Canting Keel Mechanisms

The movable ballast out on those trapezes is human powered, not some sorry sob sitting behind a console punching buttons(simplified). If they can design a system to manually control an ACC main, I’m sure then can find a way manually control a canter.

Only an imbecile would belive using an engine in a race boat; is in the finest traditions of the sport.

 

Dan, You are right on!

Hi Dan, congratulations on writing what is probably the finest posting I have ever read (of thousands) on Boatdesign.net
All power to you, and keep these gems coming.
Best wishes and happy sailing to you.

Sam

 

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I think you should be carefull about misquoting
me to make a point. I said that the use of movable ballast is in the finest traditions of SAILBOAT DESIGN and I believe it is. The fact that the technology has more or less recently allowed designers to have more freedom in what they move and how they move it doesn't diminish the fact that innovative solutions to moving ballast to increase righting moment have been around since the dawn of sailboat design.
The most modern technology has simply allowed more ballast to be moved more quickly on bigger boats.

 

Fixed it for you ...

Why bother to move just the ballast ... why not move the whole boat?

 

Shocking!

Randy, I'm shocked and dismayed! Are you suggesting using power to move a racing sailboat??!! That would be against the rules....

 

Nope, just two big block Chevy's to run the water pumps to transfer ballast ...

 

The Sherpas are human beings, part of the team.......just like grinders. That's why Tenzing Norgay is famous. The team gets together and manually hauls their own stuff up the mountain. Would an Everest expedition seem the same if you drove a Skido up to the Hilary step and took an escalator from there on?

IF you winched yourself up Everest would it count? Probably. After all, using jumars is a bit like winching yourself up; unpowered mechanical devices making the work easier but not taking out the physical aspect.

But if you had motors that drove those winches, would it be be the same? surely not.

There's a lot of tactics and skill in bicycle racing, as well as the manual input of pushing those pedals around. And bicycles, of course, use what are effectively winches (in the form of cranks, chains and gears).

Bicycling would be more spectacular, and certainly faster, if we put 1000 cc engines on the frames. So hey, let's do that, and still call it bicycle racing.

Sound sensible?

Moving the bits of the boat by hand or natural forces is what the sport of sailing is all about. Some people say "if you use power for lights and instruments why not use power for winches and keels", but in many sport it's OK to get information by wire (like bicycle riders' computers, runners heart rate monitors) and to use safety lights (rowers in pre-dawn training, bicycle riders) powered by artificial means.

But as bicycle riders, runners and rowers would agree, that doesn't mean you can use those artificial means to power parts of your equipment to move. Imagine if the backstroke on a rowing scull was artificially powered; it seems to me that would be very similar to a powered canter in some ways, in that the power is not DIRECTLY being applied but it is still being applied in a way that breaks the spirit of the game.

What about gliders? There's a lot of powered gliders around because they are practical. They use stored power to get the equipment into a position to gain power from gravity. In a glider, the power is used to get height. In a canter, the power is used to move the sails and keel.

But the glider isn't allowed to use its engine in competition, because gliding IS using no power (apart from instruments and lights - sound familiar?) apart from gravity and moving air, once the competition has commenced.

These may not be perfect analogies, but again the fact that we can't find a similar analogy in sport may underline that, according to most human ideas, a mix of engine power and humand power a la canter (or movable ballast boat) is NOT seen in other sports.

And if canting lets monos get closer to multi speeds, who cares? If you want to go fast, get a multi.

 

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I don't think that your comments would be appreciated by the crews of the VO 70's,Open 60's and the many other canting ballast boats.
"..is NOT a sport". Now, CT,by any measure that comment is really off the deep end....
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edit: note the above quote was apparently changed in the previous post as I was writing this comment.

 

LMAO

If CT is off the deep end; then you must be sitting at the bottom of the Marianas Trench.

 

Wish he was sitting about 30 miles closer to the centre of the earth than the bottom of the Marianas trench. The scientists tell us that it is so hot at that depth that the rocks even melt. Do you think that there is any way the administrator of the forum could buy him a ticket to go there?
Another gem, Dan. If there was any way the system would allow me to award you more reputation points for that posting I would, but it says I must spread them around.
Come on some-one, help me out and give Dan some reputation points for his magnificent insights.

