Canting Keel Monos vs Multihulls

canting mono's vs multi's

Randy, I'm making no claim-merely quoting Sail magazine's reports of the top speeds of multi's and mono's.
As to the foiler Moth being 20%(or more) faster than a non-foiled Moth when on foils-that's a proven fact.
And in the 60' Moth thread you yourself showed that a 60' ballasted self-righting monofoiler could probably be competitive with an ORMA 60 foil "assisted" trimaran! IF it could be built, you said.
This thread was about the future of canting ballast monohulls vs multihulls.
From just the simplest analysis it seems that
future for mono's with movable ballast has not been written yet and doubtless will be very,very fast.
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As to Moth foiler speed vs non foiler Moths: in the last year alone the top speed of the foiler Moth has increased slightly over 20% OVER A FOILER MOTH last year! And for the last three or so years foiler Moths- when racing in foiling conditions- have always beaten non foiler Moths.

 

Basing future predictions on simple analysis would also lead one to conclude that putting golf ball dimples on the foils would make them faster.

Once one goes past simple analysis, one finds that the the likelihood of a ballasted foiler working at all gets slimmer and slimmer. Do a search here on stability of windward canted rigs and read what TSpeer has to say about control problems ...

 

Well, do you think this assertion is more accurate? "Racing is about slowness."

Is that better?

Of course racing is about speed. The fastest boat and/or crew wins, whatever class we are discussing. And surely no one but a fossilized windbag would seriously assert that "Racing is not about winning." I'm not a racer myself, but I know some, and those guys are serious about winning-- if they're not, they don't win.

Please, I'm not saying there's anything "wrong" with class racing or even monohull ocean racing. I'm saying it's a little silly and a little spiteful to limit ocean races to certain types of sailboats, when other types are faster. Many different sorts and sizes and handicaps are entered in the big monohull-only ocean races, so don't muddy the water with arguments about level class racing. It's like one of those "classic car" road rallies. I'm sure it's lots of fun for the participants, and there's nothing wrong with that, but it's an exercise in nostalgia. So are monohull-only ocean races. Someday they'll be like the schooner races, or the steam threshing meets. Quaint and fun for the participants but irrelevant to mainstream racing.

It's just as stupid and spiteful for multihull events to exclude monos, and even sillier, because what do the multis have to fear from the monos?

Here's an example of a truly excellent race, in my opinion-- the Everglades Challenge. This might not be familiar to a lot of sailboat racing enthusiasts, but it's an expedition type race for small boats. It uses a couple of simple filters: the boat has to be small enough for the crew to drag it into the water from above the hightide line, and be able to carry the required safety gear. It's a little over 300 miles, and has been won by a different sort of boat each year, from kayaks to a relatively heavy sharpie-like cruiser to an open boat with a cat ketch rig. Each year beach cats have participated, and they are undoubtedly the fastest boats in the fleet, around the buoys. But they haven't won a race yet, as far as I know. It's just plain interesting to see those different sorts of boats competing.

I'd like to see ocean racing take some of the same simplifying ideas and put them to work, instead of the spiteful protectionist crap that characterizes a number of the monohull-only big races.

 

Quotes from RHOUGH ,post 122
"Basing future predictions on simple analysis would also lead one to conclude that putting golf ball dimples on the foils would make them faster." Ridiculous comparison-the 60' monofoiler- both my figures and your analysis- were based on facts not superstition.

"Once one goes past simple analysis, one finds that the the likelihood of a ballasted foiler working at all gets slimmer and slimmer."
Just not true! You say it can't be built but a well respected naval architect says it can-but right on the edge of available technology-just like ORMA 60 trimarans.

"Do a search here on stability of windward canted rigs and read what TSpeer has to say about control problems ..."
Why? Just look at the excellent control and performance of the Foiler Moth when heeled to weather! It would only get better scaled up...
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As I said before:" 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..."

