Notable open & development class racers....

[gggGuest]

Oh no, you've just made me realise I don't know my boat's star sign...

[rob denney]

I was amazed at how cramped the ORMA 60s were down below. I'd have thought more comfort would have made them faster, but surely since I don't win and those guys do, I should start from the position that they are right?[/quote]

Any pictures of down below on an ORMA tri? Failing that, any chance of a description?

regards,

Rob

[Vega]

Originally Posted by CT 249

The only pics I can find on the net (my own rolls of pics are in the attic) from 2000 is Eure et Loir, which has NO protection.

CT, I am not saying that they had the protections in 2000. I think those protections are relatively recent and they use them only for Ocean Racing, not for Grand Prix racing.

[Stephen Ditmore]

Why not multiple helm stations?

[CT 249]

Originally Posted by rob denney

I was amazed at how cramped the ORMA 60s were down below. I'd have thought more comfort would have made them faster, but surely since I don't win and those guys do, I should start from the position that they are right?

Any pictures of down below on an ORMA tri? Failing that, any chance of a description?

regards,

Rob[/quote]

I'm not sure whether any of the pics down below turned out; it's a dark hole!

Description? Very short available length - maybe 15 feet? Probably no room to stretch the arms sideways. At least one skipper (Frank Cammas, perhaps; nice guy) had his bunk angled up from the waist, so he could see through the porthole without lifting his body. My old Crossfire 20 would have been roomier and more comfortable, from memory, as would an IMS 30 on the way to Hobart.

Keep hassling me if you want me to look for pics, I can't try to find them today.

[CT 249]

Originally Posted by Stephen Ditmore

Why not multiple helm stations?

Depends on the boat and race, I suppose. I don't know about the VO guys, but I know I rely enormously on sensory information I can't get from down below when I'm driving. I can't even steer well with a wet-weather hood on, even going across Bass Strait in an IMS 30 lightweight under storm trysail, in conditions where it was snowing on other boats. Other people CAN steer with hoods on, but surely they still rely on the feel of the wind on the exposed part of their face etc? As Elvstrom said, if you only steered with your eyes, anyone could do it.

In my experience (others may well differ, of course) you may gain speed in some situations by being better rested. You may also lose catastrophically by not being able to hear the tumbling crest and perhaps momentary wind change that indicates a massive backless wave is about to hit you, or feel the wind increasing and about to spin you into a broach that will dismast you; or feeling that 1/2 knot zephy that may slide you 200 metres to the wind line.

It's not just being macho; I admit that I'm not macho enough to race offshore these days since I only like small boats, and there aren't enough other small boats to make the discomfort worthwhile. One reason I like small boats is that I think you can legitimately make the argument, on experience, that with 30 footers in 480-630 mile races, it is actually faster to avoid fatigue to prevent mistakes. On the bigger boats with shorter race times and bigger crews, it seems harder to make that argument.

The other factor is the cost and efficiency of modern top-line wet weather gear, and these days if you go offshore without it people don't think you're macho, they think you're a cheapass or a fool. A few years back when I did an article on wet weather gear by actually interviewing a bunch of Hobart winners and Volvo racers about what they wore (rather than just reading press releases) they emphasised the vital importance and efficiency of modern wet-weather gear in keeping racers warm and dry enough for efficiency. These days, everyone seems to put a lot of emphasis on good clothing that keeps you warm and dry, arguably warmer and dryer than the sailors of the '70s were despite the fact that they stayed off the rail most of the time. One of the successful Sydney-Hobart etc skippers has said publically that he demands that his crew carry the good wet weather gear or they are off the boat because he doesn't want anyone in a dangerous, cold, wet tired state. This is not mindlessly being macho.

Surely like most things there's a calculus of risk. The ORMA 60 guys may have more helm protection, but they are singlehanding and they also have boats that are riskier in other ways. The VO guys stack the rail, but they do it in wet weather gear that the sailors of earlier decades would have killed for, and they do it for comparatively short legs.
People talk about how offshore guys overdo the macho, but whenever I've been interviewing Hobart winners etc they have emphasised how important it is to judge when to conserve the boat and the crew (which we should have done last time but the bloody skipper wouldn't listen to his watch captain (me) or sailmaker. Grrrrrrrrrrrr. From would-be heroes to zeroes).