 

Human effort to move things around - using winches etc is cool. Having an engine to generate power to move things around is not cool. Then it is power boat racing, just slow powerboat racing.

 

I too think you are on a very slippery slope once you allow engines for ballast movement. To justify it in the interest of speed for 'inshore courses' is ludicrous. So why not allow electric or hydraulic winches for the sails as well? Surely that would make the tacks even snappier?

I think this is a move in the wrong direction. I would like to see all consumable external power sources banned altogether. I think all their electricity should come from wind / sun / or water so there would be a need to balance electrical use agianst generator drag, etc. I think this would be far more in keeping with the spirit of the times and might lead to innovations that would benefit us all.

 

Yep. I would rather see a complete ban on fossil fuel usage during a race than faster keels and powered winches.

 

Slippery Slope / Amazing Technology

In looking at sailboat design there is almost no area that has fascinated designers as much as movable ballast from the earliest days. One of the Herreshoff's favorite boats used on-deck movable ballast in the form of a brass ingot if I remember correctly. Various systems of movable ballast including moving sandbags, sails etc to the windward side have been employed. In the 19th century canoes were sailed with sliding seats to get ballast out to weather. Uffa Fox introduced the trapeze early in the last century.Many of the earliest canting keels used manual power to move the keel with some drawbacks like taking up interior room and slow movement. Many mini 6.5's still use manual power and even Open 60's did because they had plenty of time to tack. The first production canting keel boats like the Schock 40 had electro-hydraulic systems that hid the mechanics under the floorboards. But I think the first application of a more or less constantly running diesel(at least inshore) was on the Max Z86's.
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On a large boat like a Z86 or Volvo 70 it would be nearly impossible and completely impractical to manually move enough ballast quickly enough and far enough to do any good. So I guess the purists are saying that Reichel-Pugh, Farr(well maybe) ,Juan K and others should tell their clients that moving ballast by use of internal combustion engines and/or stored energy is against the spirit of sailing and so they can't accept design commissions on such contraptions-contraptions that will lead "us" down a slippery slope?
What slippery slope? These guys are designing some of the most high tech, incredibly fast monohulls ever done in history -and they should stop?! Never going to happen. The application of diesel hydraulic or diesel -electric-hydraulic to these large boats has produced the capability of moving long fins with a ballast bulb on the bottom from 40° each side on the VO70's to 55° each side on the Z86's and others. And to do it relatively quickly. It opens up the possibilty of large monofoilers with combinations of canting and on-deck ballast.
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BUT if you took the sails down and moved the keel these boats-capable of 30-40 knots under sail- would just sit there as the keel was canted ! Yet some viewing this in an extremely simplistic and emotional way claim these extraordinary sailboats are "powerboats"-in an on going theater of the absurd.
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Nobody that I know of likes to sail with a diesel running though many have on a regular basis to charge their batteries. As technology permits you can bet that fuel cells and other energy producing technologies will be employed to
replace the ugly old diesel.
How can the efforts of these great sailboat designers-who are guilty of using the utmost in technology(as did their predecessors)-be leading us toward anything except fantastic, incredible SAILING machines that are bringing monohulls closer and closer to multihull speeds? Pushing the envelope in the finest tradition of sailboat designers throughout history who tried to make maximum use of the technologies available in their eras.
So, what is this " slippery slope" and what does it have to do with the most accomplished sailors and designers on the planet?

 

Only if they are stupid;
Anyone with business scene will give the customer what he wants, no matter what he actually thinks about the project or the customer.

Ok this is plain stupid

When the sails are up, canting the keel assists in the production of righting moment, thus keeping the sails vertical. Since the sails are vertical, they produce more power, thus making the boat faster. Thus the power provided by the canting engines directly affects the velocity potential of the boat.

Let me see if I can dumb this down for you:

Since the beginning man produced all the power needed to trim the sails, and ballast the boat. Using artificial power sources (in a race boat) for anything other than powering safety equipment, changes this.


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