Notable open & development class racers....

Well CT, I am enjoying this exchange, but you have to take into consideration that my 1st language is not English, so it takes more time for me to reply.

First let me say to you that you have a wrong image of what boats I like or dislike. I know, sometimes I can be pretty confusing, because my tastes are wide (and not only in boats). You have said somewhere that I preferred beamy boats. That’s not true. Fact is that not long ago I used to think exactly as Milan:

If you go to my gallery you can see that the Oceangoing boat that I have chosen to modify and adapt for an eventual personal use is a narrow boat.

Now I have motives to think that I was underestimating the windward capacity of beamier hulls, like the ones from the Open60 or the ones from the 40class.

That’s why I have said that I would like very much to see an Open60 race against the prevailing winds. I would like to see if Juan K. is right about their performance against the wind, or if other kind of Open60 boats like the ones Milan is talking about, would be a better choice to win that race.

Those affirmations of Juan K only confirmed something I was suspecting. I don’t know if he is right, but my interest in the Open60 and the 40class has to do with that, I mean to find out the real performances of that kind of hulls, in comparison with more traditional and less beamier ones.

My main interest in the Open60s is because they are (with the minis 6.5) the most Open ocean category and that permits the boat to be less rule designed. I know that you seem not to consider size important as the main parameter, but I, as many people am interested in boats of a certain size, so for many people, best performance for a certain size is an important parameter in the choice of a boat.

About size, if they had an Open 42 to 50 Open class, I would be more interested on those, because it’s the size of boats most people chose (and are able to pay) as an Oceangoing cruiser. I am interested also in 90ft boats, but in a lesser manner. People that can buy them are a very marginal quantity.

About single-handed boats, versus boats that have to use a big crew as movable ballast: Well, I have not a great interest on those. I am interested in boats that don’t need a large crew to be sailed.
Most long distance cruisers sail single-handed with the occasional help of the wife. I am not interested in a cruising boat that needs a large crew, or that needs movable ballast in the form of a crew, to be sailed.

In this sense, single handled ocean racing boats give a much larger and positive contribution for the development of Ocean going cruisers than oceanracing boats that need a large crew, for handling the sails and for ballast (sitting on the rail).

You are wrong in thinking that I don’t like racing multihulls or that I am not interested in them. I don’t understand why they are not allowed to race the Sydney-Hobart, and I am in favor of allowing them to enter all ocean races.

My focus in monohulls is because I want to learn more in order to know how to have a better and faster cruising boat. And the cats are no option for me, by the reasons I explained in that thread about cruising that I have been running. I have to say that I never stop looking to see if anything interesting and suitable comes up, and recently something very interesting has appeared on the market...but the PRICE).

Finally about that story of beamy boats, I have to say that I don’t like beamy and fat boats. The boats we are talking about only look beamy on the paper. They are large transom boats, and if you take a look at the hull (outside the water), they look sharp and elegant. I don’t know how to explain that, but it’s true. I have seen a Pogo 6.5 in the shipyard, and it looked not beamy, but looked like an elegant and fast boat.



I wish everybody nice holidays and a good Christmas time.

 

It is an interesting discussion, Vega, and I apologise if the way I have expressed myself makes it seem that I am putting down your tastes and opinions. In the end, it just gets down to personal taste and the sort of sailing and cruising you personally prefer.

About beam; the Opens are sharper and more elegant along the waterline than above the waterline, but then again boats like the typical New Zealand craft are much narrower still.

I think the conditions we sail in may have something to do with the choice of boats. Here, the racing scene is about coastal races, the Sydney-Hobart, or short events. These tend to emphasise upwind ability, and evidence from the Open types we have is that they aren't that great upwind and that they are not that good around short courses. One other point is that some of our sailing grounds tend to have a very confused chop, even in light winds. Beamy boats with convex flare above the waterline struggle because the convex waterline gets hit by the chop. Boats with straighter flare seem to do a lot better. This was noted even decades ago in IOR yachts.

I don't think that you're not interested in multis; asking why people don't sail multis if they really want to get maximum speed was just a rhetorical question.

Merry Christmas and thanks for all the discussion and information.

 

I had a look over Fred Barrett's own boat years ago. It was quite similar to the GP 26. Lovely boat.

