Should we impose a sail area/length2 limit?

Sailing is a mechanical sport,

Sailing is a mechanical sport, and all mechanical sports have classes and restrictions imposed upon them by the same persons who want to follow the latest technological developments. These restrictions are themselves the source of further ingenuity and inventivness, and in this way, the mechanical sports manage to keep the costs and the dangers within reasonable limits and promote sensible and aesthetically pleasing races- so that many people can participate and many more can watch and enjoy. Let the "sailors" who do not understand this get themselves drowned in whatever ornithopteric sailing craft they choose - but in a remote place of a remote ocean please!

 

Sure, it IS the sailor's choice - I was merely pointing out that the claim "No limitations allows for any sailor to sail whatever suits you best" is wrong, if the sailor wants to be competitive. If you want to be fully competitive in almost any unrestricted rig class (or perhaps all of them) you have to use a big rig; maybe not the biggest rig, but a damn big one.

Only a tiny % of sailors compete in unrestricted classes - after all, there are almost none of them left. Doesn't that perhaps illustrate that they don't actually always promote development that can be used by most other sailors? Therefore, if we want to develop the sport maybe restricted-rig classes are better?

Again, I don't think that all unrestricted classes should be banned, they have their place. I know I'd love to see unrestricted 18s on the water again....only sailed a wide-wing boat once but it was tres cool.

 

It seems to me that there are enough racing classes out there that just about everyone can be satisfied with some racing class or another. I personally think that if enough people want to race a boat of a particular class, restricted or not, then there's no reason to stop them.

As for the original bent of this thread, which seemed to be asking about whether huge-rigged tiny boats shouldn't exist- in our economy, if there is demand for something, whatever it is, then that demand can be filled. Diversity of designs is never a bad thing. (I'd actually like to see a lot more diversity in both sailing and power craft design than we get now- there are so many restricted classes that most small sailboats fall into these, and there's little room for creativity).

 

Creativity

I think you're right marshmat in many respects. But there are exceptions. The Aussies have created a revolution in sailing by the development of monohull foilers the likes of which have never been seen before-thats pretty damn creative.
And here in the US the first two production multihull foilers in the world were developed by Greg Ketterman and Sam Bradfield. You can't call them rousing successes but they were first and very creative.Hobie cats brought multihulls to the people -designed and developed in the USA.
Garry Hoyts little Escape, the Raptor 16 and Eric and my aeroSKIFF 14 project ,among others, are quite creative. For bigger boats look no further than Eric Sponbergs design of the Globetrotter 45-very innovative.
And CBTF one of the premier canting keel technologies- born in the USA.
In many instances ,though, these innovations especially in small high speed boats aren't jumped on by Americans-I wonder why? Why so few skiffs in the US? And only 1.5 foiler Moths?

 

Most places around the world have not many foilers and not many skiffs.

Maybe it's because to most sailors, ultimate pure speed is irrelevant; and most US sailors sail in light airs (where very few boats give real speed thrills anyway) and on cold water (which is a pain if you're in a boat that capsizes and/or drenchs you with spray). Finally, AIUI a smaller % of US sailors get to live near warm water and work short hours, which are important if you want to sail skiff types where you HAVE to have practised a lot.

An ex American designer who is involved in canters, Moths and skiffs says that in the US context, boats like the Thistle are great for the typical sailor.

Even here in Australia skiffs are largely restricted to the warm-water states, where they are subsidised by the poker machines of massive skiff clubs that are open to the general populace who go there for the one-armed bandits and don't know a skiff from a Mac26X. Skiffs are popular where they are supported financially by clubs, and no-where else.

Finally, all the skiff clubs and Moths do, and always have, place a lot of emphasis on golf-type handicaps. That means you can have development more easily, because when a boat gets older it still has a chance to win on golf-type handicap and that's all the average sailor has a hope for no matter what boat he has. If you don't have something like that, an outmoded developmetn class boat is useless and therefore the resale value is crap and no-one can afford to develop new boats. The Poms support the value of their development classes by the fact that old boats are often as fast in the tiny puddles they sail on, and they get lower handicaps at club level. But this sort of necessary stuff is usually ignored by the gung-ho development crowd......just like the fact that they ignore the huge contribution of ODs etc.

