TP52s

So you are saying you have no working knowledge or experience about boat design, construction, or racing. Bloody hell mate, you really need to step back then. I consider myself a pup with 2 Sydney Hobarts and 18 years of racing to my name. You have a fair bit to learn before you say much more.

You need to come up with something more than your notions about why you think TransPacs are not seaworthy. I say bullocks to your theorizing as you obviously just don't understand the basic principles of yacht design or sailing. You cannot be an expert on anything without working knowledge my friend. I grew up in the boat yards building power and sail machines under the very careful eye of my father. I learned a great deal from him and am proud of the vessels I build. Not one keel has fallen off, not one engine has gone through the hull, not one chainplate has torn out no matter how hard racers try to push the boats to their limits.

 

"If you can't be part of the solution, there is still good money to be made from compounding the problem." Sounds about right for our migho.

 

Your comments have been addressed ad naseum.

Of course you are right about east coast nav.archs. We are obviously all incompetent because great exhalted YOU do not approve of east coast designs- whatever that means. And you are definitely the authority on what is an appropriate yacht design. Please enlighten us all and give us your approved designs so we can go purchase them. Or better yet- create one of your own designs and see how well it performs! Please forgive me, oh lord of all watercraft for not seeing your perspective earlier.

 

Water Addict.

I really would like to know more about http://www.boatdesign.net/NYD/K800/. She is like the boat of the month for this forum. But that is for another thread.

East coast naval architects are worthless right now because of the closed minded society in which they live. It is the kind of society where you have Stepford Wives and a robot can interact in normal society there without being noticed. In other words it is impossible to react fast enough to make a difference without getting knocked off the A party list. Dare question apparent poor ethical behavior by fellows like Jim Teeters and you get threats and lessons on Karma from folks like Tripp Gal.

Lets all try to keep open minds. This makes us all happier. For example, we might blame NYYC for not being able to challenge in the AC for 7 years but then again we might also credit them for all the fine support early in their history regarding retractable foils. That battle is now on again with vigor. I certainly am pleased that NYYC is ignoring ORCA, in effect thumbing down TP52s, and going with true international rating standards (IRC).

We are lucky to be into sailing right now. Monohull sailboat design is about to take a quantum leap. The tricks worked out on multihulls and on power boats likely are applicable to monohull sailboats when one ignores design rules prohibiting the innovations. It will not be more than a couple more years until we have cell phone coverage over all the oceans. We already have weather, current and other reporting that allows us to avoid danger. There are supermarkets at the most remote ports of call. All of this indicates a go for one of the most interesting sailboat design periods in several hundred years.

Then we have the misperception that AC boats are fast and what you want is a keel like on an AC boat or on a TP52. My mind is still open to the notion that there is some kind of benefit to a heavy weighted fixed fin bulb keel. But I am to stupid - or smart - to see it. All I see are disadvantages. Can you give me any argument supporting them that is not based on an artificial design rule protecting vested interests? If they are great why don't fishing boats use them? I just think our grand fathers and NAs working powerboats know that that appendage either is useless or harmful. To say the appendege is owner driven, is close to if not actually malpractice.

Go west young man. It is like Hard Drive to the Klondike. You are not going to strick gold on the east coast and you are not going to know more than an amature designer, like well myself, unless you are in an environment ready to win gold again. (Worse showing in the sailing events in 60 years during the last Olympics. If there ever was an indicator that the east-is-the-least coast for sailors in the US, that is it.)

You likely are aware of all the new design work involving Homeland Security. Yards that haven't had worked in decades are humming on the west coast. I sence that similar yards on the east coast are museums. You have to be where the action is to be relevant. During the Internet Gold rush everyone of importance - well most anyway, moved to the west coast. With the importance of Computer Aided Design in boat building is it surprising that this should not also be happening with your profession?

You can of course bang your head trying to make things better where you currently practic but I think all you are going to get are more Melges and Bongos. Its the place. Its not you. There will be 1000 yes men giving you robot advice and the 1 no guy that will make your design great has already left the east coast and is living in Water World. Guys like well, Andrew Kerr.

 

I would like to nominate this sentence for the 2004 BS Award.

The answer, migh, is that fishing boats don't sail, usually.

Steve "dis custard..."

 

Funny to hear that from someone like you!

This may come as a surprise to you, but fishing boats and sailing boats are not the same!

At long last here's something you've got right! A bulbed keel is indeed useless or harmful on a powerboat! But you know what? Even Jim Teeters and The Farr Dynasty would agree on that, so you might have to reconsider...

