Midship sections for fast cruising yacht.

I think a lot of people look at a boat's hull shape when searching for a boat. I know I did. I have spent enough miles in sailboats in both flat bottoms and v'd bottoms in all kinds of weather. The flat bottoms tend to pound like crazy whereas the v bottoms tend to have a much smoother ride. So I specifically looked for a boat with a "V" shape to the forward sections for my cruising sailboat. I found it in my Gulfstar 37 which has a hull shape very similar to the v shaped hull in the original post. It has a very comfortable ride in rough weather. Now I was looking for a cruiser. If I was looking for a race boat, then the flat bottom is probably faster. I would have looked for a different hull shape for a race boat. Different horses for different courses.

 

It would depend on the type of cruising you wish to do. The requirements for blue water cruisng will be different to those for coastal hopping where ultimate seaworthiness may be less important than accomodation, speed or trendiness. Marchaj, in his book "Seaworthiness: The Forgotton Factor", makes a good case for deep hulls with low freeboard, yet few cruising hulls nowadays are actually of this type. I would guess that true blue water cruising people are in the minority and that market forces drive cruising hull designs to appear as they do.

Cruising hull design is also influenced by the fads of racing yacht design, which in turn is influenced by the rules in place at the time, so there is no guarantee that the cruising hull design of the moment is the best hull for a cruising yacht. I remember cruising the Agean on a 40 foot charter yacht in the IOR era. What I remember most about it was sleeping in the aft cabin, in a sheltered anchorage, with the noise of the reflected waves from the pier wall slamming all night against the underside of the wide counter stern. It was a learning experience.

 

The faster you go the more violent the motion may be.

Cruising fun is not strapping into $6000 Stidd chairs to gain 1/2 K.

Most light crewed cruising under 40ft loa is 100 to 120 NM per day , not that fast.

 

You could not give a less significant comparison.

 

"Performance" at three knots is strictly equal to three knots