Hogfish stability
Imaginary number,
The HFM as loaded with water, fuel,food staples for 6-8 months,all my tools , books , clothes , large dinghy,and on and on of what we want to have to be sailing off the grid and be mostly self sufficient is about 32,000 lbs. I have been carrying around for years 2,000 extra lbs of lead pigs that I have salvaged from a wreck that I plan on selling.
When we built our house here in the Bahamas we carried over from the states a distance of 395 miles on average 3-4 more tons of supplies on board.
The HFM carries about 2,000 lbs per inch of submersion. We loaded her down the last trip over 8" above her waterline.
In this mode she still sails along great reaching speeds of 7 knots + on the trip over. Once you get the mass moving it just moves along. This we did without an inboard diesel.
When building the original Hogfish my friend Wyatt Huggins that worked For Tom Fexas yacht designs as Chief engineer for 30 years traded my rebuilding a skiff of his for a complete set of stability calculations . This includes weighing each piece of timber in the design, all mast calculations and done with the water tanks empty, full, and the centerboard up. 42 pages of numbers. This was done in1988.
As stated before I have sailed lots of ocean sea miles in my two boats. Never have I ever felt compromised by their hull shapes.
I believe the only way to roll one over is by a sea action and that would have to be from a mistake of the skipper. Having sailed in many gales down wind in up to 18' seas I find them to be excellent sea boats. I like not having a keel down at times. And when I feel I need it I just pull it down.
I was run over in the Hogfish while single handing to the Virgins by a US. Warship ruining without lights in 35 knots of wind with just my staysail up. I could not see him in the dark. My bow sprite hit his side and I ran down the length of the ship with the wake nocking me on my beam ends with the mast in the water. This broke the bow sprite off at the stem. The Hogfish just popped right back up and continued on sailing with the Hasler vane not missing a beat.
The only damage was the bow spite and my nerves.
In my designs the boats will float on their sides with no water coming in.
I belive they will roll right around because of the bouancy of the extra sheer .
I have tried when launching them on sea trials to sail into huge squalls under full sail to try and nock them on their sides. They just go over till the wind spills out of the sails but still somewhat under control.never have I had the sheers in the water for a second except for that fN ship.
I live in a remote island with only this iPad to use. I will photograph and post all this data on my facebook site as it seems to transfer there the clearest. I am computer eliterate .
The bottom of the Hogfish designs are made from 3 layers of marine grade plywood glued with 2 part epoxy. Then glassed over with 4 layers of 1 1/2 oz. Matt with a 10 oz. cloth to finish. I use polyester resin. On HFM I used vynelester as that's what I was building my flats boats with.
This is an extremely strong skin.
The problem with Jim's Alert was the hull was strip planked cedar and had only a supper thin skin of Dynel covering it so you could poke a hole through the skin with a small conch. I have settled down on my 66 lb Bruce many times and just flatten it into the sand.
Round rocks on an even bottom are nothing.
Now I use an ablative paint and if you are sitting in one spot for a month or so and you have not anchored yourself well enough to not be moving back and forth when the tide changes then you will polish off the paint on the curve of the bottom. It takes about 15 minutes for the tide to float the boat so not much bouncing but if a sea is coming in then you run out a kedge and all it takes is a few little bumps and the seas will lift you off to get back in deeper water which will mean about 5 " more depth.
Have never worn any glass off the bottom with my design method. But it's extra work in the building stage.
From my observations most aluminum boat people and steel ones try to be very carefull when grounding out as they have to deal with corrosion when the paint wears off. Not so with a thick glass skin.
The daggerboard floats and I have to crank it down with a line to a winch. I have a crash box system that I adapted from a Gold Coast Catamaran design from when I worked there years ago. The board will stop the boat like a keel but as I wrote you just release the down line and up pops your keel so problem over.
Hope this helps.
Thanks Chris, for all the info posted on your blog and here 
