Flying Canting Keel-Extraordinary Innovation!

[Doug Lord]

Here are some notes from the Seahorse article posted on SA here: http://forums.sailinganarchy.com/ind...owtopic=125193 posts 24 and 25 You can read the entire article if you click on the page images.....Article has never before seen interior pictures of the boat.


1- Ian Oately had to go some to persuade designers Reichel-Pugh to support his experimental 42 footer project but after inevitable early problems this relatively complex boat is now performing reliably.
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2) One particular success is the use of carbon 'roller-blind' to seal the keel track recess when underway-bearing in mind the big problems in the 2005-6 Volvo Race caused by similar attempts at sliding keel doors on several of the early Volvo 70's.
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3) First capsize caused by line breakage.
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4) Q weighs less than 4 tons.
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5) As the (keel) head rotates around the hull, the topsides panel covering the slot slides with it. Secured at either side of the keel head, this sheet of carbon( notched on the internal face to allow it to curve easily) moves up and disappears just under the deck-a crude explanation would be like a garage door rising up and out of sight. All this means there are no openings or wet boxes in the floor of the main hull of the Q.
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6) " We had it( broken strop) rated to 16 tons and so will replace it with some larger diameter higher modulation line..."
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7) Ian Oately: " Discovery is one of the chief reasons for doing it."
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8) What wasn't so encouraging was the speed at which some people judged the project after a single line failure.
See this thread starting with post # 43-which was the first announcement of the boat and the first announcement of its capsize in Sydney harbor. Some subsequent posts reflect the concern of the above quote.
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9) Wrapping up the day on the dock, I got the impression that for Ian it is the intellectual challenge of this project that is exciting; pulling in the best brains, then pushing out those minds, initially to believe then to achieve. The boatbuilders and system engineers are fully aware of what has been accomplished here; an innovative and fascinating concept has been realised, driven by the clients excitement and encouragement to experiment and learn. And all this during a fiscally pretty lean period for build projects.
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10) Ian Oately on going larger: "Lets just say we haven't ruled that out".

Pictures,L to R sailing by Francolini, others posted on SA by "johnny saint" showing the sliding "garage door" and the keel removed. Incredible design job producing such a strong yet well faired system.

[Doug Lord]

This is the whole Seahorse article by Blue Robinson published in another publication called "Sails": http://www.sailsmagazine.com.au/j/in...the-revolution

The revolution
This radical new ocean racer could just
be the biggest sensation in keel design since Australia II. It’s time to forget everything you thought you knew about ocean racing yachts.Text by Blue Robinson Photography by Craig Greenhill / Saltwater Images / Andrea Francolini