I've planned having a dodger and lines from the helm so I could steer my own boat from the companionway, and I appreciate its high cabin top as a shelter. But when racing, it's get into the wind, feel the boat and go fast.

[Vega]

Originally Posted by Stephen Ditmore

I think the more relevant comparison might be an Open 50 with a Transpac 52 (both of which I would count as development classes for the purpose of this thread).
...

Originally Posted by Vega

... I am mainly interested in hull shapes.

Take a look at the Pogo fast cruiser- racer (the cruising brother of the winner of the class 40) and at the J-120. Both are fast boats, but completely different boats. In an open ocean race who would be the fastest? What are the good points and bad points of each kind of hull?

Originally Posted by CT 249

Whenever I've asked designers who have done Open and "conventional" boats which one is better, they've said that the Open style is better for the reaching-oriented long ocean races, and the "conventional" style is better for coastal races and short races.

Originally Posted by Crag Cay

But these 40ft class boats are very different and have had a more 'all round mandate' in their design. I think the comparison with the J Class philosophy is valid.

I often hear it quoted that the Open Class yachts are optimised soley for downwind sailing. I think this may have been true in the early days, but the race program for these boats is now so varied, that the VPP is developed for far more upwind sailing than used to be considered.

I apologize to the ones that don’t like this kind of quoting, but I wanted to pull the relevant quotes regarding hull form and speed, I mean, narrower hulls, versus beamier hulls, kind of Open 60. And I wanted to do that because I have some information about it, and it comes from a reliable source: Juan Kouyoumdjian.

I have read a recent interview (in French) where he talked about it and what he said has surprised me. I will make a translation of the relevant part of the interview:

What are the main performance criteria for an Open 60?

The same as for any other racing sailboat: Maximize propulsion force and stability and minimize the drag (resistance to the forward motion).

A lot of sail area on a narrower boat ?

Normally it is assumed that a narrow hull has less drag. I can prove otherwise. With less than 12k of wind, the narrow boat has the advantage, but with more wind that’s not the case and these boats race along with strong winds.


All right, this has nothing to do with the above, but it’s very interesting:


Do you prefer to work with Class boats or Open boats?

Open boats. We are very happy, doing Open Boats (3). That’s much more exiting than Class America, an uninteresting and completely obsolete class. The boats have a monstrous ratio costs/performance.

In what direction would you like to see an evolution of the Class America?

That’s funny because that question was also made to Bruce Farr and our answer is very close: A little bit more of 600m2 of sail area, around 90/100 ft length, canting keels…and more liberty on the class rules (regarding design).

The problem is that Chris Dickson (BMW/Oracle) is very conservative. He likes heavy boats. I don’t expect big changes.

[rob denney]

No rush. Reason I ask is my boat http://www.harryproa.com/SoloTranspa...Transpac_1.htm for the solo Transpac has an accommodation/storage hull 5m/16' long, with 0.5m at each end solid foam. The bunk is cantilevered between the beams. Plan is that I can cook, eat, navigate, steer, trim and keep a lookout without getting out of bed, in virtually all conditions. Above the waterline, the boat has a little less than half the frontal area of the rigging on a 40 footer, so we may get some feedback on the cost of air drag. As someone who cycles into the teeth of the Fremantle Doctor (25 knot sea breeze) every afternoon, windage is something I take very seriously.

regards,

Rob

[Kiteship]

Originally Posted by rob denney

I was amazed at how cramped the ORMA 60s were down below. I'd have thought more comfort would have made them faster, but surely since I don't win and those guys do, I should start from the position that they are right?

Any pictures of down below on an ORMA tri? Failing that, any chance of a description?

regards,

Rob

Here are a bunch of Geant, 2004: http://www.sailtriad.com/transat-geant.html

Doesn't look all that small, but these were taken by a pro, member of NEMA. I'm sure he was using a short lens, which makes interior shots look much bigger than they are.

