Blue Water Sloop/Cutter Hybrid (a Slutter)

I'm getting ready to design my dream boat; it will be an auxilary Sloop/Cutter Hybrid design (often called a Slutter). I have a few questions that I'd like to toss out and would appreciate any candid advice.

I want to design her so that she can be sailed with just 2 people, so what is the largest size I can handle assuming that I design her lines to the cockpit and buy whatever gizmos that will make life easier for the small crew?

And I'm curious what the largest size is if I decide that I want to sail her solo for a quick cruise along the cost or around the Caribean area?

I would personally like to have at least 45' and I was hoping to get to something around 48 or 49' if I can. I know that it all gets down to weight of the sails for a small crew, and so I want to see if there are any innovative/unusual design ideas that helps make life easier for 1 or 2 people to handle a larger boat.

For example, with a smaller crew and a nice sized boat like this I could provide for some extra storage below with access on deck toward the bow to stow sails more easily. I toss this idea out because normally people design sleeping quarters up there, but I could shift those quaters aft a bit to store the sails or store them aft of those quarters if I have them in the bow.

I'm trying to think of out of the box and design tricks that would make life simpler for 2 people primarily with the occasional guest couple rather than trying to design this to sleep 6.

So I'm mainly trying to get advice regarding any design ideas for the lines, the deck, and any gadgets, etc. that provides for small crew of 1 or 2 and provides for a broad range of sail options (even if that would require upto 4 crewmemebers; e.g. a large genoa or spinaker.

Thanks in advance.

 

Sure I am not the expert on sailing boats, but from own experience (there is some) I can tell you that a 45ft slup is already the very upper end to handle the sails alone. (talking average Joe´s skills)

The accommodation in the bow was and is a mad idea. Nobody can sleep there at sea. Only charter boats and floating condos, "optimized" for max number of bunks are sporting that arrangement. No blue water boat has a bed there.
You need at least three properties to have a relaxed sleep at sea:
your head / cushion must not lay towards open space, but against a bulkhead or cabinet....
you must be able to cramp yourself tight into the bunk (leesails) to avoid falling out, or acting actively against the boats movement.....
your bunk must be never athwartships...

Fatigue is one of the largest risks on passages, insufficient accommodation the first step to failure.

And please, stop telling us you would design a boat! That is not the case!

You might be able to draw some GA, thats it. But thats not boatdesign.
Bring your ideas on a sheet of paper and hire a NA to do the job proper, otherwise you end up in a costly desaster.

Regards
Richard

 

I think you read my note a bit too quickly.

I wasn't planning to sail alone all night long, just wanted the option to take her out for the day if I wanted to do it alone; so I was curious if folks knew of some ideas that would help make solo a bit easier for something in the 48' or 49' range.

Regarding the bow, my question was not about sleeping there; I was asking if anyone knew of any advantages to creating some better storage access for the sails up front around the bow or mid-ship for that matter; I'm willing to move the guest cabin if I need to in order to provide some better storage access from deck for STORAGE, not to sleep.

>>And please, stop telling us you would design a boat! That is not the case!<<

Not sure how to reply. Sorry for bothering you. I will be designing her. I have the math, architectural, and engineering skills and aptitude to learn what I need and accomplish the work. I'm sure there are many newbies that come around and say they are going to do something, so I'll give you a pass on being a bit of a jerk right now. You don't know me or anything about me. I have all the apptitude (and some of the hands on skill) for the architectural, engineering, mathematical, and project management needs to get this done. I've got the money saved to have someone design and build the whole thing for me if I need to--I don't want to, I want to save some money by doing something that I love so that I can retire earlier and enjoy her full-time. I'll just assume that lots of newbies like to talk about something big but don't have the ability or funds to get 'er done.

