Modern wooden sailing boat ?

innovation is inevitable and there will always be the nay say'rs in any crowd
wood is just a great building material no mater how you slice it
its bound to be around for a long time to come
best of luck
I hope you find the boat that blends what you need, with with what you were hoping for

best
B

 

That picture is very pleasing to the eye.

 

It's just that when somebody says, "classic" there aren't a whole lot of truly ugly classic looking boats out there, unless you have something driven by design requirements and nothing else.

On the other hand, when you say "contemporary" there are a whole lot of naval architects who make fancy, "contemporary" designs which nobody could build, and nobody would ride on if they did build it. Yes, designers can and do build contemporary designs out of pretty much anything available, but some of them have very poor aesthetic sense.

Unfortunately, the guys who don't have any aesthetic sense automatically badge their designs as "contemporary" because nothing like that has ever been done before. Well, chances are nobody ever did anything like that before because it's an ugly design.

So the contemporary designers who HAVE taste get an undue amount of suspicion, because the obnoxious few (or many, I have no idea what ratio of bad to good are really out there) have spoiled the whole pot.

I'm all about trying new things, but I'd rather have something I'm not ashamed to use when I get done.

 

Personally , i have never seen an ugly functional boat.
I think when form follows function it is automatically beautiful.

 

there seems to be an intrinsic attraction to a functional form almost no mater what the medium

 

It may be that classic implies a measure of age, and boats don’t get old unless someone loves them enough to take care of them.

I have the same suspicions about some “contemporary” art.

I think there's more to it than that: what about dredgers, garbage scows, crane barges, self-unloading grain ships and Blue Marlin?

Creatures that rely on speed such as tigers, gazelles and greyhounds look beautiful to our eyes, as does an athlete of our own species. Animals that do not rely on speed like sloths, however, do not seem graceful.

I suspect size may have a lot to do with perception. Things that rely on size such as elephants, and the big dinosaurs, may be awesome but do not look elegant no matter how wonderfully functional they may be. Extremely small creatures like flies are truly repugnant to our eyes when magnified sufficiently to see in detail.

The traditional working boat is about as classic as you can get. Evolved over centuries by working men with little time or energy to spare for esthetics, they seem to have a natural beauty, hard used, dirty and smelly though they may be. I think there is a reason for that. Sails do not provide much power, especially with the material available many years ago. A boat that can use that limited power efficiently would tend to have smooth flowing lines because it must function in a medium that demands just that, and the balance and symmetry needed for safety and functionality we tend to associate with grace and beauty.

Most of us here in the forum seem to be recreational boaters, many with limited funds, and that influences our perceptions. We want our sailboats to be safe, perform well, and most of us want - or need - a reasonably compact boat. But not ridiculously so. So we are looking for fast and efficient in a modest size range. For many of us the working boat is our inspiration and our starting point, perhaps subconsciously.

Big vessels can be ugly and use lots of power while remaining perfectly functional, like the dredgers etc. At the other end of the size scale, boats tend to become iconic. There are smaller boats like Bolger boxes, PDRacers, and even boats made from a single sheet of plywood. They work, since they float and move around on the water, but they are not often fast and rarely receive accolades for grace and elegance.

 

Please reconsider. It's not that simple, since function in that case is a human desision, the function can be wrong.
The function can be also overwhelming, how you stop it. It can goes also to simplifie the construction to the extend of horror but very functional for the bank account. Or if the function, as mentioned above, is to sleep six and having full headroom in a 20' boat, the result is horrific.
It is difficult to simplifie and package "form follow function". It is use by land architect and naval architect all the time to descrive their lake of imagination or taste or both.
It is just one of these allready packed sentence like: close and personal, or speak volume, and so on. Form follow function open the door to everything and anything. And sell well.
But this is my two cents, it was not my intention be against you. Just an opinion, and as it said an opinion is like.......................................as one
Cheers
Daniel