MingMing 3

Baluchon 2.0

 

That video should have come with a warning. All those motorcycle accidents and leg smacks have given me PTSD.

I think Roger was born "North of the river", and I had my youtube voice on, not my "Eastenders-every-second-word-F". Maybe after 30 years of being out of London I dropped the accent......LOL.

 

Hes almost ready to go....



I expect he will complete his second navigation, while Yrvind is still complaining about inferior plywood boats in his workshop.

 

I honestly lost hope in him when he spent an age faffing around with varying hatches and whatever silliness it was just before all that, something to do with.... hatches. I mean at 85 he surely has enough imagination to not bother with making costly additions only to change his mind 5 minutes later. I forget but how many times did he get that poor sod to forge his keels for him, the only thing that has kept me sorta coming back is the amount of utter expense he has spent on that boat. I genuinely believed he was making himself a coffin, a final resting place at sea, maybe lost never to be found, who knows.

I am on a happier note glad to see Roger has returned with a new project, am now reminded to purchase the last of his books.

 

I was surprised he could get 90 days supplies on MingMing 1. Not bad for a boat with a 16ft waterline. But given Yanns example and some recent transatlantics in smaller boats.....just take less stuff.

 

Yes

Roger consumed 0.75 (!) liters of water per day, a low figure that he attributes to sailing inside the sailboat protected from the wind and sun.

Symon, a young Polish man in his 6.3 m LWL sailboat (photo above) circumnavigated the world around the three great capes (i.e. the Cape Horn route) and carried ...

600 (!) liters of water.

I am amazed time and time again at the astronomical amounts of food and water that small sailboats can carry

600 liters of water, OMG

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That is, 2 liters per day for 300 days, which in the end was about 250 days, I do not remember the exact figure.

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270

Szymon Kuczyński – Wikipedia, wolna encyklopedia https://pl.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Szymon_Kuczy%C5%84ski

 

Symon got surprisingly little press for that voyage. He is one of the few to sail a Setka across the Atlantic and also sail it back home to Poland. 6 cups of tea a day is under a litre of water, I also take a stock of fruit juices in 125ml cartons. At least one Mini 6.5 did a non stop also.



Alessandro Di Benedetto, around the world in Mini 6.50 (giornaledellavela.com)

 

John Welsford discusses being approached by a group wanting him to design a 10' sailing boat for a circumnavigation record. He refused, however he did some planning for a prospective small boat circumnavigation, and designed Fafnir as his idea of the smallest boat capable of doing it.
Fafnir - wooden sailing boat plans https://jwboatdesigns.co.nz/plans/boats-with-cabins-and-sails/fefnir/

 

Having your name associated with something that might fail and cause loss of life is not a good look.......but car designers get away with it.

 

There is a larger version

5.5 m

Swaggie - wooden sailing boat plans https://jwboatdesigns.co.nz/plans/boats-with-cabins-and-sails/swaggie/

The problem with reducing the size is that the Displacement cannot be reduced, because food and water cannot be reduced (moreover: by reducing the Speed, the load must be increased. John Welford presents this argument clearly) and you cannot reduce much what you have to install, for example the weight of a hatch or a battery does not depend on the length.

And by maintaining a Displacement of say 1 Ton and reducing the Length .... the Longitudinal Metacentric Height drops

In other words: the bow sinks easily.

Even the Scow Baluchon is let's say just at the limit (4 m) of what is reasonable in my opinion.

 

Another question: it is absurd and even criminal to drill holes in the mast to put the halyards inside like a summer racing sailboat.

Szymon on Cape Horn almost lost his mast because of this superstition of drilling holes in the mast.

 

I once saw a guy hit a pier/jetty at slow speed, about half way up his roller furler......the mast buckled instantly and folded on itself. And this was a boat that had just arrived after an Atlantic crossing.
Rigging is not a place to skimp on quality, even if weight saving is beneficial....a "faster" dis-masted boat is an oxymoron.
Funnily enough, even on the boats i have owned with alloy spars, they all had external halyards. Only hole was for the power cable to the masthead light right at the base.

 

I dont fancy it myself, the margins for error/weather are increased with reduced capacity. Yann was virtually out of water and food on arrival in the Azores, and that was with rationing his supplies. Im wondering if the new bilge keeler will be faster or slower?

 

E x a c t l y

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I think that the 5.5-6 meters zone (LWL) is a kind of sharp peak, and so to speak you fall on both sides, in particular below 5 meters the boat is heading to become a buoy, and many problems arise.

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Note that Roger Taylor investigated and explored the limits and ultimate frontiers with MingMing 1 and the conclusion was to increase the size to MingMing 2.

 

Indeed. I would have liked to have had more than 21ft/6.4m in waterline, but 26ft/8m overall is plenty for any place i would want to go. There is no way that triple keel Achilles could have surfed at the speeds of that old Beneteau of the same size.



One of the 6m Triss Magnum for $500 makes cutting into new plywood seem like a sacrilege.