>>Bring your ideas on a sheet of paper and hire a NA to do the job proper, otherwise you end up in a costly desaster.<<

I think you've mentioned 3 times now in my threads to hire an NA. I got it. I even agree with it. That's why I wrote this in a different thread when you said it:

>>>Engage a Naval Architect on consultancy basis, i.e. you do your designing, make your drawings, run them by your consultant and redraw based on his guidance. Repeat the procedure throughout the whole design process<<<

>Yep, I plan to, I just want to learn as much as I can to save money plus I truly enjoy doing this-I probably should have gone to school to do this for a living because I truly love the work.<

Of course I'll hire an NA at some point. I'm not going to sink hundreds of thousands of dollars into something that I'm not certified to do. But I can at least learn as much as I want along the way and enjoy doing it. I love designing, I love creating, I love learning new things, I'm not sure what the problem is--I'm only asking questions.

 

There is no problem, but one, you contradict yourself.

Calling me a jerk, because I tried to assist you on your burdensome way to find a proper solution would be rather too harsh, don´t you think?

You DO NOT save any money, trying to design a boat of the given size yourself, the opposite is true.
Quite obvious you don´t know much about N.Architecture, therefore I recommended to draw some sort of GA to have a starting point for a NA, but leave the rest to him. There will be a learning process in that procedure as well.

maybe it´s worth to start here:
http://www.boatdesign.net/forums/boat-design/design-spiral-where-start-building-boat-28580.html

Regards
Richard

 

>>That was clear right from the beginning! A hatch is the solution, what else?<<

I agree, that was pretty obvious... what's annoying is that you don't seem to think that you're being a jerk when you write in a condesending way that assumes someone is a *****. Maybe you need to look superior, some people do, and they simply view others as idiots. I don't know you enough to know if that's you, but I know that I'm a lot smarter than you seem to be talking down to me. So that's acting a bit like a jerk.

Why not just treat me nice. I'm new, learning, asking questions. I'm not an idiot, just learning.

Yeah, a hatch was what I was talking about, because there's not need to move a cabin below if I wasn't planning for a hatch... what I'd like to know is placement of the hatch and more specifically the storage are below the hatch.

 

It sometimes helps to understand others when one asks if the contributor is a native English speaker or not.............
what you felt being condescending was most probably reading more out of the comments than there was actually.

But, thats a common problem we encounter here when one contradicts, or worse, when the experts don´t confirm a biased opinion.

To your sail storage problem:

I don´t understand what the issue could be. Usually you will have a spinnacker and maybe another sail to store. Thats two bags of about 1/2 m³ volume max. A storage of about 1meter or three ft. something, behind the collision bulkhead / chain lckr. should provide ample space for that purpose and leave some space for the always forgotten fenders as well. Make sure to have access from inside the vessel too!
The hatch should be of the best quality available, due to it´s exposed position. And the cover should not be transparent, but solid material.

And....do you think you have choosen the right term to describe the sloop/cutter rig?
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=slutter

Regards
Richard

 

I have seen a fine cruiser that had the engine in the bow.

It was great as the fwd bulkhead was water and air tight and very well insulated.

This was on a heavy wood sail boat , had a 6-71 which is 2800 lbs of cast iron. Two gensets , a tool box and spares were all there and the boat was in trim! Good NA.


Today with fly weight diesels it would be quite easy. The engine turned a marine tranny with standard truck shafts with std truck intermediate pillow blocks .

The propulsion shaft did have a thrust bearing , so there were no hassles after 2 circumnavigations.

Freeing up the usual , best in the boat engine room space , makes the useful boat volume far larger.
The usual paint and other goodies carried in the ER would stink far less for a more pleasant boat.

For easy sailing simply accept slightly poorer performance, as the single handed racers do.
Since the sail area is not part of a racing formula , bigger roller sails make up for the crappy shape.

400sq ft fully battened main is easy for 1 man to handle.

Roller furling on the big jib , the outer being only the ghoster and the inner the 110 or so working fore sail.

FF

 

OK, we're getting close to nailing this thing down. I'll start over and try to be clearer, I had no idea that slutter or sloop/cutter was not a common term... I'll explain in a second why I thought that it was. I'm not foreign to English, it's my first language, and I think that I'm pretty good at it, but sometimes when typing emails it’s easy to get lazy, misspell, etc.

I'm trying to learn more about what seems to be a hybrid that is essentially a Sloop design, but is rigged with the ability to be a sloop or a cutter.

