nice bonus, and sailing dry and flat makes it more likely that on-board computers will actually be used underway rather than just demonstrated at trade shows. We are willing to accept the added complexity and cost to have the other benefits.






    Figure 3: Monohulls require special care when beaching.
    (Photo taken near Langley on Whidbey Island, WA, by Wm Leler)


    Catamaran vs. Trimaran
    I should mention one other set of trade-offs. Now that it’s clear that the Microship substrate needs to be a small multihull, the question remains whether it should be a cat or a tri. As it turns out, this is not a difficult decision at this scale…

    While building two hulls seems initially more appealing than building three, small tris have much more useful space than small “beach cats.” The latter consist of hulls that are too narrow for comfort, requiring that the accommodations be built atop the bridgedeck that connects them. (I should note that the converse is also true: for a given length, large cats tend to have more room than large tris. But the Microship is way below the point at which the curves cross.)

    Cats also have two centerboards, two rudders, and too much redundancy. Of course, tris have three hulls, but the outer ones can be passive and simple. Cats must be stronger (and thus heavier) to make up for an intrinsically weaker structure and the support of a central rig—unless the boat is set up as a biplane with two rigs (very sexy, but much more complex). The main hull of a trimaran is a torque tube, with centralized torsion and better load distribution. Cat crossbeams are severely loaded by rigging stresses, and there is no practical way to implement a simple freestanding unstayed rig (without wires holding it up)—a key requirement for flexibility while traveling since it may be necessary to drop the mast frequently to sneak under bridges or drag the boats down the road.

    Small trimarans are also less prone to underwing slamming, since the gaps between floats are narrower. And they are much easier to fold for land mode.

    Looks like the choice is clear...
     
  2. JimCooper
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    JimCooper Junior Member

    Do you really want to go faster in the very conditions in which the vessel surfs? A slower boat running off with a jib drawing well has good control and can helm to the sea keeping the crest on her quarter. The fast boat has a big problem in her broaching characteristic.


    I think there is a real problem here in just how much experience people have. I think it is a matter of how many thousands of hours you have logged not a few trips and a lot of prejudice. The bigger and heavier she is the better you will be treated at sea and the safer you will be !

    I hae had both light and heavy boats. Given my age I cannot cope wi light boats. Light boats need an able crew more than a heavy boat in bad weather, and you must keep them moving fast to get the stability. This is simply dreaming for a couple unless they are very experienced top sailors. Even then the maintenance is larger gear failure is high because of the weight issue lower safety factors etc.

    I read before from Mr Vega that he thinks that heavy boats sails are too big and that you need the crew to handle them.....This is wrong.
    On a voyage you need the crew to give you a rest as you rotate the watches. The sails on a ketch can be broken up to managable chunks made easier by the way you drop the whole thing rather than reefing. I find 500 sq feet to be esay mainsail size on ketch while a wee bit too big on a sloop. The watches make the sail changes without recourse to all hands. Arthur Bessier (I think) he sails his big beastie almost solo across the Atlantic each year and I have seen him more than once in the Baltic, his boat is not small is large and heavy . He wrote a book called "The Proper yacht" I think from memory. I had a copy from him direct but leant it and it nae returned.

    Mr Vega also talks of Women and Marinas

    My current large heavy boat treats the cook well with a good galley amidships and I have a relatively large comfortable bathroom aft next to my cabin with a shower over a short bath. I prefer a mooring to a marina berth any day and woul prefer my own anchor to either of those if I havent laid the tether and weight myself. My wife was always treated well by our heavy boats but hated the lighter ones with a vengence.

    I think you have more chance of keeping the cruising couple content for a long period in a roomy and larger boat such as Dartois says.

    As for multihulls, surely they are just a disaster waiting for an opportunity. I have seen too many rescues from inverted multihulls. Any boat that has "wait for rescue" as a main part of the operating contingency is flawed from the start.

    Aye I know its a religious issue.

    Cheers
    Jim
     
  3. yipster
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    yipster designer

    no politics but religions here ok guys? :D
     
  4. stewi
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    stewi Junior Member

    I don’t want to promote the discussion of mono versus multi. The only thing, I’m questioning is a fast hull with flat sections or even a multi chine hull versus a deep V long keel ship.

    We should be clear about the lack of funding in the cruising boat world, versus the race boat or charter boat industry. I bet more money is raised in a single round the world Volvo race, than for cruising boat development in the past 20 years.
    Even a single design idea like twin keels are not further developed, because none of the above industries have an interest in it. Only a few individuals among us dare to try it out and even if they report good results, it appears, that many people in the cruising community hold on to traditions and suspect new ideas.

