Speed Dream 27 Prototype

Thank you, Hussong for your concern about the odds of me becoming successful with the SpeedDream concept.
Let me reassure you that I'm not a novice when it comes to challenge and controversy, and I understand the perils full well.
You might not know that I'm the chap who developed MX-Ray you've mentioned above, the first single-handed skiff with asymmetric spinnaker. And I respectfully disagree that she became just a small footnote in history of sailing...
With over 300 boats built and shipped around the world - a good number for a high performance craft - and her performance in the mid-20s knots (one of my customers even claimed 27 knots measured by GPS) I would argue that she was a smashing success. Remember, this was way before the Moth foilers..
Unfortunately, the business went downhill after I sold it, but that's another story.
Most importantly, MX-Ray paved the way for other fast single-handed skiffs and you could find traces of her design in a number of modern dinghies (a vast collection of them, as you put it).
As they say, imitation is the most sincere form of flattery and it would be unnecessary modesty on my part to deny how proud I am of that design.
And then, of course is the FAZISI story, the first ever entry into Whitbread/Volvo coming from Russia.
When I started that project more that two decades ago, everyone told me it was insane, totally impossible.
And most certainly it was. And yet it had became a reality...
(By the way you can read about it in my book Race to Freedom - it's quite a story!).
So, I'm embarking on the new SpeedDream adventure with my eyes open, understanding full well the challenges ahead.
It's an extremely hard road - and the odds are low - and yet I know that with hard work, persistence and lots of luck we might succeed, bringing along a bit more fun and excitement into sailing for everybody to enjoy...
That would be the greatest reward for me.
That, and a good chunk of cash, of course.

 

How true!

 

Best of luck to you, Vlad.

 

I don't think Mike has done much, if any, racing.

Designers are "pushed' to such winning designs as the First 45, 40.7, the ultra-heavy timber planked S&S Sunstone, the heavy planked S&S 47 Love and War, the comparatively conservative Archambaults and X Yachts, Swans, and many other boats that are very hard to call "marginal."

The more radical designs are tiny as a proportion of the racing scene, and in some very advanced racing markets they are declining as a proportion of racing sailboats. The booming classes are conservative boats like Lasers, Firsts, J/109s, Formula 18 cats, etc. Pure speed interests very few people.

They built, what, 7 Schock 40s? There's some 17,000 mono keelboats racing PHRF in the USA at the moment, the vast majority of them solid and conservative. To imply that the 7 Schocks are representative of the 17,000 may not be very correct.

 

I'm not saying the idea is bad, just expounding my interpretation. By the way, how does the boom work? Is the gooseneck inside the cabin house? Kinda looks like if from the pictures. What is the concept of the foil that traverses midships?

Your design does not upset me, and if you can get it built and test it out, more power to you. I'm just reflecting here. There have been lots of other attempts at high speed sailing through the years, and a lot of really fast craft and boats out there. It just seems unlikely that there will be some revolutionary leap that gets the fleets of average Joes cruising along at 40+ knots or some such around a race course. There might be a handful of speed sailors to incrementally squeeze out a few percent more efficiency through some new design though. Just an opinion.

If you can get backing to build it, I would really like to see how it performs.

 

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Another very long list......

 

Hey Vlad,

I wasn't really having a go at the designer. I was really just winding up our mate Doug (a pointless exercise I know). As we all know, Doug tends to seize on any new wacko idea, elevate it to god status and present it so ad nauseum. It's probably just unfortunate that he picked on yours.

I wouldn't normally tease Doug either, but lately this forum has just become a Dougfest, with half of the threads started by Doug, all saying basically the same thing, and in half of those he just talks to himself. Sorry Doug, no hard feelings. I just had to get that out.

To get back on the subject though Vlad, I do wonder about the concept. I can see why you would design such a boat to beat a rule, but given that you appear to have started with a clean slate, it doesn't make a lot of sense to me. Good luck with it. Prove us naysayers wrong.

 

I once labored under this assumption that labels actually are indicative on contents.

