Notable open & development class racers....

Actually Dave, they just go up and do that for the video footage to try to get some TV airtime.
Normally they have the high twist spinniker set to the cruise setting and the pilot wandering 10 or 20 degrees, while they are down below having toga parties and smashing beers against their foreheads.

 

1- Last time I looked over the ORMA 60s (at the end of the 2000 Transat) they didn't have "fully protected helm stations" and the pics I can find of the current fleet indicate they still don't. Maybe things have changed, but that means just 6 years ago the skippers said their hand steering was done from positions that were LESS protected that the VO 70's positions.

2 - I think most of the long races in tris is done singlehanded. Therefore the crew weight is such a tiny factor that it is irrelevant. The Volvos race fully crewed and therefore the crew weight on the rail does make a difference.

3- Different style of sailing in many ways. See the Brian Thompson interview from http://www.brianthompsonsailing.com/da/36159 to see how a very successful multi sailor and Open sailor sees the Volvo style;

"With a bigger crew he could focus 100% on his responsibilities - driving, grinding and trimming - and doing these to the best of his ability. On board ABN AMRO One there were five helmsmen of which Thompson was one. With his background in racing big multihulls Thompson found steering the VO70 required a different approach. "I learned a lot from the guys because they do this all the time. I am not used to boats where you are trimming all the time! I am so used to steering to a fixed apparent wind angle and to turn the boat to always be at that wind angle rather than go straight and having people trimming the sails through different waves. So it took a little while to get used to that."

On big multihulls the view is that things happen too quickly for the sails to be constantly trimmed, so it is more a case of the rough trim being set and then the helmsman steering to this. Thompson reckons that on ABN AMRO One they trim less than the crew used to on VO60s which accelerate and decelerate more on waves. "We’re more like a multihull, trying to keep the same speed - say 23/24 knots and just steer the boat around the waves. It is only when you get out of phase or slow down on a wave that you have to ease a bit. This actually makes it a little safer, because with boats you can’t trim you have got to come up more to reattach the apparent wind. Here you can just ease the sails for the next wave and then you are off again and then you retrim." In addition to this because there are crew constantly ready to ease you as a helmsman can get away with pushing the boat harder.

Thompson reckons that on the Open 60s they should more aggressively be trimming the sails - in particular the mainsail, when they are raced with a full crew.

There is also less pontificating about making sail changes on the VO70. "On an Open 60 if you have the Solent on, you’ll keep it until it is too slow, while here they’ll change much earlier. The main is luffing quite a bit and then the wind drops a touch, then you take out a reef and it is luffing almost completely..."

Thompson mentioned that the VOlvo's stack of sails protects the driver "almost like the bulkhead on Team Adventure/Orange II," says Thompson. "So in the cockpit you have that little breakwater. And when you are steering you are pretty high up there."

So according to a top Open and tri sailor - one of the guys used to boats where they don't sit on the rail - the Volvo crews are NOT doing it wrong. They are doing what suits their crew size and their boat. Unless you can work out how to trim effectively - and that means as well as the world-class sailors trying to beat you - from a fully protected position.

I met Mike Richey from Jester; nice guy but even he said Jester was damn slow. She used to get wiped by the Vertues etc, which are slower boats than a normal Folkboat. Jester was a great boat, but not necessarily a role model for a modern crewed yacht.

By the way, you didn't see anyone with their legs over the side in 19th century ocean racing. What you did see was enormous and spectacular boats, and a tiny sport. The sport only really got going when smaller, slower boats as used by Joe Average got into the act. And the sport of offshore racing was at its biggest in the days of those slow old IOR boats.

EDIT - 2006 pics below show that the helm positions on ORMA 60s are still incredibly exposed and the same as those 2000 boats.

 

I'm not sure to which of the videos you were referring in particular. The one of really heavy weather I watched was from the BT Challenge in 2000. This was a commercial enterprise selling seats in the 'World's Toughest Yacht Race'. With that sort of tag line, I guess you're going to have to give them hardship.

The boats were built against very stringent financial constraints. They also had very finely balanced stability and sheet loading to make sure they couldn't be powered up too much. The size of the primary winches was the first design parameter that was fixed. Similarly, the hank on cutter rigged headsails was another way of keeping both costs and loads under control. But for all that they weren't bad boats and between them have logged more up wind circumnavigations than everyone else put together.