Chris, I don't doubt your recollection of the 2000 boats for a minute. My point was that they've come a long ways in a short time. Given that Geant was the most "advanced" in skipper enclosure in 2004, and that she won, can you imagine how the boats will look in 2008?

Dave

Originally Posted by Vega

I apologize to the ones that don’t like this kind of quoting, but I wanted to pull the relevant quotes regarding hull form and speed, I mean, narrower hulls, versus beamier hulls, kind of Open 60. And I wanted to do that because I have some information about it, and it comes from a reliable source: Juan Kouyoumdjian.

In what direction would you like to see an evolution of the Class America?

That’s funny because that question was also made to Bruce Farr and our answer is very close: A little bit more of 600m2 of sail area, around 90/100 ft length, canting keels…and more liberty on the class rules (regarding design).

-----------------
Yes! Wouldn't that be spectacular-and "notable"!

[Kiteship]

You may not mean it that way, Chris, but much of what you bring in this post is red herrings; I don't disagree with you regarding small boats, where crew mass is 60-80%; even 90%+ in windsurfers. I was speaking of offshore boats like the VO 70's where crew weight is a much smaller proportion of boa weight. The same thing for comparing Swan 48 "streamlining" schemes, Swans are decades-old designs, capable of--maybe--10-12 kts boatspeed. Modern planing hulls are capable of sustained speeds 2, even 3 times that fast. Hay wagons don't need streamlining; Ferraris do (do you actually mean to suggest you believe that modern open wheeled and open cockpit race cars--whose rules require them to be shaped like that--have similar drag coefficients to closed cars??? You were just jesting, eh? That or modern airforces need to take another look at aerodynamics!)

You quite succinctly and excellently demonstrate the "old guard" point of view in much of your post, repeatedly suggesting that "what was good enough then, is good enough now." Thanks for the demonstration. ;-)

Drag is of critical importance these modern days, Chris; Far from "a few ounces on the stay," a man standing on deck in 25 kts of apparent breeze creates on the order of 12-15 lbs of air drag; 35 kts of breeze; double that. 50 kts; redouble it again. A row of 6 such men on the rail will create more drag than the entire mainsail, working at its most efficient. Put another way, the rail meat air drag in effect halves the L/D ratio of the mainsail. Is this healthy?

I'm kind of sorry I brought air drag into the conversation; wave drag is far, far greater in magnitude, IMO. I'm talking about waves which come aboard and strike projections on deck--including crew. You didn't speak to any of my numbers in my previous post regarding wave drag, leading me to believe you agree that these drags can indeed equal up to 40% of the boat's total sail thrust.

To you and to others who have kindly responded regarding the crew's "desires" to remain on deck where they can better hear, see and "sense" their surroundings; I salute you; Mr Rickenbacker no doubt would have agreed with you. Nevertheless we tend to use closed cockpit aircraft these days, and instruments to sense outside conditions. Oracle BMW racing is already using a version of virtual reality glasses to project performance data directly to the sailors' eyes, how long will it be before stereo surround sound, heads-up displays and LIDAR proximity warnings will make the old (some insist current) "head in the air" sailing attitude as quaintly old fashioned as open cockpit airplanes?

Someone else points out that "the grinders" couldn't stand not seeing what's about them. When did grinders dictate the direction of racing design? Do they pay the bills of the boat?

Another offered that AC boats "tried" belowdecks crew, other classes followed, and it all came for naught. I wonder how many here know that these were outlawed for the AC class--all winches must be at deck height or higher. D'you suppose they bothered to ban something which was dying a quiet death, unaided? More to the point, ask yourself just why they were banned? (I might also note that, in modern AC boats, the entire crew crouches down below the rail whenever they can--popping up to tweak winches, then right back down. Often the only head you see above deck is the helmsman's. Is this evidence of a design optimum, or is it accommodating a rule forcing them to do so?)

Sure, single handed multihulls do go faster, and yield more stress on their crews than some other forms of offshore sailing. Some might say that these, then, are the "canaries", the test cases, and that their tried and true solutions will spread across the remainder of the fast offshore fleet in time. Shall we wait until it's fact before we concede it *might* be a good idea?