By all anecdotal evidence your assessment seems wrong. Although this is labeled a "BoatDesign" forum it seems far more BoatBazaar (and often bizarre) than scientific. That isn't to say that bazaars are bad places, and the discussions that take place here aren't interesting. Preschool quality crumpled pencil scribblings on legal pads are legitimate "designs" by local convention here in the bazaar.

Much of the discussion presented here is obvious promotion of personal agendas - complete with pseudo-scientific "calculations", crazy logic leaps and strong emotions that have no place in design. Everyone is entitled to their enthusiasms - and to quote Pericle's great tag line, "Everyone is entitled to their own opinions, but not their own facts".

It's no surprise to anyone here that one member gets a raging stiffy when there is any vertical lift component to a design's foils. Others are excited about lateen rigs, some are multihull jihadists etc. I'm not at all surprised that a new great monohull hope has emerged to once again take on the multihull hordes. New potential heroes emerge here on an alarmingly regular basis.

If this were a legitimate design forum, these discussions would be accompanied by raw data collected in third party monitored design trials against known control samples, presenting the facts without embellishment, opinion or hype. Facts speak for themselves and need no idealogical forum champions.

Now that I've clarified exactly what this forum is, remember that everyone here chooses to stay and participate. And everyone's opinions are just part of the cacophony of the bazaar - it is up to the reader to determine the needles of truth in the haystacks of opinions.

--
CutOnce

 

Cammas rolls over and breathes a sigh as the family cat wanders off, never to be touched again.

Let us mourn the loneliness of the fair weather friend.

 

Take it up with Mike.

Apples and cantaloupes. Pull the stats for canting keel production boats and you'll be aligned nicely

 

Is this now an implication that multihulls are "bad"?

Good lord.

 

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Oh lord, no: it simply highlights the absurdity of this comment by Mr. Ostlind Hussong:

The fact is that when I was a kid it would have been ludicrous to think a monohull could ever beat the same length racing cat. But now the fastest sailboat under 20'(Moth) does it as a matter of course. Monohull development is far from done and it is pioneers like Vlad that have the vision to see that monohulls can be designed that will be faster than the same length cat or tri. Not only that: they can be self-righting as well( at least like an Open 60).

 

Simple question, then...

Do mulithulls, or do they not, enjoy a serious speed advantage over monohulls and have had that same advantage for many decades during what has become the modern era for multihulls?

Before one puts their fingers on the keyboard, one should keep in mind that we are talking about conventional craft here; that being boats that do not use lifting foils to generate additional speed, or engines kept running night and day, in order to facilitate the movement and stable positioning of a swinging keel component.

Many well-versed designers, as well as learned followers of the boating industry, do not lump foiling craft in the same category as conventional, non-lifting foil, machines. To do otherwise amounts to automobile racers indicating that F1 machines should be classed the same as a racing Mazda production sedans, simply because they all have four wheels on the ground. Unfortunately, some members of this forum see it in any fashion that they wish in order to make a point that favors their extremely limited perspective.

If the weakly drawn comparison continues, then let's put a 30hp outboard on a Tornado, complete with its rig in place, and challenge any Moth on the planet to step-up for a beat-down... and they can select the style of race and location of the venue. What the heck, it's only a minor speed enhancement device, much like a pair of foils, will make the point nicely and it falls within the same allowance as the big canters are given. Foiling boats are different animals, just like a Zebra is not a Horse.

 

I think that was in response to Hussong's implication in post 15 that foilers and canters were pushing the envelope too far to catch up with multihulls, implying multihulls never pushed the envelope too far racing. Comparative statistics would add more to the discussion than a couple photos of select failures.

 

Errr, the fact that your post and quote was mixing apples and cantaloupes was the issue I was trying to highlight.

Canting keel production boats are a tiny, tiny minority among racing yachts, Leading-edge radical speed machines are also a very small minority among racing yachts. Therefore the fact that they have issues cannot reasonably be seen to be related to any supposed inherent problems with racing yachts as a whole.

To repeat, the vast majority of winning racing yachts are much more conventional - they have fixed keels, no moving ballast, and a wide range of displacement. Therefore any claim that "racing is about winning, and racing designers are pushed into poor, or very marginal, design practices in order to remain competitive" is simply wrong on the hard cold objective evidence of the vast majority of winning racing yachts.