 

LMAO! Why? Because you might learn something? Because you don't want to read anything written by someone that has professional background that might pop your bubble?

Typical Doug, put your head in the sand and attack me rather than research and support your position ...

Reality Check: Rohan Veal has excellent control and performance. Doug has foiled for how long after 4 years of effort? The concept doesn't even scale from Rohan on a Moth to Doug on anything and you expect people to think that a 60 foot boat is possible?

 

Is speed really very important in racing and sheer fun?

I will speak about the evolution in windsurfing which is actually my real passion.
First we had the Windsurfer one-design. It was hugely popular and and started a whole new genre of sailing. World championships were huge events and highlights of races were even featured on the TV news. There were so many entries that the events were split into as many as 8 sections. Lightweights, heavyweights, male, female, juniors etc. Who has seen even one occasion when Formula windsurfing racing (the current racing sailboard) made the TV news?
The Windsurfer one-design created a sporting super hero then, Robbie Naish who was a well known identity even to non-sailors at that time.
The next major windsurfing development was the development of the Division 2 sailboard. It was about 12 foot long, rather narrow, hollow, and had a sharp dinghy-like bow, and a rounded bottom, and a dinghy-like transom. I would imagine it would have have been as difficult to balance as a modern skinny Moth (without foils) if it had carried a conventional dinghy rig instead of the windsurfer free-sail system. It required a high degree of skill to sail really competively in a race, in all wind conditions, and particularly once the breeze exceeded about 15 knots. It was very quick in light to moderate breezes, particularly upwind, and racing was extremely tactical. The adjustments that were made during sailing included moving the mast base position fore and aft on a track, and centreboard position, using the foot. They appeared at the Olympics in 1988 in Korea, carried a one-design sail of 6.5 sq.m. and were quite technical to sail well, probably much like a Finn dinghy, which is also very technical, and has persisted as an Olympic singlehander dinghy for over 50 years. The Finn is BTW much slower than the latest rash of single handers such as the Musto or Solo, or even the Contender which has been an international class for decades now.
For some reason Division 2 boards then started to die out and the relatively flat bottomed long boards with centreboards and sliding mast-tracks, became hugely popular. (I believe because of much better high wind performance). The best known example was the Mistral One-Design, introduced into the Olympics in Atlanta in 1996, and has persisted until the Athens games in 2004. The Mistral one-design was very popular with tens of thousands of recreational sailors and club racers as well.
Here is a an interesting quote from a historical article about Oympic boardailing:
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"Due to the big equipment performance differences found in other windsurfing classes Olympic Class Boardsailing is possibly the most pure type of athletic sail racing in the world - a real Olympic sport. Sadly, it is and possibly always will be little understood."

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Then came the hugely wide and short Formula sailboards. Now we have no centreboard at all, no sliding mast base, and no sail size restrictions. Booms became around 10 foot long, and sails up to 12 sq.m. were common. They are extraordinarly fast, especially in the mid wind range, and I believe will defeat an 18 skiff around the race course in most planing conditions.
The trouble was that the technical factor and the fun factor had now disappeared. Who enjoys gybing 10 foot booms, and controlling 12 sq.m of sail on a boat weighing as little as 13 kilos all up. Also being a metre wide, it was now easy to balance, and the challenge was very much less. It might sound like amazing fun, but is not, compared to a Division 2 board. And, the sad fact is, that the sport is dying, and even in the heydey of the Formula sailboard racing, you saw very few recreational sailors out on the water sailing Formula boards.
IMHO the evolution from Division 2 eventually thru to Formula boards, has been one of the tragedies of one branch of sailing that has been very close to my heart.

 

canting

Randy, I apologize for causing you to believe I was "attackng" you: I was just trying to answer your comments point by point.
I did exactly what you said to do to find the TSPEER comments and found a lot of threads but not one started by him. I read three at random and his comments weren't there. If you can be more specific I'd like to read them.