    This forum has a good potential, with the expertise of designers and long time cruising people. Yet we start to get into a quarrel mode instead of taking each others input and carefully value and discuss it.
    Again, we have no lobby and funding behind us. We are dependent on each others input and hopefully one or the other idea will make it into the cruising boat world.

    I’m still not convinced, that a faster hull shape could make a good cruising boat. I certainly agree that a surfing boat is a handful to steer safely, but there is not much engineering done to improve these or heavy weather conditions.
    Water ballast for example, has been used on race boats as well on trailer boats for different purposes, but I have not heard of a cruising boat sailor, taking on water ballast to slow down speed and motion.
    Hydraulic activated wings to reduce roll motion are quite common on larger motorboats, yet on sailing boats, mainly because lacking an energy source to activate the hydraulic, doesn’t find the way into the sailing boat community. If I think about this more intensely, than the wing tabs could possibly activated by the sails and only mechanically.
    Although I’m friendly looking into the other side of the multi-hull world, I do propose to ban multi’s into a different thread. By reading some of the multi’s web-sites, they are very well aware of safety and other issues. I sense it is already difficult enough to share ideas and knowledge in the mono world.
    Apparently, the multi world is already much more open minded for new ideas.
     
  5. safewalrus
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    safewalrus Ancient Marriner

    Right . . . . . I'm going to buy a bus! in a desert. . . . away from this lot! I used to like sailing but this lot scares the pants off me! and that's before we hit the water. :!: :eek:
     
  6. yipster
    Joined: Oct 2002
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    yipster designer

    found this cordova and ok ok long as you all realise there are more definitions on
     
  7. safewalrus
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    safewalrus Ancient Marriner

    Yipster

    Yeah man like great, now are going to stay sensible, practical, and within a reasonable budget or do we go totally over the top, fantasy and fairy story?

    In which case I'd like to nominate the starship 'enterprise' crewed by 500 eighteen year old virgins (female) - I'd never get to the first storm! but I'd die happy!
     
  8. stewi
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    stewi Junior Member

  9. MikeJohns
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    MikeJohns Senior Member

    Not needs, can accommodate crew is a massive plus.
    Long haul passages need crew not to man the boat but to share the tedium of keeping an open eye at all times. Otherwise it is a miserable exhausting experience.
    Easy sail handling on a split (eg ketch) rig at 50-60 feet is now commonplace. The idea is to design the sail areas accordingly. Use the roller furlers, lazyjacks jiffy reefs etc. Ketches aalso benefit from being able to drop the main and still power and balance the rig.


    The light air sails on a ketch are the Mizzen staysail and the MPS neither is particularly 'huge' and compared with the racing kite carried on a racing boat haf the size are diminutive indeed.

    SAD of 15 won't win races but the older boats often had SAD of around 9 and still made good passages.

    Depends on the wind resistance and the hull resistance and the desired speed, some relatively small engines can drive a large boat at 5 or 6 knots into a gale. There is a lot in this so I wont start a tutorial here.

    On the 2nd hand market the bigger motors are considerably cheaper here.


    I think you miss the point that the larger vessel will be able to be self sufficient while making possible good meals and women friendly bathroom facilities.

    If you require marinas then half the world is out of bounds. Comes down to required use I suppose. I really feel the joy of cruising is getting away fromthe marinas

    Very little more in my experience (I have had boats up to 57 feet), usually another can of paint (or you get to finish the can rather than hiding it half full in the shed) and a slightly higher haulout fee. Consider the cost you are saving by being self sufficient.

    If you are cruising the Marinas will bleed you dry and offer indifferent standards of toilet facilities :)
     
  10. JimCooper
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    JimCooper Junior Member

  11. JimCooper
    Joined: Feb 2005
    Posts: 81
    Likes: 0, Points: 0, Legacy Rep: 10
    Location: Varies, Aberdeen

    JimCooper Junior Member

    Stable inverted craft

    Aye Yipster

    I am a firm and devout believer in the boat that rights itself.

    We will surely see more inversions if multi's become more common. They would be my chocse for coastal cruising in places like the east coast USA but for ocean passages you are gambling that you will not be in an inverting episode. Is that ideal for a blue water cruiser ? If you took away the rescue services would you still consider them? Seems they make up for the fatal flaw by providing a rescue platform while you wait.



    Cheers
    Jim
     
  12. yipster
    Joined: Oct 2002
    Posts: 3,486
    Likes: 97, Points: 58, Legacy Rep: 1148
    Location: netherlands

    yipster designer

    i hear ya but remember bullymore and the sidney-hobart race?
    luckely the keel went or the mono-inversion was gone.
    its true, multi's also took the beating there.
    i like power and sail, mono and multi and an open eye.
    havent done long passages but yes i'm a boat lover :cool:
     
  13. FAST FRED
    Joined: Oct 2002
    Posts: 4,519
    Likes: 111, Points: 63, Legacy Rep: 1009
    Location: Conn in summers , Ortona FL in winter , with big d

    FAST FRED Senior Member

    Here on the USA East coast many marinas charge $2.00 to $5.00 per ft per night!!!