Chees,

Dave

Originally Posted by CT 249

I agree that there have been other sports or vehicles were enclosed has proved faster despite the attitude that people were better off "feeling" the wind. Racing cars still have open cockpits; even Le Mans cars (last time I looked) showed close competition between closed-in and open cars.

One could also say that if parastic drag was the vital factor, windsurfers would be slow as the sailor's body is (I understand) an enormous factor in their total drag; a much higher factor than in other craft. Even in longboards, the fully-exposed sailor on a board is faster than the skipper of (say) a seahugger Moth who (according to Bethwaite, at least) is lower and therefore in an area where there is less apparent and therefore less drag.

Re ORMA protection; I looked at the top four just after the finish of the 2000 Transat, and crawled all the way through three with my camera; none had that sort of protection then.

Surely that study that showed a man has the same air drag as a 4' man shape has underwater must be a bit out to lunch? You can easily stand on a deck in 40 knots of wind; how much drag force is on the hand holding you onto (say) a stay; 4kg????

Now hunch to 4' height and try to hang standing upside down in a boat's hull. It's utterly different in terms of force required. I used to have great difficulty hanging onto my hull to clean it when the boat was moored in a fast tide.

Many, many crews know to the 10th of a knot how much they lose when the bowman goes forward; it has been a big consideration in design for a long, long time. Many work hard on fore-and-aft crew weight. Would they be so aware of these factors and yet be too stupid to get around to looking harder at getting rid of crew windage, particularly considering it has been seen as a factor for decades? Ben Lexcen and Scott Jutson, to name two, have been well aware of it for many years - but they ended up (I'm pretty sure) deciding that for some reason in reality it wasn't such a problem. Ben went from flush deck low-windage boats, to boats designed to rely on crew on the gunwale.

If there was so much air drag in the human figure, no one would use traps on cats; it would be faster to just lie on the tramp and depower the rig. The Kiwis used to not use traps on As for that reason - they got wiped when they went to the early worlds and learned the error of their ways. The top A Class guys get out on trap very, very early; if the windage of the body was a problem that would be slow.

And there's very little aero drag force to fight against when going upwind in a Tornado at top speed, but if you touch a wavetop you can get blasted straight over the stern. So, from personal experience, I can't see how the air drag can be anything like as important as hydro drag.

Surely if the drag of the crew was slower than the advantage of having them on deck, someone would have noticed during the time VO 60s, VO 70s and similar boats have been sailing? Surely at one time most of the crew must have been down below but on the windward side; when they're having a meeting about how to handle the boat falling apart again, or when tuning and discussing changes, etc. Wouldn't the driver have noticed the boat suddenly getting quicker as the drag reduced by such a large amount?

After all, the concept of crew keeping out of the wind is a very old one; it was tried on the 14s in Cowes among many other boats. Then someone came along, hung his crew out into the wind, and planed a boat called Avenger into the history books. If windage was such a disaster, Uffa would have lost rather than won, and 14 sailors today would hunch, not trap off wings.

Uffa later had turtleback 30 square metres with "streamlined" decks; they never went particularly well. Decades later, guys in the early IOR days eschewed multiple spreaders and had rounded cabin tops to avoid windage; they got wiped by the lightweights with the crew, flappy wet weather gear and all, hunched on the weather rail.

The 12s of the '70s had many of the crew under the deck, as the old UK Troys still do, I think, and some 6 Metres. Most of the crew hate it.

Offshore mono crews are very familiar with sending the crew down below to improve speed. They send all available crew down below to lie on the floorboards when it's light and weight should be centralised. So it's not as if they are blind to other advantages to being down below.

Some of the heavier boats don't lose too much stability with the crew off the rail. Swan 48s etc are pretty damn heavy and stable and have a fairly low deck profile; but the pros from the Swan worlds runner-up assured me it's very very important to have the crew hiking out. They have looked at the question.