When Ian Oatley called me one Friday and invited me to race on his 42-foot all carbon flying-keeler Q on the weekend, it was the good news. The bad news was that the forecast was woeful – less than 10 knots for the CYCA’s Audi Winter Series race. Rumours of Q’s revolutionary new keel design had been circulating for a long time, and it looked as if the light breeze might keep the full glory of this radical racer under wraps for just a bit longer.
At noon on Sunday, Sydney Harbour was a sheet of glass. We motored among the fleet and waved to friends. Every crewmember on every boat stared at us. The Q is beautifully built, entirely of carbon with just a clear coat on the hull and no anti-foul to spoil the shine – so it is certainly a good looker, but everyone waited to see the keel. Just as it looked like the breeze might never arrive, a light northerly started to shuffle down the harbour, and we were off.
SIDEWINDER MISSILE: Q’s keel not only produces more righting moment, but reduces drag by lifting out of the water. The internal workings of the canting keel system.RIGHT ON Q
Jostling with 50-footers on a reaching start we headed into Kirribilli, rounded, then headed up the harbour. With only 10 knots of breeze to work with, things were all very familiar. The hum of the engine, the small rise in revs as the keel moved from the vertical out 10 degrees, and a bit of chat calling the breeze as it curled over Bradleys Head. On the upwind leg we were in clearer pressure and from the helm Ian raised the keel until it was visible under the surface – still normal stuff really on canting keelers the world over. Another knot of breeze and the bulb raised a curve of water above the surface, so on the beat it looked like we had a permanent porpoise to windward. Then the breeze lifted another notch and in an instant Oatley had raised the keel out of the water, and my eyebrows to the top of my forehead.
Nothing really prepared me for turning the maximum righting moment into a maximum writing moment, which saw me furiously scribbling notes trying to describe all this – while rapidly forcing me to review my notions of what a keel should and should not do. All the theory, all the discussions and even a photograph hardly prepared me for what just happened. Properly engineered canting keelers have been charging round the world for years, so increasing the efficiency of the keel by moving the bulb to windward is accepted and understood. What the Q demonstrates is this concept can be taken further, rotating the keel and bulb structure around the hull, until the entire appendage breaks free from the thick and viscous ocean, rising out to the thin and free air – where it uses its maximum leverage, in the most efficient place, with the least drag. It is beautifully simple and, well, simply beautiful.
For the downwind and light-reaching legs of the CYC race the keel was lowered back under the boat to suit conditions, then on the second beat Ian looked at me and said, “Oh sorry Blue – how rude of me. Would you like to drive?” Would I like to drive! Oh I think I would like to drive very much…
And it works. It is slightly mesmerising, and I challenge anyone not to lose focus on helming upwind and steal a glance at the bulb working away, glistening in the sunshine – while saying to yourself, “Now that in every sense – is simply out there.”
Like a multihull sailor eager to fly a hull and slash the wetted surface, I found myself willing the breeze up to liberate the keel and feel the boat surge ahead. If I needed a reminder of its drag-component the breeze dropped to eight knots, dipping the keel back in, letting the sea wash over the bulb and wash-off our boat speed. A quick glance to windward saw pressure coming, which lifted back up to 12 knots and we were free and flying again, smooth and steady. The aft and forward rudder foil sections are designed to accommodate the keels absence, and there are no jitters or wobbles or fluctuation at all when the keel gets air. None. Ian certainly was expecting something, but is surprised and delighted at this discovery.
Every crewmember on every boat stared at us. The Q is beautifully built... but everyone waited to see the keel.RADICAL THINKING
Ian Oatley was a passionate windsurfer, loving the simplicity and immediacy of the sport. Sheet in and go. Minimum weight; minimum drag; sailing very fast and off the mark very quickly. This equation stuck with him and four years ago he had the idea of building a lightweight 40-footer, with rudder and forward canard in place to allow the release of the keel from the viscous drag.
The technology was there – right here in his backyard. Olectric Systems had designed and built the electronic systems for Volvo 70 and canting keel maxis including Wild Oats XI, Leopard 3 and Alfa Romeo. Greg Waters was the hydraulics guru for the same projects and McConaghy had built these record-breaking boats. The designers however, were hesitant. The first design team Ian approached said, “No thanks”. Even Reichel/Pugh were lukewarm.
