Heavy sailboats : Can they point ?

The inability to progress with a blunt heavy cargo vessel , beating into the Roaring 40's , has little to do with more modern boats.

The Clipper ships had little troubble doubbling the Horn , at speed!

They just didnt carry as much cargo , and required a much larger less economical crew.

FAST FRED

 

The Clippers, with their great length to beam, had less trouble, but, to me, that seems to make the arguement for fine hulls to windward, rather than large D/L.

Dan

 

Options, Increase or Decrease Ballast Ratios

Looking quickly thru a few of these discussions, brought to mind an article that some might find interesting. Bray Yacht Design discusses decreasing ballast ratios and substituting form stability to arrive at an easier driven hull.
...An excerpt...
"....once read an article by an Architect of repute that stated that anything over 30% ballast ratio was a waste of time. He went on to point out that as you increase your ballast ratio you devastate the hull shape. You do increase the ability of the boat to carry sail, but at a higher angle of heel. What is more, the distorted, heavier hull form has more resistance. Preliminary work carried out by my company, Bray Yacht Design And Research Ltd., has indicated resistance goes up twice as fast as sail carrying ability. Still, ballast ratios have continued to go up."

Bray Yacht Design, 'The New Ultralight Displacement Sailboats'

 

I can't see how the increase in ballast ratio distorts the hull shape. Usually, most of the ballast is carried in the keel.
If you want to increase the form stability, you'll have to increase the waterline beam, which not in all cases leads to an easier driven hull.

 

As I understand it, he is saying that the submerged part of the hull has a distorted form shape (and for that has more resistance ) because of the larger angle of heel ( in general , hull resistance is proportional to the angle of heel). But a heavy sailboat can be as stif , or stifer , than a light one , and for that reason expose a more efficient sail plan to windward .
Older heavy sailboats often have a not so deep total draft due to their long keel, and hence the larger angle of heel . But we can always put a deep keel in a heavy sailboat as well as in a light one and have a stiffer boat with less heel and resistance and better sailplan to windward. A heavy sailboat is characterized by its full hull form and not by the depth of the keel. Having a full hull form , it does not expose the wide flat areas of the bottoms of the light boats that distort the form shape of the submerged part of their hull and increase their hull resistance.

 

built to rule boats

Alrighty then I would like to add a couple of things to what fast fred has pointed out
#1 these clowns that call themselves sailors and buy the "racer-cruisers" allong with there designers should not be counted as they are ruining the sport of sailing for the rest of us
#2 Boats should NEVER be built or dessigned for a racing rule because this way they are not fast and racing rules come and go...I know that unfortunatly this is the way things are but it should be avoided at all costs
#3 the reason for the excellent pre 50's/60's is because it was before the days of the weekend sailors and the built to rules boats

 

Orion,
#1 - How are the owners of racer/cruisers "ruining" the sport? I'm not arguing the point as such, just curious as to how you think it is hurting things.
#2 - Open 60s are built to a rule, but no-one would argue that they are not fast. Upi just have to design rules that allow fast boats
#3 - If you don't think that there were no weekend sailors or rule-designed boats before the 50's, then you need to look up the J-boats (rule built) and their owners.

Steve

 

Isaid
"Upi", and then notice the keyboard had moved over. "YOU" was what my fingers were aiming for....

 

Steve
#1 I think that racer-cruisers are devalueing truely capable boats and that the owners are also giving a market reason to hardware manufacturing to charge exorbant amounts of money for what they sell I also find that they are ruining the sport through there overcommersialisation (sp?) ie stupid little boat trikets and over politicisation of sailing. I find that the best way to tell the sailors from the landlubbers is to hurl a few insults and 4 letter words along with the starbord/instide/leeward/ Protest you @#$#ing arrrrshole because usually the sailors will grin and not make anything of it in the bar afterwards knowing it was meerly on water politeness and the landlubbers will give you the evil eye and not speak to you!
I will add to this though that both my grandfather and my uncle are the owners of new production boats and they are both taking there boats offshore and possibly around cape horn so this is a generalisation and not applicable to everyone
#2 It is true that open 60's are buit to a rule but how many of todays 60's do you expect to see sailing 2 years from now let alone 10 years from now
#3 yes there were weekend sailors in the 50's and 60's it is mearly that they were not as common or as irritating gras a the advent cheaper boat building methods

