Canting Keel Monos vs Multihulls

It's all simple enough. The Vikings etc. lived in a cold climate - they had to build boats to suit. The South Pacific Islanders lived in a warm climate, so there was no need to build boats with significant shelter.

 

The Southern Ocean? Did I mention that? I hope you are not resorting to misquoting as you have accused others of doing.

I mention low lattitudes, low as in NUMERICALLY LOW, and some of the most violent storms on Earth originate from as low as 5' of lattitude.

However, can you, or anyone else PROVE that these people never ventured into the Southern Ocean? We only really know where they went because they colonised the places they travelled to, and there aren't many places to colonise in the Southern Ocean.

As for the fact that they island hopped, and that the longest stretch was "only 1500 miles", I would rate a 1500 mile ocean voyage a couple of thousand years ago as a greater feat than travelling to the moon in 1969. At least the astronauts actually KNEW THE MOON WAS THERE. The S.P. islanders had no way of knowing how far they had to travel did they? The only way they could have know that would be if someone had been there and returned, which would then imply a capability to sail 1500 miles against the prevailing wind. And of course they island hopped - if you were sailing into the complete unknown, with no idea when you would be able to resupply again, would you sail past any island, and say "no we better not stop here, this isn't far enough to demonstrate our real ocean going capability"

 

Yeah,yeah,yeah...Typhoon/Cyclone...everything gets trashed, at sea or not, if you get hit (i.e. get run over while in the dangerous quadrant). Otherwise, it's just windy and long swells which doesn't effect small vessels. I know, I've been there and it's not really that bad compared to shallow water, short fetch storms like ones I've ridden out in the North Sea (and the rain is warmer ). US Atlantic Hurricanes are worse for small vessels in my experience because the coast shelves so far out. Remember it is wave slope and breaking, not wave size, that is dangerous to small vessels. And the high winds damp the seas and are only dangerous to light vessels with a lot of top hamper. Like that tri that got airbore and speared the CG cutter during Iniki.

However, if an island gets hit the survivors that didn't get washed away (swell will go totally over an atoll, which is why they are historically so sparsely populated/abandoned compared to the tall islands) just pack everything up into the boats that come back and leave. Wait years for the food supply (fish, fields, and pigs) to recover for the storm. Food shortages is why the pacific islander sailed, they would starve to death if they stayed in one place and thier population grew at normal rates. It is also why ritual war and sacrifice were used to control population. Not really the paradise that it appears to be.

 

There's no contradiction because the first quotation refers to boats like cruiser-racers (hence the headroom reference). The second quote is specifically aimed at skiffs. In that specific type of boat, monos would probably have died if cats were still allowed in.

I'm sure if multis hadn't been banned, we'd still have plenty of monos 'cause monos make quite good cruisers, cruiser/racers, one designs, etc. We'd surely still have Roberts Sprays, Hartley TS16s, Lasers, etc if multis hadn't been banned.

On the other hand, in the skiff classes, first to finish is what counts and cats are normally faster. Hence we wouldn't have any mono skiffs if cats were allowed in skiff classes.


I think a problem with multis in the Hobart etc include the fact that one of the biggest problems (in my opinion) offshore racing faces is the huge and growing spread between the big boats and the affordable small boats. In the '80s, there wasn't such a massive gap between the maxis and the small safe racer/cruiser (ie half tonner) in the Hobart, Fastnet etc.

Now there is, and (I think, and many agree with me) as a result the race has lost a lot. By the time the small boats finish, the big boats have already celebrated and are getting ready to go home. The enormous spread in the fleet means that the luck of the weather pattern plays a massive part in determining the winner. The spread is now so big that this often applies even in the divisions. In the past, the 30-34 footers normally raced in their own division. Now it's 30 to 47-52 footers! That's not good racing.

Adding fast multis would only spread the fleet even more. It would harm the status of the overall prize, because there'd have to be two overall winners or else the monos would be racing the multis which is clearly not great racing. Putting more emphasis on fast boats has never (or almost never) actually helped make a race more popular and normally leads to it shrinking. Ask the guys in the NSW 14 foot cat movement if they feel overshadowed and ignored by organisers who concentrate on the bigger off the beach cats. Look at the Hobart fleet - much smaller than it used to be in IOR days at a time when its American counterpart the Bermuda race is regularly getting massive fleets (because it concentrates less on the sponsored big boats).

