New low-cost "hardware store" racing class; input on proposed rules

[Doug Lord]

Richard, page 63, post 935. In the future go to the top right of the page where it says "Search this thread" and you can find most anything.....

 

[sharpii2]

In 1898, Dominion became the first tunnel hulled scow and cleaned up. She defended the Sewanhaka Cup for the Royal St. Lawrence Yacht Club. It was designed and sailed by Herrick Duggan. After her victory the Dominion type tunnel hull was banned.....

Thanks Doug. This is the boat I had in mind.

It must have been murderously difficult to plank up.

 

[sharpii2]

...Both have their attractions, but both are very different experiences, skiing steep expert runs, or ripping up steep trails on bike, are exhilarating, but very tiring activities. Very few people that ski actually will attempt the steep narrow chutes below the cornice at the top of the ski area, comfortable road bikes out sell off road bikes by a very large margin.

And mono hulls way out sell multi hulls for perhaps the same reason.

I think A major reason this is so is because most multis are designed to maximize performance, especially in the dinghy size range.

I think your opinion on monos would be quite different if the only dinghies of that type you ever saw were high performance.

While sailing one my latest budget sailing contraptions, on a small lake, I encountered a catamaran which looked nothing like the ubiquitous Hobie types.

It had a planked bridge deck, instead of a trampoline, and it had a low but powerful sail plan. The foot of the single sail was almost as long as the luff. The boat was about 17 ft long. An old man and probably his young grandson were on board. I could hear the thing sluiceing through the water at a speed of maybe 10 kts.

Neither the boy nor the old man seemed to making much of an effort sailing it. I was probably working harder keeping my 3.5 kt sailing raft going.

Now 10 kts is not nearly as fast as the 15 a Hobie type typically sails at, in a good breeze, but for the comfort, it's probably fast enough.

I later found out that the boat I saw was a Wharram 17.

 

[macbeath]

If that is so evident, why hasn't anybody done it? There are plenty of mono hulls in the neighborhood of 14x5, maybe 5+, but no cats. And if it were true, why don't we all do it?

It has been done. Alcort built about 1,500 of the "Catfish," which was about 14' x 6'.

It was harder to cartop than the Sunfish.

 

[CT249]

I think A major reason this is so is because most multis are designed to maximize performance, especially in the dinghy size range.

I think your opinion on monos would be quite different if the only dinghies of that type you ever saw were high performance.

Very true; in fact IMHO the fact that cats concentrate so much on high performance is a significant problem for cat sailing. There's no multihull equivalent of such popular dinghies as the Enterprise, Merlin Rocket, National 12, Thistle, Tasar, Vanguard 15, Snipe, Solo or Laser. Some of those dinghies are quite fast, but they achieve speed with small but very efficient rigs and without trapezes. There's nothing really like that in cats, although the PT may go close. There's also nothing that will handle the typical weight of two adults that isn't a high-powered machine.

 

[sharpii2]

Very true; in fact IMHO the fact that cats concentrate so much on high performance is a significant problem for cat sailing. There's no multihull equivalent of such popular dinghies as the Enterprise, Merlin Rocket, National 12, Thistle, Tasar, Vanguard 15, Snipe, Solo or Laser. Some of those dinghies are quite fast, but they achieve speed with small but very efficient rigs and without trapezes. There's nothing really like that in cats, although the PT may go close. There's also nothing that will handle the typical weight of two adults that isn't a high-powered machine.

Wow!

Hearing this from you is refreshing.

Perhaps Petros might want to re-examine the multihull part of his rules to encourage more user friendly multis. Such are very much in the spirit of this class.

As they stand now:
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B. Multihull.

1. Max length 18' (including all appendages).

2. Max height from low point of hull to highest point of rigging or sails: 24’

3. No beam limit but hull must be able to be reconfigured/dismantled to 8' towing width."
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
I suggest making three changes:

1.) Limit the max Beam to 8 ft,
2.) Limit the rig height to 20 ft, and
3.) Ban the trampoline.

The first would be to make sure the set up time is minimal,

The second would be to make sure the boat is manageable by those whom are somewhat less than athletic.

And the third would be to make the boat more comfortable, so people will sail it for purposes other than race winning and thrill seeking.

Personally, if I had a choice between the fast but towering Hobie 16 and the squat but heavy Wharram 17, I'd pick the latter in a heart beat.

An associate of mine had a Hobie 16, with just about all the go fast sail adjustment equipment on it. I had to go sailing with her to tell her which lines to use and which ones to ignore.

After that, she sailed it for a few seasons.

One day, she took her boyfriend out on it. It was a blustery day.

The thing pitch-poled, throwing her boyfriend into the rigging. He sustained no serious injuries, but painful temporary ones.

He never again went out on the boat and soon broke up with her.

The boat didn't last long after that.

 

[Petros]

since no one to my knowledge has started building a multi hull, changes can be made now.

My thoughts were exactly that: usually multi hulls are much more performance oriented, so I made the rules around that idea. if a builder wanted less performance, than they can build a mono-hull.

I guess the question is what is the purpose of this multi hull class? almost all multi hull owners I have encountered are into performance, should a low cost one be any different?

if the rules limited performance (and innovation) on purpose, would it attract any participants?

Perhaps a better way to improve convenience would be to include a "handicap" based on the time it takes to go from "road" configuration to "sail ready", to encourage faster sets ups. would not that be a better goal?

