How to Design a modern Yacht

I can get any boat to selfsteer with the sails. There is a penalty for speed and course. The "imbalance created by....mainsail" is simpy nonsense, obvious to anyone that actually sails.

 

Force 10

For example, a typical Force 10 in Azores returning from the Caribbean to Europe

Plan A) it is better to return in winter, strange as it may seem, at a lower latitude and taking advantage of the southern part of the storms that pass through the north

Plan B) Surfing with a reefed staysail and a mainsail with a third reef. When reefing the staysail, the reefed sail is forward, this, together with a CLR very far aft, makes the sailboat sail alone, Joshua Slocum style: balancing the mainsail with a sail very far forward. In any case, the helm would be entrusted to the staysail to ensure good operation. But the question is the starting point: matching the forces well so that the sailboat sails alone or almost alone and only needs a very small help.

plan C) lower the mainsail, center the reefed staysail and set the rudders, and leave the sailboat alone

plan D) pick up an Ocean Prediction Center broadcast from their Boston antenna, a RadioFax, and head into the waves, first hove-to like a Yawl to facilitate, and lower the MainSail and anchor in the sea without sail and the rudders out of the water head into the waves with a sea anchor like an ocean rowing boat

Atlantic Ocean RADIOFAX Schedule https://ocean.weather.gov/shtml/atlsch.php

Ocean Rowing Boat and Sea Anchor

 

plan E) pick up a bunch of RadioFaxes every day, day after day, and maybe get an early warning of the coming Monster F10, "Storm", say 90 hours in advance, and set a fast course for the South

 

Electronics

I remember a 3,000-mile voyage on a 47-foot sailboat with the base of the mast filled with large, constantly moving numbers. At the end, your gaze is trapped on the screens, exactly as if it were an internet forum, haha

Revisionist Amish electronics, of course, because the fundamentalist version would be without anything and without electricity

AIS B+
VHF
a couple of cell phones, or a phone and a tablet
a shortwave receiver, and ...

a satellite communicator to send short texts: - honey, don't change the lock, I'll be right back

 

Joshua Slocum

His sailboat was a complete hydrodynamic disaster and on top of that, its passive safety was non-existent, in fact disappeared at sea

His sailboat sailed alone for days and days, 22 days in a row according to his book, because it was a kind of barge that heeled very little

The destabilizing force of the mainsail has a lever arm equal to "h" x sin Heel

h: high of the MainSail Force

---

If, if ....

Thomas Harrison Butler - Wikipedia https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Harrison_Butler

... a sailboat has a good hidroDynamic Stable Balance, then the question is even more simple

 

I was going to contradict you. However, you did it yourself beautifully.

 

(MiniTransat "Coco", ca. 1994)

"down the corridor we didn't take, towards the door we didn't open"

(Unfortunately I am translating TS Eliot from a Spanish translation, if anyone knows the original version I would appreciate it)

Let's go back to the crossroads (ca. 1991-1999) and take the corridor we didn't walk down and open the door we didn't open then

and let's take a step forward along the good path forged by those who preceded us in this passion for the small boat, "brave little tailor"

 

No need. It matches your usual comments.

 

why

why the right path was lost

answer: due to the obsessive search for speed: in the 1970s, design was sacrificed to gain a tenth or two tenths of a knot Upwind. And cruising sailboats imitate racing ones.

And in this century, design and passive safety were sacrificed to achieve two or four or six knots more Downwind

From the point of view of safety and comfort in a cruising sailboat, the search for speed makes no sense because the Waves drive the boat with enormous speed, and the question is whether it behaves badly or whether it behaves well dynamically thanks to good control of pitch and yaw

"Surf gliding is Surf riding in bigger Waves"





"Surf gliding is Surf riding in bigger Waves"

 

"to avoid Surf riding"

On the one hand we have those who want to avoid surf riding and those who want to slow down sailboats with drag devices, which creates a whole new set of problems such as waves hitting the stern too hard and breaking the wind vane, which has happened time and time again

and on the other hand we have all the designs obsessed with planing speed on 'flat ground' or in the trough of the waves in order to win a competition

(there is no evolutionary pressure or sufficient interest in this matter of surfing comfortably and safely)

 

For 200 D/L sailboats afraid of running and looking for ways to slow down and stabilize the sailboat with a towing-drag device ... a 150 D/L surfboard will seem like a very fast sailboat

and for 100 D/L planing sailboats the 150 D/L surfboard will seem like a very slow sailboat

 

None of my sailboats have ever shown any indication of fear or looking to slow down. Fast is fun. I haven't smoked enough weed to confuse a surfboard with a very fast sailboat.

 

Jeanneau sun fast od 2024 longitudinal symmetrical hull and team malizia banana bows are current good choices to reduce slamming and pitching, also clubswan36 has a similar approach, these boats still have "modern" flaws but are gentler than 2000s wave piercing triangles

 

Frers Design https://frers.design/

Show me how your crudely drawn rectangle has one single advantage over Frer's designs. This website is the work of someone with experience, engineering skills, and an eye for beauty.

 

Plan D) grow a pair and go sailing.