a canter,not

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And Timothy said: "I realize that multi hull is the way to go but why are canters the rage?"
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My point has nothing to do with foilers; it has to do with using on-deck movable ballast mentioned here by Tom. The idea is often times discounted but has real potential on larger boats whether they are foilers or not. What can be described as on-deck movable ballast IS used today on Hydroptere-water pumped along the wing to the ama's. It has tremendous potential to allow large monohulls and/or multihulls to go very fast.
I'm convinced that on-deck movable ballast on very wide racks combined with either a small canting keel or fixed keel and maybe foils(or not) could result in a self-righting monohull with close to the same speed for its length as a multi. I don't think we've seen the end of high speed development by a long shot and on-deck movable ballast will play a large role.

 

Water ballast is often used on short handed monos (and others), there are a few simple devices for acquiring it, transferring it to where it is needed and dumping it when it is not. No pumps, no real complication and well proven as effective. I like that idea over mobile solid ballast high in the boat, surly thats got to become an issue at some point, Murphy would see to that.

 

So, if your point has nothing to do with foilers, then why the plethora of foiler pictures? I mean, come on, Doug. I know you like the little buggers and all, but what are they doing on the posts? We'd all like to respect your contributions, but they stray so far off point with the gratuitous image files that it's difficult to ignore them.

Now if it was humor based, we can talk.

Doug, you are serious about this comparison? For a car person this would go something like this. "Now I know that my Dodge four banger isn't in the same league as an F1 drive, but with a blown Hemi, all-wheel drive, quad piston discs all around, F1 slicks and pure mag wheels as well as... well, you know the list is just too long to really post here..."

What is this BS longing to be like a Multi all about?

Sounds to me like a floating description of that broad who was married to Lorenzo Lamas. You know, the one with the fake cans, fake lips, fake injected face, fake pimped out shoes (OK, the pimped out shoes are cool)... you know she just looks like a well-done chunk of plastic. Can any of you imagine bringing that home to your Momma dearest?

I say, get an inflatable to begin with and end this ridiculous arms war.

One can only wonder just how far ahead the multi world would get if it were to slap all that kind of extra crap on the ride just to "be like those overly complex mono guys".

Point is, they do not need to.

Doesn't anyone find the ironic humor in all this? Let's spend untold millions in development and screw-ups, just so we can get a bit closer to the form that all monohullers love to hate.

This is truly ***** envy with a completely new multi-manifestation.

Whatever happened to driving the boat for the reasons for which it shines in its original form? Why is it so important to make a mono like a multi with so much gadgetry, so much complexity and so much of a penchant for self immolation that the whole exercise becomes ridiculous?

What ever happened to fantastic seamanship and tactics instead of trick gadgets?

Whatever happened to affordable craft that have really close, really fun racing instead of endless budgetary requirements to feed the ugly dog on the end of the chain?

Rant Over

 

Bravo Chris. You have the guts to "Tell it like it is"

As Clyde Cessna famously said "Simplicate and add lightness"

 

Actually, a self-righting monohull with speed equivalent to or faster than the fastest multi is like having your cake and eating it too. And a worthy development goal as well!

 

DOUG you are like a hound baying at the moon.

Monohulls like the Dragon are lovely classic sailboats. Painfully slow but lots of fun to sail in match racing,or OD fleets for the tactics and seamanship. The International 8Metre likewise is a beautful yacht but with its 70% of displacement keel weight it was doomed to be SLOW. The majority of monos are the same.

Face it Doug, CBTF or not, ballast for stability is SLOW,SLOW,SLOW.

The canting keeler is a last gasp attempt to squeeze the last tiny increments of performance out of ballast stabilised monohulls. A classic example of the law of diminishing returns.

Take Skandia a maxi canting keeler--beaten in a 168 NM open ocean race by a 30 ft Catamaran.

Take Ichi Ban, another maxi canting keeler. She was beaten last year in the Brisbane-Gladstone race by One and a Half HOURS, curtesy of Raw Nerve, a much smaller catamaran.
Again this year by the same 30 ft Catamaran which beat Skandia.

Cats and Tris now hold practically all the ocean crossing and continent circling records.

The human race is hooked on SPEED and multihulls have proven to be the fastest USABLE sailboats on the planet.

That is a fact of life and anyone who refuses to accept that is denying reality.

And Doug---we are not talking about foilers on this topic. They are a different subject entirely. Please don't contaminate them with ballast keels.