The T830 had a short production run as the T8 here. Very fast, very expensive at something like $100,000 Aus. It has been said that it largely killed off development at the front end of the fleet, which until then had seen a bit of an arms race with optimising Rocket 780s and Elliott 780s etc.

Boats of the moment in the Sportsboats down here are probably the Bethwaite custom 8m Vivace (the canting keel version has been testing and sailing slower than the fixed-keel Vivace but there may be teething problems) and the Cawardine Stealth 8m Stealthy. Stealthy is a brilliant boat. She's similar in pace to the T830 and Vivace, but has a good interior; bunks, separate forepeak/head (I think), almost standing headroom from memory, galley, etc. The wings bolt on to a hull "inspired by" the Elliott 780 (third pic). Problem is getting all that into such a lightweight package means $$$$$$$$$$$ so only two have been made. The little wonder has more accomodation tha n Mumm 30 and goes quicker and can be towed behind a car, but more people spend more and buy Mumms. That seems significant to me.

Personally, I find it hard to see a small Grand Prix boat taking off. It's failed repeatedly in the past. Can many of the people who are happy to race a small boat afford to buy a race machine and then lose a lot of the value when it becomes obsolete? Okay, the Mini gets a following but is 120+ boats which mainly gather once every four (?) years for one race a viable model for the GP?

I know classes like the GP are trying to replicate the grand days of IOR quarters and halves, but quarters and halves had two differences which seem to be very important to me (although of course I may be utterly wrong). One is that the Quarter and Half Ton Cup started off as cruiser/racer events with low budgets. That meant that the average sailor could relate to them and they gained prestige from big entries and being a truly worldwide class. You had irrestistable stories of young guys building cheap boats at home and taking on the world succesfully; that doesn't apply if the costs are high and the rule too complex and typeformed. The fact that the cruiser/racer production halves were so popular gave the classes a prestige and springboard that allowed them to develop the fleets of racing machines - but can you just drop a grand prix class into place, with no history and no local fleets, and expect people to take notice????

Secondly, the Halves and Quarters were very competitive in local racing against open fleets, so they had a use when outmoded or in the 99.999999999999% of places in the world where you won't normally get a GP Class fleet very often.

I'm running another and very different class at the moment, and it's interesting to see how little conservatism there is, even in the yachting establishment, when you produce a new class that's cheap and dual purpose. However, that is in the form of sailing about as far as you can get from offshore yachts so it may mean zilch.

 

I expect my own sailing to be in my Classic Moth.... I take it you're also talking about a dinghy? Joy frequently comes in a small package, doesn't it.

Thanks for the report on boats down under in the 8m size range. It's very intriguing. Should I design an 8m I'm thinking in terms of a family version. If a pure raceboat can be pulled out of the same mold it'd be interesting.... but if I scare away the rest of the family, is it really a boat I would want?

Merry Christmas
Stephen

 

One T8 sailed up here, and then we had the Viper 830. The Vipers are considerably slower than a Mumm 30 in bouy racing, about 12 secs/mile or so. How do the T8s line up with Mumms down there?

Are there any other canting 8s in the works? I heard a rumour that the molds were changing back to making fixed keelers like Vivace.

Is the Stealth actually 8m, or is it longer? What is the weight, and sail area? We don't have any 26 footers that go around with the 32 foot long Mumm 30s. I'm wondering if they call it an 8m, but maybe it is longer? Is it on pace uphill, or is it behind at the top mark and blitzing by on the runs?

I'm not sure about the late 60s (Arpege, Scampi, Accent), or up to about '73, but after that I think there were more and more outright race boats. Roy Cundiff's North Star won the Half Worlds ('74? or '75) and was pretty much a flush deck 30 footer with a square wooden box on top to meet the headroom requirements. I remember the articles about that regatta and there were a lot of these types of specials. Shortly thereafter things like Magic Bus, Newspaper Taxi, and the others weren't such dual purpose things either.

That is the saving grace. If you had a 10th place World's half tonner you could come home and be pretty competitive locally, against similar sized boats and overall against all other IOR raters. There may not have been enough halves in the area for a class, but you could still get a quorum by having 10 or so boats rating from 20 to 25.