The answer was to fly John Reichel to Sydney and explain the idea around a table, together with Sandy and Bob Oatley. The face to face worked – everyone now got it. The original idea was for an immensely strong rotating carbon “O” ring, located in the centre of the boat, with the keel attached and operated by three small internal cog motors, plus manual deck winches and pulleys. Though the “O” shape is certainly strong, it didn’t lend itself to the slender hull shape and once the loads became apparent an engine driven PLC was included. After a full mock-up of the keel system McConaghy built the boat in Sydney in a female mould, which came out looking so good it was decided not to paint it.
The Reichel/Pugh design has a 200mm “divot” inset mid-ships to take the keel system, a track secured to the hull with a carriage attached to the keel-head, which moves around the “U” shape of the hull from the vertical, to about 300mm above the waterline on the port or starboard side. This keel-head carriage is pulled through this operation via turning blocks by two large hydraulic rams living just below the deck – the windward ram doing the work while the leeward ram eases the heavy-duty 16mm strop line in phase.
Six 300mm carbon beams were set fore and aft inside the hull to make up for the loss of structure due to the rebate in the hull. It is very solid, very black and very lightweight; the whole boat weighs less than four tonnes. As the keel rotates around the hull, the topside’s panel covering the “slot” slides with it. Secured at either side of the keel head, this sheet of carbon moves up and disappears just under the deck – a crude explanation would be like a garage door rising out of sight. All this means there are no openings or wet boxes in the floor of the main hull of the Q.
Outside there are two small holes high in the slot panel, where fresh-water hoses plug in back at the dock to flush out the keel systems. As the Q has no anti-foul, during the week the boat is lifted onto its cradle, where maintenance and inspections can be carried out by releasing each end of the carbon slot-skin attached to the keel-head, giving access into the area to check the keel-head and track. The owner wanted this project to be light, with a furling main and jib, carbon keel and very simple hardware. The boat emerged with a steel keel and bulb, standard mainsail and PLC driven winches with a D/C driven keel-centering safety backup. The Q was built to prove the idea would work and in that sense it is a test-bed, allowing the concept to evolve.
KNOCK DOWN: Q on its side during the Audi Winter Series on Sydney Harbour. Photos of the incident even made a big splash in several metro papers the next day.PUSHING THE LIMITS
Seven days after I was racing onboard the Q flipped onto its side on Sydney Harbour. I called the guys who maintain the boat and were racing it at the time. The problem? “We broke a rope. Nobody got hurt and we popped the boat on its side. We have sailed in 20-plus knots heaps of times, but today the strop pulling the keel-head broke. We had it rated to 16 tonnes and so will replace it with some larger diameter high-modulus line. Everything was fine.”
When I spoke with Ian Oatley, we came back to the fundamentals of this project and the philosophy driving it, “This is the unknown. Whatever research you do, nobody really fully knows what these precise loads are. We made a decision and have been sailing and testing it. We now need to increase those strop loads – simple. All the way through this project we have been – and we will continue to be – learning a huge amount. Discovery is one of the chief reasons for doing this.” Discovery. Research. Unknown. If you are going to shine a light and wander down the dark tunnel home to those phrases, you will have setbacks, that is certain.
What wasn’t so encouraging was the speed at which some people judged this project after a line failure. Can I have a show of hands of who hasn’t broken a fully rated sheet, shroud or backstay on a high performance yacht? Wrapping up the day talking on the dock I got the impression that for Ian, it was the intellectual challenge of the project that was exciting; pulling in the best brains he could find, then pushing those minds, firstly to believe and then to achieve.
The boat builders and system engineers on this project are fully aware of what has been accomplished here; an innovative and fascinating concept has been realised, driven by the client’s excitement and encouragement to experiment and learn, and all this during a fiscally lean period for build projects worldwide. So after nutting out the problems on a 42-footer, would Ian consider going longer, lighter and simpler – say 60 to 65 foot? A short pause, a slow smile and a definite twinkle in the eye, then, “Lets just say we haven’t ruled that out.”
"We broke a rope. Nobody got hurt and we popped the boat on its side. Everything was fine."