There were a couple of other film clips I liked. A couple were from the Clyde sailing area. One showed the Race Committee at their top regatta each May based at Tarbet on Lock Fyne. The water is incredibly deep and they employ the services of several local fishing boats to lay the turning marks. There is always one day of each series that is stormy and it's always good listening on the VHF as some slightly anal retentive Race Officer tries to get the fishermen to move the weather mark over by say 50 yards. You don't have to be fluent in the Scottish vernacular to appreciate that they don't share the his concern for perfect windward legs when it's them that has to handle huge inflatable marks in 200ft of water, 6 foot waves and 35 knots winds.

The other clip of the two handed race shows a couple of local lads sailing Britain's equivalent of a J24 type small keelboat. With costs split between four crew these are about the cheapest way to get into 'big boat' racing. For some reason that would be a complete mystery to Guillermo, these tiny, beamy, lightly ballasted boats are given ORC Cat 3 and even allowed to enter overnight passage races. There are lots of these boats owned by young Glaswegian blokes keen to maintain the traditions of that city as a hard working /drinking /sailing /partying place. At the end of the Tarbet Passage race all the crews were met on the dock by some lovely ladies handing out freebies from the race sponsors, which traditionally was a case of Tenants lager per person and a jumbo box of Tunnock's Chocolate bars. For me they were just more stuff that had to carried as I headed for a bath and bed. But to the local lads it was brilliant - 'Hey, they've provided breakfast!' Thirty hours awake racing and then 10 big cans of larger and a dozen chocky bars to recover. Always made me feel really old.


PS Quote: "I met Mike Richey from Jester; nice guy but even he said Jester was damn slow. She used to get wiped by the Vertues etc, which are slower boats than a normal Folkboat. Jester was a great boat, but not necessarily a role model for a modern crewed yacht."

It was also lost at sea.

 

I've gone back and had a look. Both very exciting boats! Is there a class they can race in? What's 40 foot Class 1?

A lot of interesting sailors out of Switzerland these days. Is Russell Coutts still living there? Bernard Stamm? Then there's Schmidt, the Alinghi America's Cup team, one of the ORMA trimaran sailors...

Was Dovell ahead of Olaf Harken and Britton Chance, designers of Procyon, in doing a canting keel with wings? http://boatdesign.net/forums/showthread.php?t=10771

 

Procyon

I think Procyon was first but Dovels wings are much higher aspect and the first (to my knowledge) used on all out race boats.

 

Sorry Dave I had to rib you on that one.
CT 249 is on the money there.
Given any modern hull with sails geared toward crewed sailing, and pitting it with the crew on deck and trimming, will absolutely kill one with the crew below with sails set to the broad range of headings that the autopilot can provide. They ( autopilots) are getting very much better, but still not nearly as good as a human pilot.
C'mon, surely you're not asking whether an on deck crewed boat is faster than an autopiloted boat are you?
The Vendee entrees do not spend any time on deck compared to what is about to happen to BWR guys. This is going to be brutal for the double handed guys. Not enough crew to rest but enough to warrant staying at the helm and steering.
Man, this is going to be an interesting study in pain.

 

I can see that I'm not expressing myself very well--that or you guys really do think I'm an imbecile--which of course is your prerogative. ;-)

No, I wasn't proposing that a 47-year old, 17' LWL toy is a model for modern offshore raceboats. I said it was the first I'd seen specifically designed to keep its crew out of the weather. I might point out that it *did* come second on that first OSTAR, beaten only by Chichester's Gypsy Moth IV, something like 10X the displacement. One might ask oneself if there is any significance in the smallest boat ever to run the transat coming so close to an outright win--as you say, she wasn't nearly the fastest... Could it have had anything to do with the ease with which she was sailed?

Nor do I recommend that modern offshore crews climb into their bunks and set the autopilot--how my statement that they should not be on deck could have been taken as a suggestion to put them all in their racks and start the autopilot is beyond me, and yet obviously I wasn't specific...

And yes, I have noticed that some of the best sailors who have ever lived prefer to steer and handle the boat from above deck, without their autopilots, and demonstrate faster speeds because of these beliefs--yes, crewed records are still faster than single-handed records.

OK, if I wasn't suggesting pure idiocy, what, then, was I talking about? I'll try this again:

The sports of aeronautics, automobiles, landsailing and (water) speedsailing all used to run with their crews exposed. Perhaps surprisingly (and perhaps not, in context), the best operators of each of these sports *insisted* they performed better outside than inside, where they could "feel the wind" and be "closer to the elements." Each strongly resisted the enclosure of their vehicles. It should not be surprising that each of these men was proven to be in error, and that the speeds--top, sustained, whatever the metric--significantly improved when they were enclosed. Duh.

"But sailing's different," I hear you thinking. Is it really? Have we suspended the laws of physics, and specifically, the rules regarding parasitic drag?