 

This fellow is barking mad and we all know you can't reason with a rabid dog, you have to put them down.

 

This seems to be a conflict of logic. I'm sure you will come back with some warped explanation.

Some examples? Like what? There are only so many ways to extract energy from the wind. What do you propose?

Uh lets see... an advantage might be so YOU DON'T FLIP OVER, nitwit. Yes there are other ways to provide transverse stability- so the f. what.

Why don't you enter the Olympics then and show us all how it's done.

 

Me thinks he doth armchair sail too much. I am guessing he is one of the CA 60's era nuts who had a dozen too many acid stamps, hence the lack of brain cells for thinking. Add to that a healthy dose of intimidation of the water and "tippy" boats, viola! Frank Mighetto. The fellow just needs to buy himself an airstream trailer and see the USA on terra firma. The ocean and boats are just too much for him.

 

Why don't you enter the Olympics then and show us all how it's done

The fact that 50 somethings are competitive in the sailing events at the Olympics is something that is truely exciting about the sport to a middle aged man. (Thank you CB for not calling me and old fart.)

The exciting thing about a new boat design is that when the boat first comes out there are few experts. So if you work with the vessel as the designer intended you can become the expert. This is why for a young person I think it is very foolish to crew on boats that do not plane. It is harmfull to their sailing career.

Question: What did the movable ballast trained sailor say to the keel boat trained sailor?

Answer: Would you like fries with that order?

We really are seeing a technology shift as great as that seen in the IT field in going from Visual Basic to Java.

Trying to keep on topic, the sailing style advanced with a TP52 may or may not be the keel boat style. I am thinking that off of the windward leeward buoy courses, perhaps TP52s can be a good thing because they plane and . However, for a young sailor, or young at heart sailor, hoping for Olympic chances, crewing on such a boat will limit them. The TP52 is likely still part of the samurai warrior class of sail boats.

I call a fixed bulb weighted fin race boat a samurai warrior class boat because they have out lived their usefulness and are now wards of the clubs. They are also well represented in museums on the east coast.

We create windward leeward courses for samurai warrior class boats by way of honoring their captains but no longer expect their crews to advance the sport. For these boats to look good they litteraly must be given a slow course, a winlee. They are horses for courses or to put it differently horses that have been put out to pasture.

That is fine and tolerable until you discover that the US is not competitive internationally in any sailing sport and each year there are 10,000 US based sailors, as my colleagues at McKinsey and Company discovered, dropping out. Then you start wondering if the ways of the samurai arn't being passed down to a younger group of samurai who will perpetuate forever the ward-of-the-state, ward-of-the-club mentality. Samurais became wards of the state after the Black Ships from America came to Japan. They just could not do the job and neither can our current samurai sailors.

Anyway this is why Kahn and Koch have given up trying to work with the current establishment to raise the level of US sailing to international competitive standards. Today, you get on a US sailing team by patronage and keeping your nose clean. In otherwords by not speaking out or questioning, in otherwords by being a robot and living on the east coast of the US. There is little chance for a west coast athelete of promis at any age in that kind of a system. US Sailing has a chance to change that. We can be hopeful.

Got to run. Sorry. Would you rather chat or sail I am asked. Catch up with you all monday.

 

You know Spaghetto, you got that absolutely right, I couldn't agree with you more. Except it was a Mac26x sailor, not a movable-ballast sailor.

Thanks so much for your wonderful insights.

 

"Got to run. Sorry. Would you rather chat or sail I am asked. Catch up with you all monday."

After reading this silly thread it seems we all know your answer to that question - CHAT!

We all are dummber for having read this thread.

 

Rate this thread as it should be

Everyone reading the mad ramblings should spend a moment and rate this rediculous thread (see the option on the menu bar above) and in the future, avoid responding; it only seems to fuel the demented thoughts.

 

Then we have the misperception that AC boats are fast and what you want is a keel like on an AC boat or on a TP52. My mind is still open to the notion that there is some kind of benefit to a heavy weighted fixed fin bulb keel. But I am to stupid - or smart - to see it. All I see are disadvantages. Can you give me any argument supporting them that is not based on an artificial design rule protecting vested interests?

Frank

You seem to have a fundamental lack of understanding of how yacht stability works. Rather than giving opinions, I have enclosed a worked example that will illustrate the difference between a bulb keel, symmetrical water ballast and asymmetrical water ballast.