[sharpii2]

Originally Posted by Doug Lord

This is the whole Seahorse article by Blue Robinson published in another publication called "Sails": http://www.sailsmagazine.com.au/j/in...the-revolution

The revolution
This radical new ocean racer could just
be the biggest sensation in keel design since Australia II. It’s time to forget everything you thought you knew about ocean racing yachts.Text by Blue Robinson Photography by Craig Greenhill / Saltwater Images / Andrea Francolini

When Ian Oatley called me one Friday and invited me to race on his 42-foot all carbon flying-keeler Q on the weekend, it was the good news. The bad news was that the forecast was woeful – less than 10 knots for the CYCA’s Audi Winter Series race. Rumours of Q’s revolutionary new keel design had been circulating for a long time, and it looked as if the light breeze might keep the full glory of this radical racer under wraps for just a bit longer.
At noon on Sunday, Sydney Harbour was a sheet of glass. We motored among the fleet and waved to friends. Every crewmember on every boat stared at us. The Q is beautifully built, entirely of carbon with just a clear coat on the hull and no anti-foul to spoil the shine – so it is certainly a good looker, but everyone waited to see the keel. Just as it looked like the breeze might never arrive, a light northerly started to shuffle down the harbour, and we were off.
SIDEWINDER MISSILE: Q’s keel not only produces more righting moment, but reduces drag by lifting out of the water. The internal workings of the canting keel system.RIGHT ON Q
Jostling with 50-footers on a reaching start we headed into Kirribilli, rounded, then headed up the harbour. With only 10 knots of breeze to work with, things were all very familiar. The hum of the engine, the small rise in revs as the keel moved from the vertical out 10 degrees, and a bit of chat calling the breeze as it curled over Bradleys Head. On the upwind leg we were in clearer pressure and from the helm Ian raised the keel until it was visible under the surface – still normal stuff really on canting keelers the world over. Another knot of breeze and the bulb raised a curve of water above the surface, so on the beat it looked like we had a permanent porpoise to windward. Then the breeze lifted another notch and in an instant Oatley had raised the keel out of the water, and my eyebrows to the top of my forehead.
Nothing really prepared me for turning the maximum righting moment into a maximum writing moment, which saw me furiously scribbling notes trying to describe all this – while rapidly forcing me to review my notions of what a keel should and should not do. All the theory, all the discussions and even a photograph hardly prepared me for what just happened. Properly engineered canting keelers have been charging round the world for years, so increasing the efficiency of the keel by moving the bulb to windward is accepted and understood. What the Q demonstrates is this concept can be taken further, rotating the keel and bulb structure around the hull, until the entire appendage breaks free from the thick and viscous ocean, rising out to the thin and free air – where it uses its maximum leverage, in the most efficient place, with the least drag. It is beautifully simple and, well, simply beautiful.
For the downwind and light-reaching legs of the CYC race the keel was lowered back under the boat to suit conditions, then on the second beat Ian looked at me and said, “Oh sorry Blue – how rude of me. Would you like to drive?” Would I like to drive! Oh I think I would like to drive very much…
And it works. It is slightly mesmerising, and I challenge anyone not to lose focus on helming upwind and steal a glance at the bulb working away, glistening in the sunshine – while saying to yourself, “Now that in every sense – is simply out there.”
Like a multihull sailor eager to fly a hull and slash the wetted surface, I found myself willing the breeze up to liberate the keel and feel the boat surge ahead. If I needed a reminder of its drag-component the breeze dropped to eight knots, dipping the keel back in, letting the sea wash over the bulb and wash-off our boat speed. A quick glance to windward saw pressure coming, which lifted back up to 12 knots and we were free and flying again, smooth and steady. The aft and forward rudder foil sections are designed to accommodate the keels absence, and there are no jitters or wobbles or fluctuation at all when the keel gets air. None. Ian certainly was expecting something, but is surprised and delighted at this discovery.
Every crewmember on every boat stared at us. The Q is beautifully built... but everyone waited to see the keel.RADICAL THINKING
Ian Oatley was a passionate windsurfer, loving the simplicity and immediacy of the sport. Sheet in and go. Minimum weight; minimum drag; sailing very fast and off the mark very quickly. This equation stuck with him and four years ago he had the idea of building a lightweight 40-footer, with rudder and forward canard in place to allow the release of the keel from the viscous drag.