A better statement might be, "Can the crew operate the boat as efficiently from within an enclosure as they can now, outside?" This is a good question, and could be profitably argued both ways--always remembering the pilots, drivers and skippers of those earlier vehicles--*all* of whom were proven wrong. (Not what they *believe* they can do, but what they actually *can* do--with specially designed equipment, perhaps, and much practice.)

An even better question might be, "If we put the crew inside and forced them to completely relearn their jobs, and *if* they were found unable to perform to the same extremely high efficiencies they can while on deck, can an argument be made that the reduction in drag on the boat due to putting them inside some enclosure might/can/will overcome the loss of efficiency due to removing them from on deck?"

Bringing it all around to where I started, I believe the answer to this question is yes, it *can* be done. Not by doing something like we've done before (putting a plexiglass dome on a Folkboat, or switching on the autopilot and playing canasta), but by doing something new, perhaps even something untried.

Just how much drag are we talking about here?

Well, let's look at air drag. It's been said that, for each man standing above the deck of a sailboat, beating at 10 kts against a 20 kt true wind, an identical amount of drag can be created by removing the man, standing in air, and substituting a 4" tall model of that man, cemented onto the hull underwater. This was s simple demonstration to bring home just how important air drag is--nobody in their right mind would go around gluing 4" tall toy soldiers to the bottom of their hull, and yet few give a second thought to a crewman on deck--even though they create the same drag on the system. Now, have a look at the entire boat--men, cockpit, mast base, stanchions, winches, blocks, line, etc, etc and let's imagine moving *all* that to an enclosed, streamlined structure. Could this make any sense?

What about crew sitting to windward? Forgetting for a moment what a barbaric custom this is, couldn't it be done by stacking these guys into windward wing bunks? They aren't on duty, put 'em in the bilges. Yes, they create a tiny advantage by getting their c/g's a few more inches outboard on deck, however, see below regarding tradeoffs. (Plus, do we *really* want to encourage a level of sport where off-duty crew must sit in the teeth of potentially fatal wind and wave conditions, just to remain "competitive?" I thought that's what rule-making bodies were for, to make the sport more healthy?)

Let's talk about waves coming across the boat, as this one was what started the thought for me. A published data point says that a V70, doing its "max" speed of 35 kts on a broad reach is generating just about 400 hp from her rig. A bit of arithmetic suggests that this equates to roughly 3700 lbs of thrust (defined as the sails' resultant, parallel to the boat's average motion), or a shade over 1.5 metric tons of thrust. As the boat's at equilibrium, it can be inferred that this number also equals the hull's total drag at that speed. I'm happy to be disputed on this, but it both looks and "feels" right to me. At 25 knots, drag should be roughly half that at 35 kts, so we'll postulate the rig is creating about 3/4 ton of thrust at that speed.

How much drag is there on a man, then, stopping a wave with his body? We can play around with calculations, but as a worst case scenario, let's say that, usually, this force is less than that needed to rip him off the boat to his death (though, literally according to evidence, thus "evidentally," this is not always true--men are dying this way). As a strong man can hold his body weight plus likely 100% of that weight, I think we can set this force as something less than 200 kg, on average. Let's dial it down a bit (OK, a lot) and call it an average force of 50 kg. Further, let's suggest that this wave force might last for 5-6 seconds, perhaps once/minute, in rough seas.

What's this come to? If we've got 6 men on deck and each man suffers 50 kg of drag when each wave hits (as above), we've got something like 300kg of combined wave drag across the cockpit, 6 seconds out of every minute of the time. This is equivalent to losing 40% of the boat's total thrust, just as wave drag on the crew, during fully 10% of the time she's sailing in rough seas. How much added efficiency must the helmsman achieve, in order to overcome this sort of dead drag?

OK I know, you want to tell me I'm full of it, but consider this: I have completely ignored the drag due to waves washing across the cockpit structure, the mast base, the dodger, winches and pedestals, the wheel itself, the sail bags "breaking" the force of waves on the helmsman, etc, etc. D'you really think a well-designed enclosed boat, crewed by men who are determined to do as good a job "under glass" as on deck, couldn't lead to overall increases in average speeds?

Single handers must use shortcuts, because of crew fatigue. Think of this; if a full crew were "under glass" wouldn't the raw physicality of their job be reduced? If so, couldn't their performance level increase? Couldn't, for instance, a helmsman maybe stand longer watches (longer than the 20-40 minutes max they can achieve today, out on deck)? If the men could stand longer watches, could there perhaps be fewer of them? It's a commonly accepted figure that, depending on length of race, one crew = .5 to 1.0 tons of added displacement, given man, gear, food and water (or watermaking capacity). How many men could you leave ashore, and how much faster, on average, might this leave the boat?