Sure, diversity is great....which means that not every race should be open to multis, we should have some races to encourage the monos, in exactly the same way as the Micro Multis have thier own events, the F16s have their own major events, etc. Sure, the powered canters are big and fast....I think that damages the race (and I'm far from alone in that - there is a strong movement to get them out of the main event even from people like Farr 40 owners).

As mentioned, I also just can't see why multis should be allowed in the race. There's no case to say that all races should be free to all sorts of boats. As I mentioned, my cat club will not allow monos or windsurfers in. My windsurfer club and its races aren't for cats. The Hobie 16s won't allow F16s to race. As won't let hydrofoilers in. If you agree an event can restrict itself to one type (like Ronde Om Texel, or the Aust Offshore Multi Champs) why isn't it fine for the CYCA to do the same with the Hobart?

If a group of people have developed a sporting event, surely they have the right to decide what sort of equipment you can use in the event. The Hobart and its traditions were founded on "mainstream" monohulls from 27-83 feet. As far as I can see, no one has any more right to bring in another sort of boat than I do to walk into the Bathurst car races with a motorbike. Sure, you could say "move with the times"; but there's a strong case that the times are actually leading AWAY from development classes, and the days when encouraging faster boats increased fleets. The Hobie 16s, Lasers, Dragons, Optimists, A Class, 420s have restrictions on the way they "move with the times" and as a result they are much more popular than F16s, Moths, 5.5s, Flying Ants, 18 squareds, and Cherubs (which are all more "up to date").

Frankly, I think there's tendency to put way too much blame for the fairly small numbers of big racing multis onto the organisers of the big mono races. Here in NSW, even the events that were run for and by the off-the-beach cats are merely a shadow of their former numbers. That cannot be because of bias from mono sailors because the events are controlled by cat sailors. And events where offshore multis have always been pretty much welcomed, like the OSTAR and Round Britian, are not exactly shining successes in terms of numbers.

 

So basically you agree with the original statement of this thread -

"It depends on acceptance. I could argue that a canting-keel monohull
is a very inefficient multihull. Imagine canting a keel to leeward
and instead of ballast you have air. You would achieve the same
increase in righting moment in a lighter solution, and in fact you get a
multihull. Our sailing community is divided, and choices are made on
style or fashion; otherwise we'd all be sailing multihulls"

If not for politics or rules (politics anyway) we would all be racing multihulls?

 

Interesting stuff. I'm sure you're right about technology of the times, the Victorians were really adventurous with their boats and materials. The sailing canoes of around 1900 were actually lighter than today's Canoes. They were also much less popular than Canoes of Amaryllis' time because they had gone from being cruiser/racers to radical racers......first example I know of that now-familiar story of centreboarders developing themselves almost to death.

Apparently the NYYC also didn't allow races for Sandbaggers. The New York establishment weren't that keen on dinghies either. That didn't stop them from succeeding. There was also a rather radical spirit afloat in New York sailing in the late 1800s, with the Corinthians pushing the concept of the typical amateur being able to compete, not just the professional Baymen. Okay, it's a bummer the Corinthians etc chucked the pros and the sandbaggers out - but in some ways perhaps there's evidence that the scene wasn't as conservative as we paint it?

Movable ballast, cats, boats zipping over the Atlantic, the start of ocean racing, the second-ever one design, and the introduction of the amateur.....seems to have been a scene of some vitality and a lot of innovation in the north-eastern USA at the time.

Of interest, why didn't the Lightweight Sharpie catch on in the UK (or Germany etc)? In the research I've done into why it caught on here, it's very interesting to see that the superior speed, the thing that fixates many, actually sat about 5th on the list of advantages listed at the time for the Lightweight. Lower cost, ease of construction, ease of maintenance, and ease of carrying (our Sharpies often launched into small surf over long sandy beaches) were seen as more important.
But it's great to see the classic gunter rig still going in the UK etc; perhaps a classic case of different areas suiting different types of the same hull shape.