The official terms that I've read in my books to describe this concept are:

"Sloop/Cutter" (p. 120-121, The Modern Cruising Sailboat by Charles J. Doane)
"Slutter" (p. 120-121, The Modern Cruising Sailboat by Charles J. Doane)
"Double (or Triple) Headsail Sloop" (p. 54, Understanding Boat Design by Ted Brewer)

Doane says on page 120, "Another variation increasingly popular with blue water cruisers is a sloop/cutter hybrid, sometimes called a slutter rig, where a removable inner forestay is installed on what would otherwise be a straight sloop rig." And on page 121 he has an entire page dedicated to the title, "Converting a Sloop to a Slutter". So I thought this was a normal term.

Regarding sloops and cutters, Brewer says on page 54, "Today the rigs are difficult to differentiate. Generally, if a boat has only a single headsail she is a sloop, and if the mast is well aft, almost amidship, and the boat has two or more headsails, she is a cutter. The distinction becomes more confusing when the mast is forward and the board has several headsails set on a bowsprit. Some might call her a cutter, but she is actually a double- (or triple-) headsail sloop; witness the famous Friendship loops of Maine."

What I find confusing betwen Doane and Brewer is that Doane shows a picture on page 119 of what he calls a "True Cutter" and a "Sloop/Cutter or 'slutter'"; also on page 117 he has a picture of a sloop. The sloop on 117 and the "sloop/cutter" on 119 both have the mast midship but slightly forward, whereas the "true cutter" has the mast in the picture as amidship but slightly aft. But when I look at Brewer's pictures on page 53, his sloop is the same, amidship slightly forward for the sloop, but his cutter picture has the mast further forward than the sloop but he extended the bow with a jibboom so that is the reason that it's more forward.

As I ponder this sloop/cutter hybrid concept, it seems to me that Brewer's cutter design with the jibboom could be used better with this sloop/cutter hybrid because your mainsail would be as large as possible for your sloop, plus you get the ability to sail as a full blown cutter if you like with a huge Genoa and Staysail.

It seems that this design offers you the ability to sails as a sloop or cutter; it's also easier to get her storm ready in the middle of rough seas.

Here is what Doane says on page 120, "The removable stay normally has some sort of quick-release mechanism at deck level that makes it easy to set up and tension the stay and to loosen and remove it. When stowed, the removable stay is brought aft to the mast and secured."

This is why I was asking for the best locations for stowing the sails... I wanted to know what was most efficient.

He goes on to say, "To a large extent, the slutter rig does offer the best of both worlds. In light to moderate winds you can stow the inner forestay and sail the boat as a straight sloop with a large genoa pass through an open foretriangle. In heavy conditions, you can set up the inner forestay, hank on the staysail, roll up or douse the large Genoa, and sail the boat under main and staysail alone. Since setting up an inner forestay and hanking on a staysail is normally less taxing than stripping a large Genoa off a furling rod and hoisting a smaller working jib and/or storm sail in its place, this is a viable practice."

Doane clearly feals that it's better to convert a sloop to a sloop/cutter than vice versa. He says, "Sometimes you see true cutters that have been converted to slutters. Here the foretriangle is normally large enough to fly two headsails simultaneously..." (Note: I believe that Brewer calls this a Double-Headsail Sloop) "... if desired, which is not possible on a converted sloop. The downside to this arrangement is that making the inner forestay removable makes it impossible to install either a roller-furling staysail(currently a popular arrangement on cutter rigs) or a club-footed staysail."

So, after reading all this, I understand most of it, but this last paragraph did confuse me; also, after looking at Brewer's pictures it truly made me wonder if Doane was wrong, and if the best design would be a Cutter with a jibboom, which gives you extra room forward, which would increase the efficiency of the multiple sails forward as well.

I hope this helps.

 

Slutter has been in common usage for years, but as an idea it had its zenith maybe 20 years or so ago. It was an idea to try and give convenient headsail options from 4 to 30 kts apparent.

Most headsails on single rollers either don't have the area to be effective under 10kts (most people resort to the engine) or if they are big enough for the lightest airs (150%), they roll badly and have become useless at 20kts apparent.