 

While I agree that multi hulls are the way to go for speed I am not convinced that for cruising purposes they are best. After all the reason all the development in vessels since the beginning of the agrarian age some 8000 years ago has been in mono hulls is that societies with a social elite need trade and their ships need to carry large loads of both cargo and heavy weaponry to either protect their cargo or to steel it from others . Pre- agrarian societies on the other hand tended to be egalitarian and used there vessels primarily for coastal voyaging . hunting and fishing and not to carry heavy loads.It may be that the colonization of the pacific was largely done by accident and was really only a result of gender equality in pre- agrarian cultures . There were women were on the boats when they stumbled upon new islands and though they were not able to return to their home lands they could reproduce. It seems modern catamarans have load capacities that are sufficient for cruising but I think mono hulls are still superior I don't think we will be seeing any multi hull oil tankers soon. So if your purpose is to travel the world and bring every thing with you including the kitchen sink, so to speak, then I don't think its unreasonable to try and develop the mono hull so that it is faster and shallower in draft, and still is good at what it does best, carrying large loads. After all movable ballast is hardly a new idea . Its intuitive , as soon as man started mucking about on logs he found out very quickly that he'd better be lively on his feet and get down low. As for myself I would love to build a cat but what I have is a lead mine and as I will never be able to buy or build another I keep messing about with with ideas to improve it for my purposes and am very happy doing so.

 

YES! called a catamaran! Could not resist.

Weight to windward, or buoyancy to leeward. Plus sign vs. minus sign.
A canting monohull is a negative catamaran (with a lot of extra weight, i.e. not too sensible- but then sailing isn't so sensible in its own right).

 

The nice thing about Catamarans is their weight is normally doing something other than just being weight. It is usually structure as well.

Lead, like in my monohull, not only is weight in itself but also requires more additional weight (structure) to support it.

We all know what Uffa Fox had to say about weight and steamrollers.


I always thought it was Stout who said, "Simplicate and add more lightness." I never heard it attributed to Cessna. I know Colin Chapman borrowed it, "Simplify and add lightness".


I don't like the idea of a canting keel on a cruising boat, or moving weight racks, or the like. Simplify and remove as many things as possible that can go wrong, while still maintaining whatever performance you require.

 

But if the weight has to be there and it can be moved simply so that there can be less of it Why not?

 

If you are going to have "less of it" then you are depending on the mechanism to be foolproof.

If the compressor for your fridge goes out 1200 miles from anywhere you will be OK. If the motor or mechanism or mounts for your moveable ballast malfunctions you are in a world of hurt.

You may need less ballast, but with the extra weight of racks and mechanisms and batteries, etc how much lighter are you really going to be?


Maybe 10 years from now there will be enough data to really think about a canter for cruising. Right now it is new technology and we don't know as much as we should to consider it for this purpose. If you want to be one of the pioneers the rest of us can learn from your mistakes.


All I know is another boat was abandoned today because of a problem with the canting keel. There is a beautiful canter for sale here in CA that the owner wants out of because he and his crew of pro sailors recently had an unfortunate issue in rather gentle conditions. There is a also 40 foot canter for sale near my club, has been for years. No one wants it, and there are others on the market with the same result.


I'm hearing there is a LOT of maintenance required for the boats that are out there. Is that what you want from your home?

 

The boating industry report for 2007 shows that Catamarans represented one third of all new cruising sailboats sold in the USA.

 

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The mostly water movable ballast that works so well on some monohulls would work on any length boat and is/would be fast,fast,fast!

 

DOUG.

Can't you get it through your head.

Experimentation in and development of foilers is a very worthwhile research.

BUT NOT ON THIS THREAD.

Please go to another thread ---or start your own.

 

Head

One of the most important applications of movable ballast just happens to be on large foilers; in fact it makes a large foiler possible. It most certainly IS a subject of this thread-not the foiler per se but the movable ballast. The combination of a small canting keel and on deck FAST movable ballast is the next step in fast mono design. Saying BALLAST is slow is absurd. Spitfire a 40' surface piercing foiler uses 1000 pounds of ballast. Hydroptere uses MOVABLE ballast. These just happen to be foilers but they illustrate the exciting future in the further development of ballast systems on large fast boats. The sketch above of the "60' Moth" is a boat designed to use a small canting keel to make it selfrighting in combination with wide racks with on-deck movable water ballast IN A TANK-to facillitate fast movement w/o pumping. The fact that, generally, wide racks with movable ballast- such as water in a tank- has not been used very much means nothing about its efficacy-its just something else to look forward to in the on-going evolution of fast monohull design.
Putting a well designed and engineered version of Timothies system ON DECK as Tom suggested may be the key in unlocking a whole new era in fast keelboats-an era where multihulls are no longer the fastest sailboats....