Is the 200 strong keelboat class you mention Squibs or F15s?

It's interesting to see how the UK manages to have both lots of existing fleets and grow new ones....clear evidence that diversity is not an enemy of the sport IMHO. If we could only just get people to support older classes as you mention, and work out how to get old and new to complement each other.


PS - Jehardiman, thanks for that. Interesting to get your information and viewpoint.

 

No, because I don't believe that style or fashion keeps people in monos, I believe that monos have a lot going for them, as do cats or boards or tris or proas. Each to his or her own in their particular circumstance. I think it's BS to say than a Farr 40 or TP52 or Hobart sailor would be sailing a multi if not for style or fashion....they sail F40s etc because they do the job very well.

If there weren't rules or politics that set up some classes to make racing meaningful, I for one wouldn't be racing. Once you set up some rules to keep boats apart - to keep 399 foot quadramarans out of the local class for kid's sailing - why not have some more?

Certainly style and fashion is not the reason I sail monos, I sail them because despite being a cat sailor as well, I actually prefer monos. No matter what style or fashion, I enjoy sailing monos.

Is it style or fashion that keeps Tornadoes out of the Laser class? Is it style or fashion that keeps A Class tris (if they were allowed) out of sailing with the Optimist class (which wouldn't exist without rules).

 

It's true that there are many classes of boats and that each has its devotees. As an analogy, there are many classes of racing vehicles, from go-carts to NASCAR to Le Mans. But while I can accept that racing go-carts is lots of fun, apparently it is not something that people will pay to watch except, maybe, on a local level.

I think racing go-carts or sprint cars or hotrod trucks is great, but to some extent we seem to be stuck in the same position that fans would be in if the powers-that-be in NASCAR limited the power of NASCAR racers to go-cart engines.

You'd still have competition, but would you have the audience?

Racing is about speed. The speed advantage belongs to multihulls and yet the Corinthians can come up with a thousand reasons why slower boats are better than faster boats.

This strikes me as a triumph of wishful thinking over reality.

 

That’s a very simplistic view imho.

Racing is about asserting dominance over ones competitors while staying within the rules, thus the reason every known form of racing is broken into classes. For example, the NHRA lists 12 major classes. Each class has a very distinct set of rules. The rules keep a class within a given region of cost, complexity, skill, safety etc.

 

CT, I can see many of your points. However, the big boats, the Maxi's get billed as being fast. They are not about good racing, good racing can be found in any size and in a multitude of One-Design classes and under many rules. The Maxi's are about first to finish and setting records.

The way I see it, the anti-multihull mentality spawned in 1876 has prompted the monohull establishment to change rules in an effort to allow faster boats. They started to allow moving and in some cases variable ballast in an effort to reduce the speed advantage of boats that do not require rule changes to sail faster. The lust for speed and new records has created boats that require auxiliary engines to sail.

Why do the rule makers change two basic rules of sailing to allow the "super-maxi's" to sail in the S-H while still banning multihulls?

I also think that mono's are fun to sail, I enjoy good racing more than pure speed.

What bothers me is the rule breaking, moving ballast, auxiliary powered, creations being compared to honest boats that fit inside the rules. It is interesting to note that even with moving ballast and powered systems mono's remain 20% slower than multi's.

Just curious, what do you think happened to the popular multi classes? Did the sailors stop sailing or move into different boats?

 

This is what bothers me too. It seems that almost anything is acceptable as long as it only has one hull! And yet honest, SAILING multihulls are outcasts.

One other thing - a reasonably inexpensive 50' podcat like Raw Nerve would be competitive with Wild Oats etc at probably less than 1/10 of the cost.

 

Well, I was in the industry media when the non-canting "supermaxis", followed by the supermaxi canters came out. The PR hacks for at least some of the owners pushed all the old buttons - they said that the clubs (which were partly trying to ensure some continuity of performance, so that the new boats could race for the old records and races without things getting silly) were hidebound, anti-progress, interested in the status quo, etc. It was interesting to see the big money machine at work, especially since the owners of the top 2 "supermaxis" were very happy with their slow IOR machines in earlier years (and at least one told Seahorse that he didn't care how fast he went as long as the racing was good....same guy later got his PR guy to imply it was all about speed).