The technology was there – right here in his backyard. Olectric Systems had designed and built the electronic systems for Volvo 70 and canting keel maxis including Wild Oats XI, Leopard 3 and Alfa Romeo. Greg Waters was the hydraulics guru for the same projects and McConaghy had built these record-breaking boats. The designers however, were hesitant. The first design team Ian approached said, “No thanks”. Even Reichel/Pugh were lukewarm.
The answer was to fly John Reichel to Sydney and explain the idea around a table, together with Sandy and Bob Oatley. The face to face worked – everyone now got it. The original idea was for an immensely strong rotating carbon “O” ring, located in the centre of the boat, with the keel attached and operated by three small internal cog motors, plus manual deck winches and pulleys. Though the “O” shape is certainly strong, it didn’t lend itself to the slender hull shape and once the loads became apparent an engine driven PLC was included. After a full mock-up of the keel system McConaghy built the boat in Sydney in a female mould, which came out looking so good it was decided not to paint it.
The Reichel/Pugh design has a 200mm “divot” inset mid-ships to take the keel system, a track secured to the hull with a carriage attached to the keel-head, which moves around the “U” shape of the hull from the vertical, to about 300mm above the waterline on the port or starboard side. This keel-head carriage is pulled through this operation via turning blocks by two large hydraulic rams living just below the deck – the windward ram doing the work while the leeward ram eases the heavy-duty 16mm strop line in phase.
Six 300mm carbon beams were set fore and aft inside the hull to make up for the loss of structure due to the rebate in the hull. It is very solid, very black and very lightweight; the whole boat weighs less than four tonnes. As the keel rotates around the hull, the topside’s panel covering the “slot” slides with it. Secured at either side of the keel head, this sheet of carbon moves up and disappears just under the deck – a crude explanation would be like a garage door rising out of sight. All this means there are no openings or wet boxes in the floor of the main hull of the Q.
Outside there are two small holes high in the slot panel, where fresh-water hoses plug in back at the dock to flush out the keel systems. As the Q has no anti-foul, during the week the boat is lifted onto its cradle, where maintenance and inspections can be carried out by releasing each end of the carbon slot-skin attached to the keel-head, giving access into the area to check the keel-head and track. The owner wanted this project to be light, with a furling main and jib, carbon keel and very simple hardware. The boat emerged with a steel keel and bulb, standard mainsail and PLC driven winches with a D/C driven keel-centering safety backup. The Q was built to prove the idea would work and in that sense it is a test-bed, allowing the concept to evolve.
KNOCK DOWN: Q on its side during the Audi Winter Series on Sydney Harbour. Photos of the incident even made a big splash in several metro papers the next day.PUSHING THE LIMITS
Seven days after I was racing onboard the Q flipped onto its side on Sydney Harbour. I called the guys who maintain the boat and were racing it at the time. The problem? “We broke a rope. Nobody got hurt and we popped the boat on its side. We have sailed in 20-plus knots heaps of times, but today the strop pulling the keel-head broke. We had it rated to 16 tonnes and so will replace it with some larger diameter high-modulus line. Everything was fine.”
When I spoke with Ian Oatley, we came back to the fundamentals of this project and the philosophy driving it, “This is the unknown. Whatever research you do, nobody really fully knows what these precise loads are. We made a decision and have been sailing and testing it. We now need to increase those strop loads – simple. All the way through this project we have been – and we will continue to be – learning a huge amount. Discovery is one of the chief reasons for doing this.” Discovery. Research. Unknown. If you are going to shine a light and wander down the dark tunnel home to those phrases, you will have setbacks, that is certain.
What wasn’t so encouraging was the speed at which some people judged this project after a line failure. Can I have a show of hands of who hasn’t broken a fully rated sheet, shroud or backstay on a high performance yacht? Wrapping up the day talking on the dock I got the impression that for Ian, it was the intellectual challenge of the project that was exciting; pulling in the best brains he could find, then pushing those minds, firstly to believe and then to achieve.
The boat builders and system engineers on this project are fully aware of what has been accomplished here; an innovative and fascinating concept has been realised, driven by the client’s excitement and encouragement to experiment and learn, and all this during a fiscally lean period for build projects worldwide. So after nutting out the problems on a 42-footer, would Ian consider going longer, lighter and simpler – say 60 to 65 foot? A short pause, a slow smile and a definite twinkle in the eye, then, “Lets just say we haven’t ruled that out.”
"We broke a rope. Nobody got hurt and we popped the boat on its side. Everything was fine."