The solution was to have a second headsail available, so the larger genoa could be rolled away completely and a second headsail unrolled. However, if this second headsail was in the traditional cutter staysail position, it was too small to be effective at 'only' 20 kts apparent, so the idea was to move this stay forward till it was just aft of the main forestay and its sail would then be almost the size of a traditional No3 or Solent jib, rather than a staysail. It's the same idea as is commonly seen with people having a removable inner forestay for heavy weather sails, but in a slutter, they tended to be two rollers permanently installed.

There is nothing wrong with the system at all, but it's a level of sophistication / cost / complexity that most people find unnecessary. It used to be popular with open class boats, but windage is also a problem and now there's better sail handling kit out there for soft luff sails, this set up has faded a bit.

If you're interested in short handed sailing on a 48 foot boat, it's worth Googling on Beth Leonard and Evans Starzinger and their boat 'Hawk'. They've got a few miles under their keel now and are keen to share what they have learnt.

 

Thank you I will. My goal is to truly get to the point (when I'm fully retired) where I'm doing lots of blue water and so I want her designed primarly for that if I'm forced to make decisions... so cutter seems perfect. But I also want to sail often in the Carribean and Mediteranean and so I liked the options of a sloop.

I'm just trying to learn what the better rig designs are and how to get the most flexibility with a small crew of 2 primarily.

I'll check out the site and if you have any other recommenations regarding any rig setups that you think would be appropriate I'd be grateful for the info.

thanks for your help.

 

Why a sloop for these specific geographic sites?
I come from one of them, I never saw or heard the sloop is The option.
Could you explain your research about this statement?
Could you explain the origin of "slutter" ?
Thank you
Daniel

 

Yep. From what I've read the sloop offer a bit more speed for coastal but cutter was better for blue water simply because it was a bit easier to swap her around for bad weather.

But from what I read the goal of this hybrid was to give the slight speed advantage of the sloop with the flexibility of the cutter.

That's what I've been reading in my books. Thanks for the reply let me know if you think I should study or consider any alternative ideas.

 

If you are interested in cutters the books from Illingworth & Primrose ,"Offshore" or "Furthur Offshore" is still the Bible for Cutter folks not involved with go slow "racing " rules. ...

For our 33ft cutter we "lifted" the complete sail plan from Myth of Malham and sent them off to the HK sail makers.

Only change added was fully battened main.

After 3 decades , not a thing would be changed, they refined the cutter setup very well.

The cutter works very well offshore as the boat is never bald forward , so the self steering has no problem during sail changes , and the boat foots well while the change is happening.

FF

 

I always think reading is good, but sailing experience will put the reading in perspective.
Can you have the opportunity to sail with friends?
It is after all your goal, so if you can take a leave of absence and go sailing that will be very usefull for your project.
Daniel

 

Yes, I'm actually looking for work in a coastal city as we speak. When you have a nice job, quiting and moving is a big commitment, and so I've kept the dream alive and now I'm ready and preparing for doing my dream.

It's certainly fun planning, learning, and getting ready.

I also looked at the plans again that I like from Ted Brewer and I'm giving serious thought toward simply buying the 45' Orca plans and just stretching her 2 feet longer; he's also got a 46.5' Wolf Point plan that is the very same type of hull but it's 8" wider; so I wrote to him and asked him which he thought would be better, stretching the Orca 24" or to stretch the Wolf Point 6" and use the Orca layout on the slightly wider beam.

As I looked at his Orca plan I really like it a lot; if the wider beam would not slower her down too much then I think I'd like to go with that because the aisles and doors were 22" and I'm 6'1" 250 lbs. and so that feels just a bit tight for my taste, especially since I plan to live on her; I don't need 36" but a few more inches would be nice and that wider beam would offer that ability without cutting into room space.

What I am leaning towards is doing a Cutter, but I want to learn more about this slutter concept to see if it's an advantage... I can see that it's mainly a concept that tries to make it quicker and easier to swap various sails around and give you more options. I'm curious enough, I'll figure it out eventually.