Yep, I would have LOVED it had the clubs turned these guys' words back on them and had a press conference. They could have said "we've listened to those who said that speed was important. We've listened to those who said that allowing the latest in technology was important. We've listened to those who said that traditions were rubbish - so we're allowing 30m canters".

And then, while the supermaxi owners were smiling, they could have added "....and for exactly the same reason, we're allowing multis in to race the canters."

I would have loved to have been there, if they'd done that, to see the smiles fade and to see the supermaxi owners rush to create reasons why motorboats could race and multis couldn't. But it remains, sadly, only a daydream.

I must also say that the owner of the quickest supermaxi of all is a very fine chap from all accounts.

So yep, totally agree. If sailing is about going fast offshore, multis rock and rule. Only thing is that for most people, sheer speed isn't so important, which is why Hobie 16s are more popular than Formula 16 cats, and why Lasers are more popular than Moths.

RHough, I wasn't in the cats when they were popular. I was in boards when they were popular; in the industry and racing. I'm sure that the problem was that both types (like dinghies when they were booming, and mono keelboats when they were booming) grew enormously when most of the hulls were modest/medium paced, comparativley cheap, comparativley small, and accessible to the average non-sailor. But then the industry started (for a variety of reasons, including peer pressure) to cater for those who had got into the sport through the cheap slower boats and wanted to move to faster kit. The industry started to ignore the entry-level boats and promote the high-tech high speed machines - but that means you ignore new sailors and those who can't/won't "upgrade." You start worrying about the experts and not the average sailor and the newbies.

Same thing happened in the earliest small sailboat class (canoes of the 1800s) according to contemporary records, and cats, and windsurfers, and keelboats as far as I can see (and according to very many of the big names in the industry).

Anyone could look at a Hobie 14 or an original Windsurfer on a lake and say "hey, I could do that". Then the industry starts pushing fast 18 foot cats or wavejumping boards, and most people can't/don't want to sail them and newbiest look at them and go "hey, that's for experts.....I'm not an expert so that sport's not for me".

Well, that's what it seem to me, anyway. Of interest, in the small cats 'round here, the clubs that have catered for the high-performance end aren't doing well but some that have catered for the simple, accessible end of the cats ARE doing well.

A survey for ISAF or Yachting Australia a while ago, and another for Laser/Sunfish USA, pointed out that non-sailors don't think sailing is boring....they think it's hard, inaccessible, difficult and elitist. Since most high-performance boats ARE hard to sail, inaccessible, difficult and elitist, concentrating the PR of the sport on such craft can only hurt the sport (in my humble opinion).

So yeah, I think allowing 30m canting-keel powerboats and banning multis is dumb - and so does a very large number of active offshore racers here, and they've been holding meetings etc to try to put their point across.

 

"Racing is about speed"? I don't think so. I sailed (as a member of the national team in the limited-entry worlds) what may be the fastest sailing racing class in the entire world (measured in terms of top speed around the entire course, or down a 500m course). It was fun, but no more fun than sailing Laser Radials. That high-performance class is pretty sick, despite having industry support, PR, spectators, etc. Meanwhile the Radials, Optis and Dragons are doing very well. Even among Aussie skiff sailors, the slowest Skiff of all (in terms of maximum speed and speed for length) is the most popular. Even among cat sailors, the most popular boat is the rather slow (by modern standards) Hobie 16.

If it was all about speed, why the hell would you do it in sailboats?

I know a bunch of people who have moved from boats like performance windsurfers, Tornadoes and 18 Foot Skiffs (at world or national level) to sailing gear that's normally about as fast as a Laser. These people are not stupid. They have moved to slower gear because slower gear can be just as much fun.

I don't know about the situation here, but the situation in motor racing v sailing here in Australia is interesting. We have a Formula 1 world champ round, one of the world's top touring car races (Bathurst), world motorcycle champs, etc. And yet motorsport is (according to ABS and Sweeney surveys) despite the enormous support of the massive motor industry, NO more popular in terms of participation than sailing - a sport with very little PR.

One of the major findings of the annual survey of PR, audience and participation (Sweeney) makes the same point - there is virtually NO correlation between the PR, sponsorship and audience of a sport, and the participation that the sport attracts.