 

Racing is about enjoyment on the water. It's a way to have fun, get challenged, exhausted, and learn.

It's not about winning, if it was about winning almost no one would race because the vast majority know they have no chance of winning. As Stuart Walker puts it so well - "winning is the object of the game - but it is not the reason for PLAYING the game."

Surely if you say it's "silly and spiteful" to limit races to classes or types, you are in fact saying it is wrong?

A guy in one of my fleets moved from 2nd in the world in the fastest of all dinghies, to the back of the fleet in a Laser-speed bit of kit. If it was all about speed and winning, why would he do that? A two-time world Moth champ (fastest of all singhelanded monos) has moved to a class that's too costly for him to win in, but he's having fun. If it was all about winning, he'd be in a class where he could afford to play to win. A one-time and three-time champ in the fastest small singlehander enjoy Lasers although they get beaten in Lasers....if it was all about speed and winning they wouldn't do that.

Tell me, are these guys - probably much younger than you - all "opinionated old windbags"? I've known a shedload of racers, and almost none of them do it for the winning.

The "spiteful protectionist crap" keeping multis from mono racing is the same sort of thing that stops Indy Cars and F1 from racing in the NASCAR that you held up as an example of a good racing format. They don't let recumbents in the Tour de France, they don't let surfskis in paddleboard races, they don't let cats in windsurfer races, they race like against like.

Even the Watertribe events you hold up are only "for small boats. Therefore, there are filters and rules designed to naturally limit the size of the boats".

If you can say "this is a small boat event" and only one or two crew are allowed and that's fine, why can't you say "this is a mono event"??????

The Watertribe says that those who are considering entering a "doubtful" or "experimental" boat may submit it "for review prior to signing up by supply the following: a picture in jpg format, manufacturer or designer, model, length, beam, depth, displacement, rigging description, propulsion methods."

So why is a race where they can review your application to enter based on displacement or designer something to hold up as an example, whereas a race that says "monos only" is spiteful? It's okay for the Watertribe to say "we won't let a boat of XXkg or by designer "X" to race", but it's not okay for the Hobart to say "no cats"????? I have a canoe that belongs to the oldest class of canoe to ever race, yet it's not allowed in the canoe or kayak class....so much for no rules.

Monos are just like another type...a rather more open type than some. They should be allowed to have their own races, just as Hobies can have a Hobie event without Tornadoes, and windsurfers can have a race open to all types of windsurfer, but not let skiffs and cats in.

The Everglades race looks interesting. Races that allow different sorts of boats in are interesting. But just as some of us enjoy that sort of race and should be allowed to do so, others should be allowed to sail to a race format THEY like without being insulted.

 

For once I fully agree with CT 249.

Racing is about EGO. Period.

And modern maxi-racing is about the worst kind of ego, sponsorship.

And there are some people who want/need to pamper their egos sooo bad that they want to win at all costs.

Speed and crew skill are just things that one can buy in order to win. This is the real cause of the deaths of some sailing classes. When the cost to buy a win becomes so high that the competion, i.e. those that you are trying to impress to stroke you ego, leaves....the class is done for.

One of the best ways for those who leave to win is to relevel the field by starting a new class were they get to set buy in cost high enough, and the rules strict enough, to keep the "riff-raff" out. The previous winner must then play catch-up. I believe classes rise and fall based upon who is sailing in them, and the costs required to field a competative boat.

As I said before, high profile racing is, was, and will ever be, a rich man's dalliance

 

Depends what you mean by "ego".

If you use the definition of having an inflated idea of one's superiority, I fear you're failing to consider that most racers are intelligent, rational, reasonable people who race for perfectly good reasons.

Where's the ego gratification for the people who make up the back of club fleets in Snipes and Lasers?

Where's the ego in doing a beercan in a Catalina 22?

Sure, there are egoes and in some classes there are lots of big ones. But it's not true and it's highly insulting to say that racing is about ego, period.