 

Orion;

1) I think you'll find many sailors who are probably much more "real" than you do NOT like being sworn at and insulted. I know America's Cup winners (who started their trans-oceanic cruising at age 2 or so, and are expert professonal wooden boatbuilders and skiff champions, not "merely" racers) who do not like being sworn at and insulted. I know Olympic medallists who don't like it. I've done a bunch of Sydney-Hobarts, won national and state titles and been 4th in the national "champion of champions" series, won in everything from 8' wavejumping windsurfers to 80' carbon fibre maxis, and I'm damned if I'll talk to some punk who swears at me and insults me (unless he apologises first, which is what real sailors often do when they've lost their temper on the water).

2) What's not capable about cruiser-racers? I' ve sailed on a boat that has been liveaboard homes for over 20 years and have cruised from Europe to New Zealand and up to Alaska. It's definitely "truly capable" of cruising.

That same boat has been British national "Yacht of the Year" more than once. It has won its class in the Fastnet several times, won the Channel Race (the UK's other main offshore event) against the whole Admiral's Cup fleet, won the international Commodore's Cup, won its class in the Sydney-Hobart of 2000 (half a dozen Volvo boats competed that year and went on press as saying the Hobart would be the hardest part of the Round the World race). So it's definitely "truly capable" of racing.

I know a guy, the most experienced Sydney-Hobart skipper of all, who cruises his IRC racer/cruiser home singlehanded (or doublehanded, I've forgotten) across the notorious Bass Strait. The boat is a regular winner in IRC and OD and IMS. He has had an internationally-succesful career in IOR raceboats, IMS, way back to the '60s. His boat can race, it can cruise - it is capable in both. According to your theory, he knows less than you do about boats. Not likely!

3) There have been offshore boats built to rating rules since Nina of about 1928. Her hull form and rig were both designed around the rules. Many boats of the '50s and '60s and earlier were designed around rules.

4) Several Open 60s have been around the world more than once. They ARE lasting, despite doing many more miles than almost any other boat.

5) If you don't have a rating rule, how to you race? PHRF style handicapping, where the results are based on some committee's impression of the speed of your boat and your sailing skill? No thanks.

Box or restricted class rules? Yet the oldest international "box rules" of all, the International Canoe and International 14, have created very radical and expensive boats that are in their own way, just as distorted as anything the IOR or IMS produced. Ever seen the mid point on a Hutchinson Internatonal 14? It looks like someone has stuck half a dinner plate on the chine.

Why do Int Canoes have canoe sterns with chines? Because of the requirements of the class rule.

If you dump almost all rules and just go for length restrictions alone, you end up with boats like Mini Transat 6.5s - boats that are fairly quick for their length, but also incredibly expensive. The 22' Minis cost aboout as much as a normal 30'er, and in most conditions they are slower than a 30'er.

Look at some of the boats designed to a rule - Dorade, Stormy Weather, the metre boats, the 30 squares, the Australian Cole 43, the classic S&S boats of the late '60s and early '70s - all rule-driven, all beautiful.

 

Benefic, launched in 1991, in the hands of skipper Karen Leibovici, is currently racing around the world in her 5th Vendee, and 6th time RTW. The boat has a little less than 150,000 miles under her keel, most of it racing in the Southern Ocean. A couple of the other boats in the current Vendee are 8-9 years old, with more than 80,000 miles on them, and they are still competive with new foils, sails, and rigs.

Tad

 

Original question

I see there might bee arguments about rules boat vs. non rule boats, but I remember the thread was about light (modern..) boats vs. heavier ones, and the capability of heavy sailboat to point and progess upwind.