 

[Nnnnnnnn]

Very true; in fact IMHO the fact that cats concentrate so much on high performance is a significant problem for cat sailing. There's no multihull equivalent of such popular dinghies as the Enterprise, Merlin Rocket, National 12, Thistle, Tasar, Vanguard 15, Snipe, Solo or Laser. Some of those dinghies are quite fast, but they achieve speed with small but very efficient rigs and without trapezes. There's nothing really like that in cats, although the PT may go close.

Dart 15?
Or, if you in the ex-USSR, something like boat on the picture. Definitely faster, cheaper and easier to sail than Laser.

There's also nothing that will handle the typical weight of two adults that isn't a high-powered machine.

Hobie Wave or Getaway.

 

[Richard Woods]

Perhaps a better way to improve convenience would be to include a "handicap" based on the time it takes to go from "road" configuration to "sail ready", to encourage faster sets ups. would not that be a better goal?

It seems crazy to have a low cost boat and then have to buy an expensive trailer to transport it. In some places such a trailer has to be registered and taxed, even if the boat does not.

Would it not be a "better" class if the rule said "all boats must be car topped", certainly it would be cheaper and simpler for owners

Richard Woods

 

[macbeath]

Why not have the same dimensions for the cats as the monos?

 

[Segler]

Why not have the same dimensions for the cats as the monos?

That's the mono class without the "hollows" restriction, and that is not a bad idea.

 

[sharpii2]

It appears to me that multis are heavier than monos (without ballast, of course) of the same carrying capacity. And making a 5 ft wide multi doesn't seem like a winning idea either.

Unless it comes off the car in pieces, a multi with decent performance and capacity is very likely to be too heavy to car top.

When multi owners say they are into it for the performance, they probably mean they are in it for faster than the usual mono performance.

A multi can be nearly as fast a a very fast mono, without much of the crew effort needed to make that mono go fast.

This is an area of multi dinghy development that I think has been ignored.

Such a multi is very much in keeping with the philosophy of the mono portion of this class. Fast, yes. But not overly expensive. And useful for other purposes than simply racing.

 

[gggGuest]

A multi can be nearly as fast a a very fast mono, without much of the crew effort needed to make that mono go fast.

This is an area of multi dinghy development that I think has been ignored.

Back in the 60s, when (in the UK at least) of the beach multihulls were at probably their peak of popularity, there were quite a number of moderate performance sort of entry level type catamaran classes, but they all seem to have died a death. Whether that was because they were kinda generation one boats, heavyish with bridge decks and the like, and there were no replacements of a more modern style I don't really know, but its not as if there were never such things, its just that they don't seem to have found a sustained market. The Aquacat still seems to be built in the US, I don't know how much of a market that has. Always seemed to me a kind of Sunfish equivalent.

 

[Petros]

Would it not be a "better" class if the rule said "all boats must be car topped", certainly it would be cheaper and simpler for owners

good call Richard, that is exactly correct. the idea was the boat needs to be inexpensive and small enough to keep it in a small space was to keep owning it inexpensive. Having a trailer would make take it away from the intent. Car topping is an excellent idea, though I did not want to complicate it further, it is a simple rule. Of course with those dimensions there is no reason it could not be a car top design. it does not mean it has to be car top carried, it just means it must be capable of it.

I have built a number of 16-17 ft inexpensive multi hulls, all were car topped on my small Toytoa wagon (only 14 ft long), in fact not a single one has ever been on a trailer. No reason to not have a car top rule apply to both mono and multi hull classes.

I wonder if a time from car top to sail ready is a practical thing to score. But I like the car top capable rule (at least for the main hull and rigging perhaps).

 

[CT249]

Dart 15?
Or, if you in the ex-USSR, something like boat on the picture. Definitely faster, cheaper and easier to sail than Laser.


Hobie Wave or Getaway.

Yeah, you're right, the Dart comes close and I should have remembered it. If I recall correctly it's the second most popular cat in the UK, which may confirm that when the cat builders aim for that market, it's a success. The Russian cat in the pic seems to be a significantly more complicated sort of craft.

We have a bunch of 14 foot hiking cat types here. IMHO they fall too far each side of the Laser/Solo/Sabre/OK bracket, being either too 'tweaky' or showing too much of their origin as leisure machines to achieve the same sort of fleets as the small hiking monos.

The Wave and Getaway don't really fit into the same "two-adult hiking" Ent/Tasar/Snipe/MR category since they are plastic and more aimed specifically at beginners and leisure use, whereas even in their early days even boats such as the Ent and Snipe were most definitely seen as cruiser/racers. Interestingly although there have been several monos in that bracket, none of them have taken off either. The Wave's success in the USA as a singlehander, though, could again indicate the possibilities.

PS - as I understand it the Dart 18 requires quite a light crew and it's quite a big boat, so it's not in the same bracket as a cat version of an Ent, Tasar etc. It is of course quite possible that the sort of boat I'm thinking of just won't work in a cat for some fairly good reasons, but the lack of a cat version of such a popular style of craft does seem odd. Basically I suspect that a major reason that cats aren't more popular is that they haven't hit the right market segments, and I know at least one of the major cat builders down here has a similar belief. Of course, it's highly likely that I'm talking complete rubbish.