I agree that it's crap that people must sit on the rail. It's a major reason I have given up ocean racing. I wish there was evidence that it was faster to stay warm, refreshed and rested down below. Unfortunately, there just seems to be a lot of evidence on the racecourses of the world that indicates that it's faster to be stuffed, cold and tired and sit on the rail.

[CT 249]

"You quite succinctly and excellently demonstrate the "old guard" point of view in much of your post, repeatedly suggesting that "what was good enough then, is good enough now." Thanks for the demonstration. ;-)"

So far this in a year or so, DC, I've started one new class (now officially National) which goes against all conventional wisdom in that area of the sport; been the first person in my country to sail two new types of kit; assisted with writing the rules for another new class' first Internationals; and won one new state title. And I've been on the first sail on a boat that has had international patents awarded for its major feature; last week we were talking about customer resistance to a novel rig I was advocating.

Not bad for a prisoner of "old guard" thinking, I'd have thought. Exactly how many new classes does one have to create, assist with or sail in one year to prove you're not too conservative? It's just that I actually race against some of the top sailors in some of the most competitive classes, and that teaches me that they are not stupid or closed-minded, and that if they do things they almost always do them because they work.

I'm very aware of windage and drag. No one who sails slalom boards could be otherwise; if you put a high drag/high lift sail on, you just can't get to windward. It's a very graphic example.

As I said, I'm also anti sitting on the rail and on my own boat I want a more protected helm for cruising. Your insistence that I believe in rail sitting because I'm old guard flies in the face of those facts that I have already presented.

The point about the earlier boats where crew were below decks was that they utterly disprove any assertions that monohull crews are too "old guard" and conservative in their belief to ignore windage and wave drag. The point about the Swan is that even in boats were you wouldn't think weight on the rail may count, it does - even when the much-vaunted fatigue problem doesn't arise as the Swan champs are just day races.

It is patently obvious, and proven by many previous instances for 80 years, that "conventional" mono crews are NOT blind to the advantages of reducing windage and wave drag. Even 30 years ago, they had low-windage coachroofs until they found they had no effect. They had single spreaders on 40+ footers to reduce windage. They are NOT blind to the idea of keeping crew weight down below, as demonstrated by examples already given. Every skiff/dinghy designer knows of wave drag. Farr was writing of the problems 30 years ago.

Therefore, very simply, any idea that mono crews sit on the rail because they are "old guard" and can't see other ways of doing it is patently incorrect. There must be other reasons for their behaviour - possibly the fact that it works!

Re "Someone else points out that "the grinders" couldn't stand not seeing what's about them. When did grinders dictate the direction of racing design? Do they pay the bills of the boat?"

No, grinders don't pay. They just complain. The fact that they complained is significant. Why did the grinders get upset? Because working down below is *&^%$#ing horrible. Crag gave his own example of how crappy being down below was. What is the benefit of making the sport less pleasant for a proportion of the competitors? So why inflict it on all the crew? Many, many, many people have noted that seasickness is worse down below than on deck. Sitting up down below is generally considered one of the most uncomfortable possible things to do offshore. Why inflict it on more sailors?

You use the fact that planes have closed cockpits as ammunition. For a start, the wind forces on a plane are magnitudes greater. You reject my analogy to A Class cats because of forces, then introduce a sport where apparent air speeds are about 200+mph. Furthermore, at least as late as the '40s, as I understand it, at the critical times like landing, pilots often DID open their cockpit. The analogy may not hold. Aircrew already fly heavily muffled because of the cold. You could well argue that an open cockpit plane does not equate to a yacht. I've never had 200mph windspeeds at -20 degrees on a yacht. I've also never seen an enclosed hangglider.

Basically, I cannot understand how you can reject an A Class analogy because the ratios are different to yachts, and then propose instead a totally different sport where the windspeeds are orders of magnitude greater. And the numbers of people competing in that sport are much less than in sailing (around me, anyway). If popularity is a guide, sport flying has it wrong, sailing has it right.

I know that open-cockpit cars have higher drag. I don't know how severe the drag is, in the Le Mans articles in Racecar Engineering etc I've seen it seems to be less important than fuel tank volume etc. The point remains - the rules demand open cockpits on many racecars so why be so scathing about open cockpits for sailors?