A very interesting article. Thanks, Doug.

I suppose if there was a contest for the most expensive four ton yacht, this would probably win hands down. But the engineering is fascinating.

I've read Cut Once's arguments and find them a bit wanting. I suppose the diesel in question is of modest horse power, but the sail area it enables is enormous. This is kinda like the last days of sailing ships where "donkey' engines were used to raise and lower massive spars and even used to sheet them. I suppose the same engine power could have been used to turn a propeller and might have moved the massive vessel a knot or two in a calm, but it would have been of far less utility.

A healthy man can put out about one quarter horsepower at best and only for a short duration. He can put out about one third of that for hours on end, if his heart and lungs are in good working order.

In the case of this boat, four men would be needed to produce one horse power. I'm going with the max because the canting ballast is not moved that often. Once for every tack, plus some adjustment.

Now, I'll take a flying guess. I'll say the diesel in question puts out about ten horsepower. If so, it would take forty men to equal it. The forty men would weigh around seven to eight thousand pounds. The engine and fuel would weigh about maybe two hundred.

Now, if you took the same engine and fuel and put a propeller on it (something that should be permitted, in exchange for letting this type of boat in), it might move the four ton boat at hull speed for a few hours. At the rate this boat (and others in it's class) sails, this is not competitive, unless there is a dead calm.

As I have said in other posts, there probably is a way to make this system fail safe enough to take off shore.

All this being said, this design does not excite me.

An expensive boat (and probably inherently so for the careful fit, finish, and engineering needed to make it work) has been made able to sail faster than cheaper versions. Nothing new in that. Or very exciting, IMHO.

What excited me was when Wharram and Piven came out with cheaper boats that could out sail the more expensive ones on the water at that time. We will probably never see that again.

Someone once posted somewhere on this site that "nothing goes to windward like gold". Sadly, I can see how this is true.

A true test of this technology would be to race it against a multi of equal length and see how it does. My guess is a the multi, made out of the same carbon fiber and to the same level of finish, will beat this boat, or at least equal it. And the multi will almost certainly be cheaper.

[Doug Lord]

Originally Posted by sharpii2

1) What excited me was when Wharram and Piven came out with cheaper boats that could out sail the more expensive ones on the water at that time. We will probably never see that again.

2) A true test of this technology would be to race it against a multi of equal length and see how it does. My guess is a the multi, made out of the same carbon fiber and to the same level of finish, will beat this boat, or at least equal it. And the multi will almost certainly be cheaper.

================
Thanks for the comments, Sharpii.
1) Never say never.....

2) One of the things that is so cool about the Reichel-Pugh design and the other flying canting keel design(if they get it working well) is that this technology can enable full flying hydrofoil keelboats. Well, over 5 years ago I postulated a 60' Moth that, to work well, would have required a canting keel just like the one on Q. First mention I know of, of the need for such a keel . There are other ways to do flying keelboats, including with a fixed keel, but I didn't realize that back then.

Ian Oately's vision has brought the thing to life in an extraordinarily well done version which, if nothing else, expands the possibilities of monohull keelboat design. I find it very exciting......

pictures from the Sails mag article
click on image:

[Doug Lord]

Q- did not do well in the first race but I don't have the whole story yet:
http://www.topyacht.net.au/results/2...DivA/SGrp1.htm

great new picture by Nicole Scott-

click on image-look at that keel bulb:

[Doug Lord]

More bad news for Q-she's dead last in the first 4 races(DNC-did not start mostly). Have no additional info yet as to what is going on.
--
SA rumor: the cover over the slot in the hull "washed off"-not verified anywhere yet. Said she was doing well when this happened...

[Doug Lord]

Designed with two canting keels-one on each side(and no daggerboard or forward rudder) : http://www.defline.com/r&d/2QP.htm

click on images-

[sharpii2]

This one is a far more sensible concept.