Sydney-Hobart: CBTF wins!(prediction)

If I have understood it correctly, a 37 yrs old boat could have won, what just the intention is of a fair handicap system.

If you have to infringe all major and valued rules, sofar, and to write new ones, what is the significance of the canters? Do we need them?If you shift a canter manually, ok no deal. All is fair. If you need a running engine, all sorts of misalignements are called forwards. You can top up batteries, power winches so it will open the way for full engine powered assistence.

What a progress

 

Happy New Year to you!

In my not so humble opinion, Rule 51 that does not allow ballast to be shifted is a bad rule. Shifting crew weight or shifting ballast weight has exactly the same effect.

Crew ballast is self powered, the hunk of lead is not.

Moving crew to the weather rail, or hiking, or using a trapeze are all moving ballast. Ballast is what allows single hull boats to carry sail.

If we can agree that moving the crew = moving ballast, then moving the keel or ballast strut to get the same effect should not offend anyone.

For me the only argument is how the ballast gets moved.

I really like the idea of movable ballast, it allows boats to be designed around the number of crew it takes to sail the boat. No need to provide space, food, etc. for crew that spend most of their time as live ballast.

Other than some pretty wild tacks and gybes, just unlocking the ballast and letting it travel to the "wrong" side just before tacking would get the job done without adding an engine. It would not be too hard to engineer it so that the ballast would only travel to about 20 degrees. Then after the tack or gybe the ballast only has to be moved 35 degrees to get maximum RM. The boat's speed could be used to power the last range of motion.

A feathering prop that drives a hydraulic pump would not slow the boat very much when the pump was not in use. The boat would take more time to accelerate after a tack, but it would be starting with a 20 degree ballast shift so it still should be faster than a non-moving ballast boat. The system would not work in light air, but AFAIK there is no reason to cant the ballast under those conditions.

The pump and ballast rams would weigh the same as the systems used now, and I'll wager that the feathering prop drive for the pump would weigh less than a ballast engine and fuel. The engine-less boat should be faster than the power assisted boat. If the prop drive got pulled out of the water when not in use, there would be no speed penalty at all while sailing.

I suspect that since most boats have to run an engine to keep the electronics alive, it was an easy step just to use the engine to move the ballast since it was already there.

I completely agree with Doug as far as the CBTF system goes. I only disagree with how the work gets done. I confess to a Mono-hull bias for several reasons. I would love to see a movable ballast system on a Mono (CBTF or other) that would allow Mono's and Multi's to compete head to head. I don't know if it is possible, but I'd like to see it done ... without a donkey engine.

 

Bit by bit I begin to see the mechanism. Point is that the supermaxi's have nowhere to go to.
There is not a single impressing race they can join so the Sidney Hobart was the single solution for their building.
It is mainly an Australian affair and the Aussies are very well capable to clear their own troubles so I guess that either one will accept the fact as tehy are or next year we will sea a different kind of approach.

Let's see how the VOR fleet will perform ( well fleet?)