Your case assumes that the VO sailors - guys who have handles the massive change from IOR ketches to canters in about 16 years, guys who include skiff racers and others - are conservative "old guard" sailors. I ask again, how, in all the lead-up training and the design and the race around the world, could someone not have thought of the wave drag/ windage factor WHEN IT HAS BEEN RECOGNISED FOR LONGER THAN THE ROUND THE WORLD RACE HAS EXISTED.

The designer of the winning VO boat is talking up multis and canting keel AC boats. Is he too "old guard" and stupid to see the advantages of which you write?

Either the designers of modern monos - Farr, Bowler, R/P. Elliott, Juan K etc - are too stupid or blinkered to understand your case, or your calcs are wrong. The mono designers include guys who got into carbon the same year as Formula 1 did. For some time, something like the 12 biggest pre-preg structures in the world
were mono yachts, followed by the space shuttle doors. Sure, size isn't everything, but the idea that "conventional" mono designers and sailors are too stupid and conservative to come up with new ideas is *&^%$#@. Every Aussie "conventional" mono designer I can think of is either an engineer, or has experience with boats that are rather "radical" (ie Opens, skiffs etc) and/or don't use crew weight (ie metre boats) yet all of them know of the importance of crew weight on the rail in "conventional" boats. I assume it's the same other places.

Look at Scott Jutson. He designed a wing-masted 18 which has rolled gunwales and a bow specially designed to reduce windage and wave drag. He was aware of the problems of wind and wave drag. He then designed a record-breaking Open boat. He knew about Opens. He wrote about windage drag from crew ("Offshore" magazine) - and then said that the significant factor was that no one really worried about it because in reality it didn't make a difference. He did so because, as Scott says, when it comes down to it, in fast boats you look at what the top sailors prove to work.

Look at Ben Lexcen. He spoke about windage and wave drag for years, yet his later boats largely ignored such factors. You really think Blinky Ben was too "old school" to see the problem?

Finally, if you hold up the ORMA 60s as an example of reducing windage, I'm fascinated - considering they have stinking big rolled headsails up the bow. Those boring old conservative mono crews have known about rolled headsails for years. They just pull them down when they are not needed, because they can. They are fully aware of the windage problem, they just know what works in their application.

[SuperPiper]

Here is a photo of Derek Hatfield's Open 60 Spirit of Canada, September 09, 2006 - the day she was launched into Lake Ontario at Cobourg, Ontario. The keel & bulb were not yet installed which explains why she was floating so high. But my question is: what is the prefered profile of the cabin's trailing edge. Derek has chosen a square, vertical trailing edge. But Hugo Boss had some sort of scalloped, parabolic profile. I have been watching mini-vans and hatch-back coupes. They seem to prefer that the trailing edge actually curve in at the corners and the top/centre protrude the furthest aft.

What shape do you suggest to minimize drag?

[Vega]

Nice looking boat. It is a Owen and Clarke Design.
Another one to the Vendee Globe.

About the boat, look at this detail on the bow. For having more lift for planning easily in weak winds?

That race is going to be great, but they should enlarge the number of entries. The race is going to take place in about two years’ time and I have heard that all entries are already filled in (27 I believe). Crazy!

http://www.spiritofcanada.net/boat_specs.html

Good luck to Canada on that race. The only problem with Open60's and the Vendee Globe was that it was mainly a French thing. I think that the next Vendee is going to be a world's race, and a BIG one.

By the way, I have bought the video about the last Vendee, it is called "Ocean's Twenty" and it is worth every penny. There we can see how the open60's handle bad weather. The steerage of the boat is amazing. Even with big waves, they point it that way, and that way it goes.

Regards

[Stephen Ditmore]

I think the photo above shows the structural skin on the boat, but not the final shape. It's common these days for boats to have a foam gripe, a foam stem, or both, which are external to all but the outermost finish laminates.

Originally Posted by Vega

In what direction would you like to see an evolution of the Class America?
[/color]

What's "Class America"? Is that what they're calling the IACC now? How is that relevant to the comments of any of the people you quoted, Vega?