Look at motor racing - F1 is one of the world's most popular spectator sports, yet for all the gozillion of bucks it attracts, it gets about 22 cars to about 12 races a year - less than half the entrants it got in the '70s when it attracted less publicity. And the fastest F1 race of all was the Monza streamliner of '73 or '74......you don't have to go faster each year to get publicity, and even getting publicity and PR doesn't mean you get participation.

Here, the Sydney-Hobart starts have 200,000 live spectators and live TV. The fleet is way down on what it used to be. The Bermuda race and Fastnet race get nothing like the same publicity, and they are now much bigger than the Hobart in terms of fleet numbers.

The idea that spectacular competition that attracts audiences will increase participation is a triumph of wishing over reality.

The fact that NASCAR - a bunch of fairly restricted racers with lids that look like Joe Average's car as far as I know - attract more spectators than F1 is just more proof that it's not all about speed. Conventional racer/cruiser monos are a bit like NASCARs in a way, as far as I can see - restricted in speed but great for audiences because audiences can relate the look of the vehicle to the one that they drive every day.

IMHO, the conservatives are people who are refusing to see (by acts such as simply refusing to look at the classes that are growing in the very strong UK market, for instance) that slow, simple boats are where sailing is going.

In Australia - land of many of the fastest small cat sailors and the fastest supermaxi monos and the place where foiling Moths and skiffs come from, the fast boats are NOT growing. Meanwhile, the last two Laser nationals were the biggest ever. Slow and simple is where the successful classes can be found....THAT'S new and innovative (and to me, exciting - because it proves that the means to grow the sport we love are here, at our hands, cheaply and available NOW).

 

future of canting ballast(vs multihulls)?

RHOUGH:"It is interesting to note that even with moving ballast and powered systems mono's remain 20% slower than multi's." Not even close: according to the latest Sail the fastest big mono's are within 12 % of the speed of the fastest multi's including Mediatis Region Aquitaine, L'hydroptere and G- Class cats.
It's been shown in the Moth class that the addition of hydrofoils to a monohull can increase speed at least 20%-and not just top speed with higher percentage increases in lighter than maximum conditions. So, I think it's reasonable to predict that a well designed mono utilizing movable ballast and hydrofoils could potentially exceed the speeds of existing multihulls while being self-righting.
And just as a reality check: the fastest sailboat(on water) NOW is a monohull...

 

Doug, don't start.

Sailing speed records are ratified by the Wolrd Sailing Speed Record Council

Please click on the link. Click on "Major Current Records"

Compare the passage times and speeds of the multi's to the passage times and speeds of the mono's.

There is no way that the mono's are within 12% of the multi's. The only person that makes that claim is you.

Transatlantic W to E, Ambrose Light – Lizard Point 2925 July 2006 Orange II 28 knots average

Transatlantic W to E, Ambrose Light – Lizard Point, monohull 2925 2 - 9 Oct 2003 MariCha IV 18.05 knots average

Orange II is 9.95 knots faster. That makes MariCha IV 35% slower than Orange II or Orange II 55% faster than MariCha IV depending on how you do the math.

24 hour run:

2006 "Orange II" 120ft Cat, Bruno Peyron, FRA, 766.8nm. 31.95kts

2006 "ABN AMRO TWO" 70ft, Sebastien Josse, AUS, 562.96 nm, 23.45kts

Orange II is 8.5 knots faster than ABN AMRO TWO ... 36% faster.

If you wish to be taken seriously, don't try to pass wishful thinking off as fact. If Sail made the claim that big mono's are within 12% of big multi's, I hope they qualified the conditions where that might be true. There are no Ocean Races, Passages, or 24 Runs that support that claim.

There is also no documentation for your claim that hydrofoils can increase the speed of a monohull by 20%. That is just more wishful thinking and hype.

Take a moment and consider this ... yes, the fastest sailboat is a windsurfer ... a planing hull ... just think, if only they would listen to you and put foils on it they would be able to "increase speed at least 20%" ... why haven't they adopted foils?

Prior to the windsurfer the record was held by Yellow Pages Endeavour a planing trimaran.