I still do believe that nice, heavy, hull designs from 50 years ago or more should be considered as attractive even today, for some kind of needs, because their performances (including upwind performance) are better than most people believe, and because they can be built using excellent cheap industrial materials (non exotics...).

I guess that their chances to win against light modern boats in modern rule based competitions are clearly limited, but, they do have quite a few other advantages, including added comfort at sea and an interresting safety advantage when you get stricken by a gale upwind from a coast (much better capabilities to progess upwind in gales...).
I guess one of the reason they do not get more attention (and immitations...)today, is that cruiser designs of the time were a bit slow in light winds, and it might seem odd to try building replications of old racers while saying that they have no chance to win a race, at least by current practice.

looks much more like a marketing issues, than a technical ones..

 

re "I guess that their chances to win against light modern boats in modern rule based competitions are clearly limited"

Nope. In the last few years, boats like the very heavy circa '65 "Sunstone" (S&S 38) have won their class in Hobart (during a world cruise after being UK Yacht of the Year several times); the 1909 vintage Fife "Eu Na Mara" has won the Australian Offshore Championships under IRC (against carbon Farrs etc); another old Fife has won its class in Cowes Week under IRC; and the Laurent Giles designs including one whose name I've forgotteon (something like "Zulu") and "Whooper" (both about 1930s) have won major UK races like the IRC nationals in the past few years.

There is no rating disadvantage to old boats. In fact, Sunstone was re-measured by ISAF to find out why the old boats had an apparent IMS advantage!

"but, they do have quite a few other advantages, including added comfort at sea"

It depends on your definition; I know a skipper who has won the One Ton Cup, Admiral's Cup, sailed 30+ Hobarts and won several, won the Fastnet, did the '79 Fastnet, and sailed heavy long-keel boats, S&S classic, Frers mastheaders, Petersons - and says that his current IMS Farr lightweight was a better boat to be on in the infamous 1998 Hobart (6 deaths, 3 of them from a classic from the 1930s or 1940s) than his famous Fastnet winning S&S design of the '60s. There's not a lot that's comfortable about a boat that drives through waves instead of going over them.

"and an interesting safety advantage when you get stricken by a gale upwind from a coast (much better capabilities to progess upwind in gales...)."

No way. The upwind performance of the Fife classic (sorry, I've forgotten the name) was (according to the owner) her weak point in that she pointed 15 degrees lower than the old IOR 25-28s she raced against.

The 2000 Sydney-Hobart was largely sailed in a gale that had most boats down to storm trysail and storm jib, in seas that were bad enough that the Volvo Round the World race crews (training for the race to be held the next year) to go on record as saying that the Hobart would be the toughest part of the Round the World race. Sunstone (remember, a classic and enormously succesful S&S) was slower than 30' IMS boats and (IIRC) no faster than 33' lightweight IMS boats of 1981 vintage. It was not an easy race - Sunstone lost her splining and suffered rigging damage, yet she was much SLOWER upwind in the gale than a modern 38.

In a moderately heavy breeze (#3 jib stuff IIRC) Sunstone is actually clearly slower than a 1975 Farr cruiser/racer 36 upwind, let along a modern 36.

In the gale in the '98 Sydney Hobart, the veteran yacht of the fleet not only didn't go upwind well, she sank with the loss of 3 lives.

There is no logic in the argument that (1) old boats are disadvantaged by rating rules yet (2) they go upwind better than new boats.

The old boats rate very, very low under IRC and IMS - so if they went upwind as well as new boats they'd win every heavy air race. They don't! They do well, they are fully competitive, but they don't win every race - and they only win because of their low rating. They do NOT finish ahead of modern boats of similar size, even when it's a beat upwind in a gale.

In Australia, our major race is the Sydney-Hobart. Every year you must expect to spend 200 miles or so going upwind in big seas, with the waves kicked up by 2-4 knots of opposing current. It's a place where the most succesful skippers (duel Hobart winners like Syd Fisher, Lou Abrahams, Roger Hickman) say that one of the most important features of a boat is its ability to go upwind in heavy air.

