Major u turns in sailboat design?

[CT 249]

Originally Posted by jehardiman

PPFFfffffftttttt!!!! You never see it because those "racers" aren't out in those conditions! One of the major complaints even before I left the Bay area in '94 was that the "big boat" IMS and IRC racers were taking over the "little boat" courses inside the Bay. Too bumpy outside.

With respect, the Bay is not the only place in the world. In other places, the racers race outside in tough stuff and do very well.

No, I've often sailed and seen a well balanced older CCA "cruiser" roll a modern lightweight high aspect "racer" in conditions inside and just outside the Bay. Bumpy? Yes! Wet? Yes! 2 reefs and a blade? Yes!

I've sailed what is probably THE most successful CCA type boat in the world today, in a national title. I raced closely against it in one of the world's great ocean races, in a 10' shorter IMS raceboat. The CCA boat got hammered on speed in all conditions - even in headwinds and head seas that had the Volvo crews telling Seahorse, Sailing World and other magazines that this would be one of the roughest parts of their global event. Even in conditions that had the CCA type (in the middle of a multi-year round the world cruise) throwing splines and breaking rigging, it was knots slower than the IMS and IRC boats and even the better IOR boats of its length.

I think a bigger question is: "Are modern racers measuring themselves against the right stick?" Here is an recent article http://sailmagazine.blogspot.com/2007/09/986.html
that I found ineresting....one of the comments was the need to have wind and smooth water.

The smooth water certainly doesn't exist where I sail. Way back when,it was standard practise for overseas boats to re-shape their headsails for our rougher water. And in these conditions, the old boats can do very well under IRC and IMS. But why? Because the rules rate them extremely low (ie very slow) which they are, compared to modern boats. In the last Hobart, for example, Love and War finished 12 hours behind the new boats of the same length, 9 hours behind a comfortable modern Swan 45. A simple, cheap one design, 9 foot shorter than Love and War, beat her home by 6 hours (in a race that took them all less than 4 days). This was a long, tough upwind beat against a fast current in big seas - and the old boats got creamed for speed and only did well because they rate low.

[mgpedersen]

Originally Posted by CT 249

The smooth water certainly doesn't exist where I sail. Way back when,it was standard practise for overseas boats to re-shape their headsails for our rougher water. And in these conditions, the old boats can do very well under IRC and IMS. But why? Because the rules rate them extremely low (ie very slow) which they are, compared to modern boats. In the last Hobart, for example, Love and War finished 12 hours behind the new boats of the same length, 9 hours behind a comfortable modern Swan 45. A simple, cheap one design, 9 foot shorter than Love and War, beat her home by 6 hours (in a race that took them all less than 4 days). This was a long, tough upwind beat against a fast current in big seas - and the old boats got creamed for speed and only did well because they rate low.

Chris, how are we going to make progress if you keep citing data and facts in the face of anecdotes?

Oh, and

[brian eiland]

...courtesy of Tim Jeffery



"How did we get from there to here?" asks Merfyn Owen, the British designer, surveying the Open 60 monohulls in the Le Havre ahead of today's start of the 4,350 mile two-handed Transatlantic Jacques Vabre race to Brazil.

Telegraph TV: Transat Jacques Vabre
Mike Golding: Pleasurable pressure of race preparation

This class of boat developed for trans-ocean solo racing and for nearly 20 years spawned some of the most innovate monohulls afloat. Yet in the last two years, the explosion of interest, budgets and sophistication in the class has been cataclysmic.


Full speed ahead: Banque Populaire will be in the race
As Owen points out, old boats which were seemingly ageless now look redundant beside the latest in the class such as Michel Desjoyeaux's Foncia or Mike Golding's Ecover, the latter designed by Owen and Allen Clarke.

You can see the rate of progress in deck and sail systems, hull shapes and a staggering diversity of mast styles, ranging from fully rotating wings supported by great struts projecting from the hull to ruggedised versions of the normal.

Sensing the Open 60 class might be approaching its apogee, chief measurer Rene Boulaire has asked designers to come up with ideas to rein-in the new boats' power. The trouble is that limiting certain design features inevitably increases the costs as designers claw back performance losses.

Golding, one of the race favourites, can plot the progress of the class. The first of his three Open 60s he had over the last 10 years is now Dee Caffari's Aviva. His newest Ecover has a mast three metres taller and, though only 500kg lighter, has an even higher proportion of the boat's weight in the ballast keel.

advertisement"It's a huge increase in sail area, a huge increase in power and in terms of sophistication of the boat," Golding says. Whereas Aviva has just a couple of inside ballast tanks to trim the boat, Ecover has 10. "You have more gears basically," he adds.

Sadly, the most extreme and powerful of the new Open 60s is missing the TJV – Pindar was dismasted last week for the second time in three months. Designed by Argentine Juan Kouyoumdjian, Pindar is low, wide, heavy and sets a cloud of sail. The dismasting has not just left co-skippers Brian Thompson and Will Oxley stranded ashore, but also frustrated a keenly anticipated comparison between Pindar and seven other new Open 60s.

The peril of class development spiraling unchecked is witnessed by the paucity of ORMA multihulls in this race. There are only five. Four years ago there were 14.

An antidote to this is also plain to see in Le Havre. From a cold start, the low-cost, aimed-largely-at-amateurs Class 40 now has 60 boats worldwide, 31 of them competing in the Jacques Vabre. Talk about sensing a gap in the market and the solution scoring a bull's eye. The Class 40 has burst the race's 50-boat limit to a 61 boat starting list.

The monohulls depart today and can expect a 13 to 19 day passage to Salvador, Brazil, while the faster multihulls are held back until tomorrow.

The forecast is set fair to let the fleet escape the worst November can throw up in the Channel and Bay of Biscay. In 2005, nine of the 34-boat fleet were knocked-out in the first 48 hours.

[beau.vrolyk]

I think we're missing a big point in this gaff vs batten discussion. We've left out the topmast! In days of yore (I've always wanted to say that) any self respecting gaff headed boat had a topmast upon which one would hang a topsail of various sizes.

Topsails did not exist because they had better aerodynamics, they were a device for modifying the amount of sail area one carried. The big advantage was that one could add massive amount of sail area without having to haul around a tall rig when it wasn't needed. What we really need to do, and what I'm thinking of building, is a modern rig made of carbon etc... with the ability to add about 25 to 30 percent to its height by hoisting and locking in a topmast. The lower sail, the main, would need to be "gaff headed" so that it would fly well when the topmast wasn't in place. Then, when one wants an additional 20 to 25 percent increase in sail area for light winds, or off the wind, one hoists the topmast and sets the topsail.

Besides, the only really good place to fly the yachting ensign is from the tip of a gaff.

B-)

[Brent Swain]

Masts go from stiff to bendy, from foreward to further aft, in regular cycles, every time being touted as the latest , most modern innovation. What they called "California Reefing" in the 70's was the same slab reefing that Drake and Magellan used on their cicunmnavigations in the 1500's .The gullible amoung consumers keep the cycle going.
Brent