It is all about having critical mass. Even the new Box Rules don't give any chance to race your TP52 vs STP 65 vs ORC42 if you don't have a class of your own type.

 

The class is actually a junior windsurfer; cheap and cheerful, not loaded with carbon.

The 8m I can see working is a family version, like the one you want, that has a spirit somewhat similar to the Classic Moth. That is, you know the Classic isn't as fast as the International Moth - but it's still a lovely boat to sail and it suits you and many people and therefore the various forms of classics are more popular than the foilers.

If I got back into yachts in a few years, I wonder if there could be potential in a class using IRC. You could make it a rating band class, in the mid .900s, with an LOA around 8.5m and a minimum DLR, and an announced intention of creating a box rule class of racer/cruisers. Maybe the class could be designed to run in tandem with a 7.5m racer class; again starting as a band class with the announced intention of developing a box rule, but the band class would always also exist. I really like the way the F16 cat was designed to rate the same as the F18, so the two can race together in a more meaningful way than if they were different in basic speeds. The 750R/850 CR combo could be similar. It wouldn't be a perfect class, but it may get off the ground especially if boats just outside the box could be grandfathered in.

However, this is pipe dreamng for me I'm afraid, as the difference in $ between a new boat and my current one is way more than the difference in function. After the junior windsurfer is established more firmly I may try to stir something up, but that's not going to happen for a while. I'd love to see a boat you may design.

 

Paul, on the site of the Pogo 850 owner’s association you can see the races (right side, down):
http://www.assopogo.com/

Some are only for Pogos, others are coastal races and there is a classical Transat, the Transquadra, that has been won twice by a Pogo 850.

The boat is also used in Spain, in an Ocean championship for solos or duo crews.

The Pogo 850 is not a racing boat, it has not a racing version and its draft is only 1.75m.

As an oceangoing cruiser racer I think it is a fast boat. If we compare with boats of the same LOA, around here, only pure racing boats are faster:

Pogo 850 LOA850 – 22.5 First 27.7 LOA830 - 20 First 31.7LOA950 – 21
J80 LOA 800 – 21.5 J92 LOA912 – 24.5

But I believe that if the J’s or the Firsts were raced solo, they would be left behind very quickly. They need and are designed to be raced with a full crew on the rail. The Pogo is designed to be solo crewed and doesn’t need a crew on the rail to go fast.

Another difference is the extraordinary seaworthiness of this type of boats. For them, the worst conditions put them in an advantageous position compared with other boats of the same length and even bigger boats.

In on of the recent Ocean races of the Spanish Solo championship, the ANS cup, a Pogo 850, with strong winds (5 boats have retired from the race) won in compensated and real time. The second boat was a 52ft and it left behind also a First 47.7 that came third.

http://www.ans2000.org/noticias/

I believe that when Pogo launched the new 850, they were hoping that the mini6.5 became the 8.5 class, but it did not work that way. The Mini6.5 continued as the basic entry class for Ocean racing and it has become more and more important. In the next race I believe we will have canting keel minis.
Take a look at the entry list for the next Transat race that will only take place 6 months from now:

http://www.wmaker.net/classemini_en/download/Inscriptions_Transat_21_decembre_2006.pdf

Have you noticed the size of the waiting list?
Take a look at the association site. I think they have more than 400 associates.

http://www.wmaker.net/classemini_en/index.php?action=rubrique&numrub=1

It is in the Minis that European young NA begin their racing career as well as young pilots.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iLeiFt0b5_Y&mode=related&search=
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tvukolhoYpk
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KdqonZXKzWM

Many boats are made by the racers in the “garage”.

This is one of those garage boats. Is it not a beauty?

 

I don't know if you know this already. It is a very interesting résumé about the different rating handicap systems.

http://www.sailtexas.com/handicaparticle.html

http://www.sailtexas.com/handicaparticlepart2.html

 

I've started this thread, advocating a change to IMOCA rule D2.
http://www.boatdesign.net/forums/showthread.php?t=15206

This would not apply to Class40.

 

I tried responding on your new thread. For some reason, I wasn't able too.

So I will respond here instead.

I remember when the old BOC races started and when movable ballast was first discussed. The agreement was that it would be allowed as long as it could not tip the boat more than 10 deg at rest. I thought then, as I do now that that was a bad plan.