Yet they sail modern boats, because even upwind in 35-40+ knots, they still go faster than the old boats.

Put it this way. Syd's current boat rates about 13% faster than his old S&S design which is almost the same length. If Syd thought his old boat was faster upwind in the big winds typical of the Hobart, he'd still be sailing it - and he'd be taking advantage of its very low rating. He doesn't sail it - he sails a modern IRC/IMS boat.

The old boat is still racing, still doing well (she IS quite competitive) but Syd prefers the all-round pace (including upwind) of his carbon fibre lightweight.

Even older boats like 12 metres are not competitive upwind against modern 50s, and the 12s are not a comfortable ride in many ways. They are stunning to sail, but wet and they tend to stick their long snout through swells.

Re "it might seem odd to try building replications of old racers while saying that they have no chance to win a race, at least by current practice."

No way, a boat built in modern materials to an old design like Sunstone's would be an absolute killer on the racecourse; all the age allowance and other rating relief, plus modern construction........the facts are clear, boats as old as the 1909 vintage Eu Na Mara are winning major races around the world on IRC. Anyone who thinks old boats are handicapped unfairly, that they are beaten because the rules are wrong, has not been looking at the lessons of the racecourse.

The main reason most people buy newer boats instead of replicas is that they prefer newer boats!

I own a 1968 timber boat, so I don't think I'm prejudiced against old boats - I just think the facts are pretty simple.

 

#1 yes that is true that no one likes to be sworn at and appologizing is the correct thing to do. i have often found though that certain people take it as a on water loss of temper and others will take it as a personal insult which it is often never ment to be (i appologize if i offended anyone by not clarifying this the first time)
#2 I am not dissputing the sea worthieness of racer-cruisers as boat (I will be bringing a brand new Hanse 411 aross the atlantic and quite possibly around cape horn) I am mearly disputing many elements in the rig and interior as sold by the factories for those people who do not ever leave sight of shore or a marina i find that now that it is very hard to find production boats that the producers are willing to modify to meet the needs of those who would be taking there boats offshore
#3 yes racing boats have been built arround racing rules for decade i simply believe that boat design and the boats would profit more if they were not designed to race well under a certain set of rules (one excelent example of this are the older half tonnes on which i have raced and found that they weigh to much for there rig and have and incredibly short waterline)
#4 some 60's yes are lasting but compaired to the number of 60's that are being newly built and designed i wouldn't exactly say that they are built to be raced for the leinght of time the 60 class is racing (now very few boats are built like that but with the proper mantenance and alot of time and effort you can race them for a good long time
#5 yes some of the nicest boats i have ever had the honor of sailing on were build around the rules of the day and some wonderful and inventive designs were inspired to meet these rules but i still maintain that if racing boats were built simpy for speed that boat design (both racing and cruising) would be far better off
#6 in responce to what rules i race with and what i would prefer them to be in spite of my near hatred of what i believe these rules have done to boat design (ie the slab sided ims monsters currently scaring people in the med.) i will concead that to a certain level these rules are necesairy because at a club racing level you cannot expect every one to have the newest best boat I do race phrf and i do not doubt that it evens things out pretty well on the race cource i do beleive that these rule should be tweaked slightly every season/2 seasons to keep the rules updated with the lattest of boat design and to make it uneconomical to boat builders/designers to build rule specific boats
#7 allthough going for length restrictions alone does make for some expencive boats i personnally would rather buy a new boat and save for a year or 2 longer for an upgrade in on water speed rather than get a new boat right away for an upgrade in on paper speed that i only see once i get into the club house and the race comity has fed the results though there computer
Orion

 

re "I guess that their chances to win against light modern boats in modern rule based competitions are clearly limited"

re :"Nope. In the last few years, boats like the very heavy circa '65 "Sunstone" (S&S 38) have won their class in Hobart (during a world cruise after being UK Yacht of the Year several times); the 1909 vintage Fife "Eu Na Mara" has won the Australian Offshore Championships under IRC (against carbon Farrs etc); another old Fife has won its class in Cowes Week under IRC; and the Laurent Giles designs including one whose name I've forgotteon (something like "Zulu") and "Whooper" (both about 1930s) have won major UK races like the IRC nationals in the past few years.
There is no rating disadvantage to old boats. In fact, Sunstone was re-measured by ISAF to find out why the old boats had an apparent IMS advantage!"