Racing is fun because it tests your sailing skills. It concentrates people at a certain time and place, so you have a sail together, learn from each other, drive your boat as well as you can against other sailors whose presence gives you much better feedback than if you were sailing alone. Then you help each other carry your boats onto the trailers, help each other unrig, sit around, laugh and joke, say how well other people went. Have a beer or a wine, go to someone's house or the local pizza joint for dinner. We got another wedding invite from someone in the fleet yesterday, that's two at the moment. If it was all about showing off, would we invite each other to weddings?

One funny thing is that racing sailors put back a lot into the sailing community. Who runs most non-profit learn-to-sail courses? RACERS. And it's not to get more people to beat as an ego exercise......you don't get guys in their 40s and 50s training 11 year olds so they can beat them. They do it because they love their sport and they want others to share the joy.

If sailing is all about ego, why would some of the guys I mentioned in my previous post move from being world-class in high-profile high-performance boats, into a low-profile class where they get beaten? That's not exactly going to massage one's (supposed) idea of superiority. Are the middle-aged female schoolteachers who sail Radials at my club doing so to feel superior? Really? They get to feel superior when they finish well behind? Truly?

There's surely much more ego involved in declaring that you know the unsavoury truth for the reason everyone one of the hundreds of thousands of racing sailors do it, than there is in being a Snipe sailor. I actually find the best small-boat sailors to have very realistic egoes. You have to be able to respect your opposition's ability to learn from them. Because you respect them, you inherently respect others - and there's nothing that's a better cure for an inflated ego than getting a crushing defeat on the racecourse when you shouldn't have.

Windsurfer sailors had a very high profile. Robby Naish was 3rd in list of popular sports stars at one stage in Germany. His dad's a schoolteacher. Not all high-profile racing is for rich men.

This is becoming a very negative place. Threads start with someone saying that people only sail monos because of style and fashion, when in fact they do so becase they love their monos and they love racing them as much (and for the same sort of reasons) as multi sailors love their boats. Other people chime in to say that mono sailors are mean spirited. Further people say that EVERYONE who does a major sport does so for their ego.

Does no one think that perhaps people often do what they do for good reasons and good motivation? Oh, and after pouring such scorn and ridicule on reasonable people from such height, they accuse OTHERS of having an ego?

 

By EGO, I mean exactly what Freud defined it as. Not the perjorative meaning that it has gained. The EGO is the piece of the conscious that implements the rational action of the mind between the wants of the ID (the subconscious I want it now child) and the restraints of the SUPER-EGO (the society building living saint). The EGO is the part of the mind that physically implements the pleasure that the ID wants. How people are mentally arranged determines how the EGO provides the pleasure. Why I said the racing is all about the EGO is this:

There are some people's IDs that can only be satisified but it knowing that it is as good as or better than everyone else in something; be it math, art, sex, or sailing. In order for the EGO to satisfy the ID that it is good, the EGO must prove that it is successful. For some things this is just the amassing things like money or lovers. For other things, the ID requires that the EGO compete against others. It is the EGO that implements this competion and offers it up to the ID as proof, whether it is in business, goldfish eating, or sailing.

Racing is competion by definition, it is not racing without it. The ID does not require the race, it requires the proof. The EGO creates the competion, and the rules of that competion, to prove to the ID that it is satisfying it. Note that the "rules" to the competion are from the EGO, not written down. The implementation of "social" rules between EGOs is a function of the SUPER-EGO.

There are many sailors that never have any need to race, the EGO can satisfy the ID by just sailing possibly because the ID is satisfied in general. Some of these do fall unto a competion with nature, the people that would rather be at sea than on shore, or undertake epic voyages. It is the EGO that develops these voyages to satifsy the wants of the ID.

There are many sailors that race without the need to win. The very fact that they are in competion satisfies the ID, again possibly because the ID is satisfied in general. Or that the SUPER-EGO is strong enough to assert delayed gratification on the ID. Or more likey, "winning" has been met by the "rules" their EGO has implemented on their ID. Again, the EGO implements the race, but winning is not required.