In the illustration below, curve A is a 4 ton sailboat with 1 ton of lead in the bulb keel. Curve B is the same boat without the lead in the bulb, but with 1 ton of water ballast low and on the centreline. Curve C is the same hull again, but with the water ballast moved out to a tank near the rail. In all cases the total displacement of the boat is 4 tons.

As you can see from the 3 front views taken at 20 degrees of heel, the righting arms for the bulb keel and the assymetrical water ballast are very similar at this heel angle, while the centreline ballasted case has a significantly worse righting arm.

The actual righting arm curves from 0 to 180 degrees show the situation in more detail. Although the asymmetrical ballast case is reasonable at low heel angles, it quicky becomes inferior above a heel angle of 20 degrees. It is still superior to the symetrical water ballast case up until about 60 degrees.

Both of these curves however are greatly inferior to the bulb keel case however, whch has almost twice the maximum righting arm (and therefore twice the sail carrying ability), a much greater angle of vanishing stability, and substantially higher area under the righting arm curve (equivalent to the amount of energy required to capsize the boat).


If they are great why don't fishing boats use them?

Because fishing boats do not have sails applying substantial heeling moments.

I just think our grand fathers and NAs working powerboats know that that appendage either is useless or harmful.

Our grandfathers boats went significantly slower because they had substantially less righting moment available. This is also the reason that the speed potential of a Mac26x under sail is limited, as its available righting moment is substantially less than most boats its size.

If you like I can write a post about why the Cods Head and Mackerel Tail hull shape was made obsolete in about 1830 and has not been competitive ever since, but you will have to promise to actually listen to the reasons.

 

Andrew;

I feel that I may answer for the great one;

a) You must be an East Coast USA person; you're so brainwashed by following the conventional line....the same line that has seen the USA written off as a competitive sailing force. There is a new way of sailing (the fourth mode) which can only be learned by those who come from areas where they sail lightweight centreboarders. Look at the America's Cup; no US team in the finals yet again, and the Cup was won by those famous skiffies from Switzerland. Proof!

b) Your approach to sailing just PROVES that you are only experienced in heavy displacement non-planing sailing craft. You just fail to see the possibilities of a planing performance boat, like the Macgregor 26X. You're obviously a very conservative person who has never done anything like sail a fast craft, or else you'd be a Frank follower (like we all are here). You' ve obvioously never seen a fast boat like a skiff, windsurfer, speed record boat, or a Macregor 26X.

c) The leverage is wrong; a figure skater spins fater with the weight concentrated (with her arms into her body) and therefore a boat must go faster with the ballast concentrated. At first we pointed out to Frank that figure skaters rarely stick masts in their back and spin across oceans and that the analogy is wrong. We also pointed out that Frank Bethwaite (one of his gurus) writes at length about the importance of separating ballast from C of B and levers etc, but Mighetto can't quite understand that either. But now, after being exposed to the depth of his experience, insight and knowledge, we are humbled. Our errors have been exposed. You should join us in Mighettoland.

d) Frank will also tell you that you obviously don't know anything about older boats; long keelers, boats with internal ballast; the boats before the "failed fin keel experiment that started in the 1960s". Of course, Frank MUST know more than you about classic boats......Because he chartered a square rigger once, and he saw Trekka in a museum too. How can your pitiful knowledge compare to that depth of insight???

e) Frank will tell you that if you don't think old boats are competitive, it's because you haven't understood what Frank has learned; that in light airs, reducing sail area (reefing, changing headsails etc) actually makes a boat go FASTER, because it reduces drag. This is, of course, one of the reasons that Frank has given as to why his Macgregor 26 (which finishes DFL in beer can races) can beat a TP 52 in light airs.

f) You obviously have no knowledge of the sort of forces involved in high performance sailing. The bulb will be torn off these TP 52s (not that there are any that will sail at speed) as soon as they heel and gather speed.

g) Your ideas on stability are wrong. The CSF proves that TP 52s are unsafe. OK, it may be called "crude" by even those who sponsor it, it may not include most of the factors involved in stability; but it's on the US Sailing website so it must be right.

Really, Andrew......your post just proves to Frank that you're a typical short-sited Yankee conservative, who knows nothing about high speed sailing, nothing about the virtues of traditional boats, and nothing about design. You seem so ignorant you've obviously never read Royce or Bethwaite.....Really, you should sail a Macgregor 26X and experience the thrill of planing in 11 knots of wind.

In fact, your post shows that you are just a secret agent of the Teeters conspiracy.....here, have some Kool-Aid.