 

damned cold water and light winds..

 

It depends...Warm weather also means burning sun together with sunblocking oils and lotions and creams on decks and ropes all over the place and tourists, tourists with loudspeakers and fancy colours and noisy smelling outboards...

 

"and tourists, tourists with loudspeakers and fancy colours and noisy smelling outboards... "

Bringing gobs of $$$ and Euros to leave behind for the locals ,

who otherwise would be packing olives , or sardines.

Seems to be a reasonable tradeoff,

FAST FRED

 

Is there any history of using a simple box rule that include height above and below the waterline?
For example 10 Meter long, 15 meter tall, 3 meter wide - draw the waterline whereever you want.

(Adding a spec for how wide the canvas may be flown might be helpfull)

 

Man you would do well to study the post rather than......blah,he was talking about sail size nothing to do with hulls.
I kinda disagree that small sails are being used in the moths anyway.If you look at the size of immersed boat on a flying moth compared to its sail size,the sail area is massive,way bigger than that of an A class or 49r.

 

ORMA 60 tris, Euro version of the 18' skiffs (AUIU) and Mini-Transat 6.5s are pretty much like that.

You may well end up with a rig and boat that's fairly costly for the speed, as are some of the above.

 

Moth

K4s, I've said in several places that the Moth sail is big for the size of the boat but the point is that it is very small compared to some of the boats that it's beating like the Aclass cat and the 49er.
As a matter of interest the sail loading(weight divided by sail area) for those boats is: Moth 2.58lb.s per sq. ft; 49er upwind:2.57(offwind:.98); A Cat 2.06 lb.s per sq.ft..

 

Sail area to displ.,wetted area or simply length(LWL)?

When we say that a sailboat is overcanvassed or not, should we compare its sail area to displacement,wetted area or simply length(LWL)? What is the "right" way to do it?

 

Sail area ratios

A lot of the time SA/displ. ratio is used but for high performance boats there is a lot of variance ;for instance a Moth comes out about 35 and a 49er about 52(upwind). The higher number is supposedly faster but not in this case: the foiler Moth is apparently about 15% faster than a 49er.
"Wingloading" or "Sail loading"= total weight in pounds divided by SA in sq. ft comes out quite close between the two.(see previous post)
Bethwaite uses three ratios:
1)Sail Area divided by wetted area-which he says governs light air performance;2)-Sail Area divided by total weight-which he says governs downwind ;3) Sail Carrying Power divided by total weight which he says governs upwind in a breeze/ apparent wind sailing.
For this ratio you need to know the approx. position of the CE. Take the max righting moment and divide it by the distance from the approx. center of lift of the daggerboard/centerboard to the CE in feet. Divide that answer by the total weight of the boat. Above 30% and the boat will plane to windward. You can find more on page 178 of High Performance Sailing.
His opinion is that in high performance dinghy types displacement length ratio and speed length ratios aren't of much importance.
For instance comparing the the displacement /length ratio's of the Moth (73) to the 49er (64) is basically meaningless since the Moth operates on foils.
If you're interested in putting together comparitive statistics for a number of high performance boats the vital statisics(except CE height) for a lot of boats are all in one place-the Johnson 18 website. I'll post a url if I can find it.
Here it is: http://www.johnson18.org Click on comparisons; note that there are two pages of comparisons upwind and downwind. They are using a form of SA/displ ratio that I'm not familiar with that comes up with single digits- don't get it.
I use SA in sq.ft. divided by displ. in cu.ft. raised to the 2/3 power. Comes out in double digits and is the basis for all the comparisons I've eve seen. Anybody know whats up with the single digit ratio?

 

No right or wrong way IMHO, its all down to what the guys sailing it think. IMHO there are an awful lot of variables that make a big difference that youwon't getdown to simple numbers.

An example, a some years ago I bought very cheaply an old singlehanded dinghy that had never really had the bugs sorted out of the original design. As it was when I got it you could sail it happily in a F8. Clearly a boat that you can sail happily in a F8 without reefing is undercanvassed. However I then sorted the rig out, put on spreaders and lowers and some other changes which spectacularly increased power available from the rig. Like that it was usable in a much lower wind range. So it wasn't undercanvassed anymore. But none of the dimensions had changed...