My message concerned the eventual building of heavier sailboats today, using either authentic old hull designs, or some evolutions of them. I understand that such boat would not qualify for any kind of age allowances, contrarily to real oldies, or antiques, which would obviously ruin their chances of winning, whatever they might have been. Furthermore, although an enthousiastic and frequent sailor on a 1931 pilot cutter, and restorer of even older boats, I defend using real antique boat at sea today but I strongly object, for safety reasons dues to the age of their materials and structure, racing them on "serious races" against modern boats.




re" they do have quite a few other advantages, including added comfort at sea "

re "It depends on your definition; I know a skipper who has won the One Ton Cup, Admiral's Cup, sailed 30+ Hobarts and won several, won the Fastnet, did the '79 Fastnet, and sailed heavy long-keel boats, S&S classic, Frers mastheaders, Petersons - and says that his current IMS Farr lightweight was a better boat to be on in the infamous 1998 Hobart (6 deaths, 3 of them from a classic from the 1930s or 1940s) than his famous Fastnet winning S&S design of the '60s. There's not a lot that's comfortable about a boat that drives through waves instead of going over them."



heavier boats have much slower and gentler roll and pitch movements because of higher giradius and lower metacentric height, that'is basic physics. Obviously, because their pitch is slower, they are also weter because they don't climb waves as quickly. I thank you for this precision which was not detailed in my message. I don't think it changes the general meaning of my sentence.




re"and an interesting safety advantage when you get stricken by a gale upwind from a coast (much better capabilities to progess upwind in gales...)."

re "No way. The upwind performance of the Fife classic (sorry, I've forgotten the name) was (according to the owner) her weak point in that she pointed 15 degrees lower than the old IOR 25-28s she raced against."




I was caught in a SW gale in Irish Sea with a modern serial Finot design, and I can testify that the boat went actually backwards in spite of our best efforts to get some distance upwind from the Irish coast. I was not killed in the incident because our navigation was precise and we could find a shelter downwind in spite of the gale. I understand that a great many boat sank on the Irish coast out of similar problems. This issue is supposed to be very well known (there is an ample litterature on it...), and in the 30' or 50', it was "the" big argument in favor of double-enders (Colin Archer type...) which were considered as having a distinctive advantage in those kind of circumstances. Of course they didn't have carbon fiber ou GPS, but I understand they were very serious guys in their domain.
Furtermore I remind you I was speaking of saving lives, not of racing....





re "The 2000 Sydney-Hobart was largely sailed in a gale that had most boats down to storm trysail and storm jib, in seas that were bad enough that the Volvo Round the World race crews (training for the race to be held the next year) to go on record as saying that the Hobart would be the toughest part of the Round the World race. Sunstone (remember, a classic and enormously succesful S&S) was slower than 30' IMS boats and (IIRC) no faster than 33' lightweight IMS boats of 1981 vintage. It was not an easy race - Sunstone lost her splining and suffered rigging damage, yet she was much SLOWER upwind in the gale than a modern 38.
In a moderately heavy breeze (#3 jib stuff IIRC) Sunstone is actually clearly slower than a 1975 Farr cruiser/racer 36 upwind, let along a modern 36."