    At $100 to $250 per night cruising dockside can get Quite e$pensive.

    I consider it a personal FAILURE if I ever have to pay for a dock.

    Having many trips up & down the ICW in the past 40 years , with ZERO $$$ ever spent for docking , it can be done , with most reasonable boats.

    Sure fuel & water & trash removal are needed , but most are avilable at every fuel dock.
    A folding shopping cart carries the 20# propane bottle for the fridge , and using canvas bags for groceries allows the dink davit to bring the groceries up from the dink.

    A larger empty boat is far easier to live on than one crammed with electric junk , always needing repairs. KISS

    What ISN'T aboard never has to be fixed, and eats no space, or batteries.

    FAST FRED
     
  14. D'ARTOIS
    Joined: Nov 2004
    Posts: 1,068
    Likes: 18, Points: 0, Legacy Rep: 321
    Location: The Netherlands

    D'ARTOIS Senior Member

    Fast Fred: so, that's different cook! For a '40 boat we pay in Holland Euro 30 to 40 a night; the UK might be even more expensive.
    But you are right, the practical boat should have characteristics in such a way that it can be moored in small harbours and uotside the expensive hemisphere of the marina's.
    If anyone can confirm how difficult it is, as going short crewed, it's me! On my last voyage from Holland to the South of France I had a young girl as a watch with me who was afraid to stay outside during the night. She staued in the cabin and I was forced to do the "cooking alarm" trick, that is set the alarm of three quarters of an hour, take a little nap til the alarm goes off, have a thorough look around, and repeat the trick again.
    It works, sometimes it doesn't!
    This time it didn't and the boat beached on the coast south of Torrevieja.
    Flares in the night, the keel was already locked deep in the sand, lots of movements on the coast, cars shining their headlights on the motionless boat.
    The cruz rioja came, etc. I was rescued by a Belian motoryacht that came to help. Rescued in the financial way, because the captain of this 35 mtr yacht refused to take a penny. Seamanship in optima forma!

    A second time I will not be that lucky; I hear people say: "Hey, if you can sail the North Sea you can sail any sea!"
    It is not true: I would say if you can sail the Biscay, you may probly aware of the danger in other seas as well." I am scared to deah for the Biscaya, same as for Cabo Creus in the Med area.
    This winter, I have to sail from Ventura to the Panama Canal, and from there to Florida and from there to Europe. In a boat I don't know, in seas I don't know. It is 3000 nm from Ventura to the Panama and then another 3500 nm back home.
    I have to study the routes of the people who did it before, because I will sail against the wind and season.

    Talking about the ideal passagemaker, long distance cruiser, it should be the first task of the designer to create a boat in such a way that it can cope with the task it is designed for. Nothing else.
    Therefore we should throw away, do in the bin, anything that is designed according to a specific rule that has nothing to do with passagemaking.

    We all have experiences, good or bad, that we can share with those who haven't.

    In that little safe-haven harbour, Spaarndam, on the North-Seachannel from IJmuiden to Amsterdam, one has experimented a lot with all kinds of designs.
    Twin keels, deep keels, converting workboats to sailboats etc. All people with a limited budget and an unlimited trust in the fact that one day their boat could begin her voyage. Some of those people accompanied me during my trips to the Dutch Isles, or exploiting the approaches of the English coast.
    They wanted to learn as much as possible. And, they respected each others opinion.

    Same are we trying to do here: also one day we will go beyond the daily routine and make the voayage of our life. many of us share this idea.

    There is not a single reason that we go into a quarrel on this topic. Tell about YOUR experiences, like engineers as Mike and Wynand are doing, or seafarers as Bergalia and Walrus or others that amassed knowledge and experience.

    Furthermore, I hear some criticism on budgets: please be aware of the fact that passagemakers are not build in one year. They grow! Over the years whilst their owners are working and spennd their freetime in finishing the boat. Sometimes they need five years to do so, some more, some less.
     

  15. D'ARTOIS
    Joined: Nov 2004
    Posts: 1,068
    Likes: 18, Points: 0, Legacy Rep: 321
    Location: The Netherlands

    D'ARTOIS Senior Member

    In addition to my last post, I would like to present another well known Dutch Designer: Olivier van der Meer, who is well known for his design of Little Zaca and Puffin, designs that are much different than what is going. Van der Meer is strongly attracted (and who is not) by traditional designs, upgraded where necessary, producing pleasures or the eye and good seaworthy boats, cruisers and passagemakers.

    Puffin is a little over 40'and Little Zaca is 50' - just have a look!
     

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