There are a few IDs, as I pointed out, that the ID requires that they be on top of the heap....any heap. These "Type A" people can extremely successful, or not, but it is the need of the EGO to "win" the competion so as to satisify the ID, that drives them. Because this competion requires the participation of other EGO, the "rules" the EGO uses to satisfy the ID are somewhat limited by the SUPER-EGO. Some times the SUPER-EGO is so lax or the need of the ID so powerful, that the EGO resorts to "playing outside the rules"...maybe even cheating... to satisfy the ID. This is were class rule limits and restrictions come from, the EGO limits the field to maximize it's chance of satisfying the ID. The EGOs need here is not to be the absolute fastest, but to be the "winner" in the competion, and therby satisfy the ID. If the EGO determines it cannot "win" within the limits set by it's SUPER-EGO, then it "picks up it's ball and leaves", generally modifing the "rules" it needs to satisfy the ID.

Sailing, amassing wealth, and needlepoint can all either be solo or social endevors. When competion is introduced, it is only by the EGO to satisfy some requirement of the ID. However, once the venue is established, other EGO's may use it to satisfy thier needs; such as sponsorship. Sponsors ID's may not measure thier success by winning races, they may measure it by how much money that they saved by using it as a tax write-off. Winning, losing, loss of vessels, deaths of crew may mean nothing to their IDs, it is just a mechanism used by the EGO to amass wealth which their IDs want.

I could redo the analysis in Jungian terms if you'd perfer, knowing how some people dislike Freud.

Actually yes, a wedding is just a way of showing off that you were successful in gaining a mate .

 

Wow!

Hi Jehardiman, you are quite an intellectual; and I sincerely say this without meaning any sarcasm or trying to put you down at all. The psycho-analytical treatment of EGO, ID and SUPER-EGO, and how they interact in relation to sailboat racing has got to be beyond the full comprehension of many members of the forum.

I for one pretty much agree with nearly all you have said, but why get it all so complicated?

BTW, on a holiday in Bali some years ago I spent the entire week reading a book entitled "Why Freud Was Wrong". Author is Richard Webster. He is an academic that studied in English Literature in England. He took years to research his material before writing his book. The aspect of infantile sexuality features quite prominently, and there is no mention of sailing anywhere in the 673 pages.
Congrats anyway on the time and effort put into your posting.

 

I am not an intellectual, "I" am a Naval Architect......(though I have been called other things!) And therefore everything about a vessel is my purview; keel to truck, cutwater to duncecap. The care and feeding of owners is just as important as stress corrosion cracking in condenser tubes.... .

Edit to add

Many may not agree with how I look at marine things, but that is what it is all about. As I said in my very first post in this thread:

 

Okay, je.....it appears to have been another example of a definition problem. The perjorative meaning IS the popular meaning these days, isn't it, and therefore reading "ego" in that way may have been perfectly reasonable. If you'd mentioned it's about the ego and id or super-ego, the meaning would have been clear although I'm not much into Freud; more interested in social psych.

On the one hand I may have gone off the deep end and I apologise in that case. I also totally agree that there's a lot of "Type A" personalities in many classes. They certainly aren't dominant in most small boats, but the big-boat world bristles with them.

Many sailors who never need to race can satisfy their need for competition in other ways, can't they? I've seen many who compete by having the most "seaworthy" boat, or the biggest boat, or the "best cruising boat", or who compete by denigrating all those nasty racing types, or those stick-in-the-mud mono sailors.

Sometimes a race is just a race*.


* yeah, I know Siggy probably never said the phrase I'm misquoting.

 

Don't forget the boat with the most dead fish aboard, the boat that sounds the most bad-***, the boat whose outboard stalls least often, and the boat with the most hot girls on the foredeck.
We all have our own ways of showing off....