Again, I was speaking of real gale, for instance in Irish sea, where myself and all the serious people I know would simply not consider racing any more.
I insist that, generaly speaking, heavier boat can escape upwind better thant light boat whenever needed. Depending on the designs, this difference might be more or less sensible (it is huge when comparing Colin Archers vs. some Finots...).
I am really worried to see that, whenever I spoke of escaping and saving lifes, you speak about racing.





re"In the gale in the '98 Sydney Hobart, the veteran yacht of the fleet not only didn't go upwind well, she sank with the loss of 3 lives."


Some boats sink due to different reasons. I guess that absence of understanding about real issues has always been a major reason and will always be. Personnaly I object serious racing aboard real antiques, whatever the quality of their maintenance, because many of them are clearly much older than they were ever supposed to be. That is one of the reason I strongly believe that we should build some copies of them with improved materials.





re "There is no logic in the argument that (1) old boats are disadvantaged by rating rules yet (2) they go upwind better than new boats."


if you read my messages you will see I never said any of those propositions, much less the whole of them.





re"The old boats rate very, very low under IRC and IMS - so if they went upwind as well as new boats they'd win every heavy air race. They don't! They do well, they are fully competitive, but they don't win every race - and they only win because of their low rating. They do NOT finish ahead of modern boats of similar size, even when it's a beat upwind in a gale."


I think one should never race in gales with real antique boats. Even more if it is against modern IRC or IMS. I am currently working on a #1900 boat and the only "races" we are thinking about for it is Cannes' or St-Tropez', provided wind remains reasonable...






re "In Australia, our major race is the Sydney-Hobart. Every year you must expect to spend 200 miles or so going upwind in big seas, with the waves kicked up by 2-4 knots of opposing current. It's a place where the most succesful skippers (duel Hobart winners like Syd Fisher, Lou Abrahams, Roger Hickman) say that one of the most important features of a boat is its ability to go upwind in heavy air."


In Europe many sailors lost they lives because their boats were pushed on rocks by gales on Irish or Norvegian coasts for instance. We often feel more concerned by this kind of issues than to know the upwind capabilities of boats in heavy air races





re "Yet they sail modern boats, because even upwind in 35-40+ knots, they still go faster than the old boats."

re"Put it this way. Syd's current boat rates about 13% faster than his old S&S design which is almost the same length. If Syd thought his old boat was faster upwind in the big winds typical of the Hobart, he'd still be sailing it - and he'd be taking advantage of its very low rating. He doesn't sail it - he sails a modern IRC/IMS boat."
The old boat is still racing, still doing well (she IS quite competitive) but Syd prefers the all-round pace (including upwind) of his carbon fibre lightweight."



If you pal's new boat wasn't getting a better rating allowance vs real speed than his older one, I guess he wouldn't have bought it. I don't think it might prove anyting, either way.






re"Even older boats like 12 metres are not competitive upwind against modern 50s, and the 12s are not a comfortable ride in many ways. They are stunning to sail, but wet and they tend to stick their long snout through swells."


I don' see many similarities between, say late 12 meters, and "classic" double-enders like Archer's or Francis Herreshoff, I was speaking of. Furthermore I spoke of saving lifes, not of being competitive.






Re "it might seem odd to try building replications of old racers while saying that they have no chance to win a race, at least by current practice."

re"No way, a boat built in modern materials to an old design like Sunstone's would be an absolute killer on the racecourse; all the age allowance and other rating relief, plus modern construction........the facts are clear, boats as old as the 1909 vintage Eu Na Mara are winning major races around the world on IRC. Anyone who thinks old boats are handicapped unfairly, that they are beaten because the rules are wrong, has not been looking at the lessons of the racecourse."


did you really write: "...age allowance ...plus modern construction...". Didn't you notice there was some kind of problem asking for both in the same boat ?





re"The main reason most people buy newer boats instead of replicas is that they prefer newer boats!"


other possible reasons are:
- established builders heavy marketing
- buyers incompetence
- lack of interresting products
- fashion
- ....




re"I own a 1968 timber boat, so I don't think I'm prejudiced against old boats - I just think the facts are pretty simple."


I don't