I thought that a better idea would be to allow no more than 50% of the total ballast to be moveable, with the stipulation that the boat be able to recover fron a 90 deg. knock down (and be made to prove it) with the shifting ballast on the wrong side. I never anticipated canting ballast keels back then.

Being that 'canters' are here to stay, I propose a new rule. As simple minded as it may seem , I do believe it will work. The rule would be this.

That the total of Draft plus Beam equal no more than 50% of the boat's length.

This rule would be extremely easy to check and I think it would do a very good job of eliminated the abuses you have just talked about. The stipulation that the boat in question could, at the comittee's request, be inclined 90 deg. with the keel canted toward the low side, and a weight equal to 1% of the boat's displacement applied to the mast head.

If the boat shows any inclination to right itself from this possition, It should pass.

Bob

 

I know that you were talking with the other Paul, but have you seen this tread:

http://www.sailinganarchy.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=46061

It looks that there are a lot of people interested.

About the Minis, do you know that in the next Transat in the open class there will be, as a Wild card, an American boat. It is a canting keeler and it is a garage boat.

 

Radical 40

Follow up on previous post on this winged canting keel raceboat:
Radical%2040%20083.jpg
Address:http://www.sailinganarchy.com/fringe/2006/images/Radical 40 083.jpg Changed:10:58 PM on Wednesday, December 27, 2006
===========================
Thread from SA on this boat; some interesting info:
shark attack - Sailing Anarchy Forums
Address:http://www.sailinganarchy.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=46124

 

Fringe is what comes on the edges of rugs ... or extreme and fanatical views as in Lunatic Fringe.

Since the boat does not resemble a rug, I'll assume the latter case.

Carry on ...

 

Development in ocean racers has not come as far as I would like to think it has.

After looking at the S/L averages attained by this years S-H racers, I got to wondering how their averages compared to past performances.

Marchaj spends some time comparing the speeds of sailing boats over the last 100+ years. He uses Vs (boat speed in knots) over sqr rt LWL as a ruler. In 1851 the yacht America recorded a day's run at S/L of 1.25. In 1931 Dorade recorded a speed of 1.44 S/L.

He goes on to compare average passage speeds from the Santa Maria's .45 S/L to Parma's best passage of .90 S/L for square rigged boats. For and aft rigs do much better, posting speeds up to .99 S/L from 1935 to 1954.

Another interesting data set is:
1851 America, 0.70 S/L average
1866 Henrietta, 1.00 S/L average
1931 Dorade, 1.14 S/L average
1955 Carina, 1.18 S/L average

Compare these boats and numbers to the numbers posted in the S-H this year:

Ichi Ban, 1.23 S/L
Wild Oats, 1.11 S/L
Love & War, 1.07 S/L
Skandia, 1.04 S/L

Anyone care to try to put this in a light that shows great progress since 1931? Are the new boats more or less seaworthy than Dorade and Carina? Are they more or less seakindly? Bear in mind that Love & War was built in 1973 and won the S-H on corrected time.

Granted, I'm comparing Atlantic crossing speeds to those in the S-H, but if progress is being made, shouldn't the S/L average of the new boats be much higher than that of a 1973 design?

It seems that the rating formulas and class rules are driving the shape of yachts and "improvement" can only be measured by looking through the filter of the rule or formula that created the yacht.

When wind and sea are the only forces to design to, how much improvement has there been?

 

Monohull Progress?

---12.75' Moth foiler-max speed (so far): 27.9 knots-uses movable ballast. Nom-S/L=8.41
---Aussie 18-max speed-(so far): 30 knots-uses movable ballast. S/L=7.07
---VOR70-max speed-(so far):40.6knots; 23.45 knots for 24 hours-uses movable ballast.S/L=4.85
---Alfa RomeoII(sistership to Wild Oats)-max speed-(so far):35 knots-uses movable ballast.S/L=3.62
---Open 60-max speed-so far-30 knots-uses movable ballast. S/L=3.87
------------------
And this is just the begining: movable ballast applied to big boats in much the same way it is applied to dinghies is revolutionizing monohull speed-now just 10% below that of the fastest multies. And those fast multies use hydrofoils! When mono's begin to use hydrofoils in combination with movable ballast that gap will go away.......