Wharrams to weather: How bad is it?

mental boy,there is a Tiki 21 in the bay that is sailed pretty regularly. His name is Roger and the boat is LIttle Cat. He frequents the Wharram Builders and freinds forum. I would think he would be the guy for you to hook-up with.

 

Good sailing.
Looks like you caught about 50% of the favourable wind shifts. ;-)
Better than I do most days.

 

81-88 tangaroa Mk1 in full RTW-trim, rig Newick-style cutter (small main, mast just aft of 50% LOA, big genny/yankee, staysail: on the DR I was always calculating with 120° over ground between tacks as far as I remember (no GPS then!) & this was consistently pessimistic. boat was quite overladen so lateral area was fairly big & windage fairly small (for a Wharram!), had lots of forestaysag of course with this type of rig...
in retrospect we still consider it a miracle that she didn't come apart as e.g. coming back via the Red Sea at times she had to be driven really hard upwind in a lot of wind & short vicious seas - it was never a question then that we were making better than 60° over ground (which of course would have been ridiculous on our 2nd & 3rd cng with the 7' draft 37' alloy keeler we had "upgraded" to from the Wharram...)
(& obviously you don't want to hear about the "conditions onboard" during those beats up the Red Sea...)
(everything under Aries btw...)

 

Just a thought;
I've only sailed on a Wharram (Tiki 26) once and at that time I didn't know squat about sailing, but having since sailed a lot on keelers I'm wondering if running backstays would help the forestay sag issue ? Or would the inherent "flexibility" kill them too ?

 

the boat was incredibly flexible, even with firm rubber under the beams: jumping at one hull's extremity at the right frequency one could excite the whole boat in torsion - looked scary even though in fact she stood all 36000 miles of circumnavigation & crossed the atlantic one more time under new owner without structural failure. the way to go would have been a fractional rig with a large main (not necessarily fullbatten) & small foresails

 

my W-31 had a F-27 tri's rig on her and sails full batten main +big jib
it was an older alloy mast that the f-27 racer/owner replaced with carbon
I did not build her just bought and sold

she also had the original sails that were much smaller un battened cutter rig
with the stock W-31 sails she was slow and did not point well
with the F-27 rig and sails she was much faster and pointed higher

other factors that effect pointing are how well fared the hull rudders and CB are
and if the fins have a good foil shape [something the CB could be vastly improved on]
as many Wharram's donot have good foil shapes my CB was not very well shaped
nor were the rudders

 

Nota; I didn't think centreboards were used on Wharrams except the bigger Pahis ? Was that a builder mod ?

 

she had a single center mounted CB under the deck
as the f-27 rig was not standard maybe added the CB also
I did not build the boat or add the rig but know the rig was added years after