I'm not saying this is a "lay-down" position, but wouldn't one agree that this concept--enclosed offshore racing boats--ought to be considered?

Cheers,

Dave

 

Interesting photos, Chris. Quite different, however, from these taken at the end of the 2004 Transpac:

http://www.sailtriad.com/geant/at_the_helm.jpg
http://www.sailtriad.com/geant/lounging.jpg

I can vouch for these; I was in Boston as these boats came in. Sodebo and several others had similar enclosures and "super chairs" though, IMO, Geant's was the most advanced. Quite a change from 2000, eh? Also quite a change from your--later--pics taken at the Multicup event.

ORMA 60's sail in two completely different guises--single handed offshore and fully crewed inshore. I guess it makes sense that they'd change the setup of the boat from one to the other--especially such a competive and well-sponsored boat as Geant.

I'm not suggesting that these enclosures are particularly well streamlined--for the boat's sake. They do, though, pretty obviously, work well to reduce the physical stress on the helmsman. It would be a much more comprehensive move to enclose the entire crew. See my other post for more.

Cheers,

Dave

 

I agree that there have been other sports or vehicles were enclosed has proved faster despite the attitude that people were better off "feeling" the wind. Racing cars still have open cockpits; even Le Mans cars (last time I looked) showed close competition between closed-in and open cars.

One could also say that if parastic drag was the vital factor, windsurfers would be slow as the sailor's body is (I understand) an enormous factor in their total drag; a much higher factor than in other craft. Even in longboards, the fully-exposed sailor on a board is faster than the skipper of (say) a seahugger Moth who (according to Bethwaite, at least) is lower and therefore in an area where there is less apparent and therefore less drag.

Re ORMA protection; I looked at the top four just after the finish of the 2000 Transat, and crawled all the way through three with my camera; none had that sort of protection then.

Surely that study that showed a man has the same air drag as a 4' man shape has underwater must be a bit out to lunch? You can easily stand on a deck in 40 knots of wind; how much drag force is on the hand holding you onto (say) a stay; 4kg????

Now hunch to 4' height and try to hang standing upside down in a boat's hull. It's utterly different in terms of force required. I used to have great difficulty hanging onto my hull to clean it when the boat was moored in a fast tide.

Many, many crews know to the 10th of a knot how much they lose when the bowman goes forward; it has been a big consideration in design for a long, long time. Many work hard on fore-and-aft crew weight. Would they be so aware of these factors and yet be too stupid to get around to looking harder at getting rid of crew windage, particularly considering it has been seen as a factor for decades? Ben Lexcen and Scott Jutson, to name two, have been well aware of it for many years - but they ended up (I'm pretty sure) deciding that for some reason in reality it wasn't such a problem. Ben went from flush deck low-windage boats, to boats designed to rely on crew on the gunwale.

If there was so much air drag in the human figure, no one would use traps on cats; it would be faster to just lie on the tramp and depower the rig. The Kiwis used to not use traps on As for that reason - they got wiped when they went to the early worlds and learned the error of their ways. The top A Class guys get out on trap very, very early; if the windage of the body was a problem that would be slow.

And there's very little aero drag force to fight against when going upwind in a Tornado at top speed, but if you touch a wavetop you can get blasted straight over the stern. So, from personal experience, I can't see how the air drag can be anything like as important as hydro drag.

Surely if the drag of the crew was slower than the advantage of having them on deck, someone would have noticed during the time VO 60s, VO 70s and similar boats have been sailing? Surely at one time most of the crew must have been down below but on the windward side; when they're having a meeting about how to handle the boat falling apart again, or when tuning and discussing changes, etc. Wouldn't the driver have noticed the boat suddenly getting quicker as the drag reduced by such a large amount?

After all, the concept of crew keeping out of the wind is a very old one; it was tried on the 14s in Cowes among many other boats. Then someone came along, hung his crew out into the wind, and planed a boat called Avenger into the history books. If windage was such a disaster, Uffa would have lost rather than won, and 14 sailors today would hunch, not trap off wings.

Uffa later had turtleback 30 square metres with "streamlined" decks; they never went particularly well. Decades later, guys in the early IOR days eschewed multiple spreaders and had rounded cabin tops to avoid windage; they got wiped by the lightweights with the crew, flappy wet weather gear and all, hunched on the weather rail.

The 12s of the '70s had many of the crew under the deck, as the old UK Troys still do, I think, and some 6 Metres. Most of the crew hate it.

Offshore mono crews are very familiar with sending the crew down below to improve speed. They send all available crew down below to lie on the floorboards when it's light and weight should be centralised. So it's not as if they are blind to other advantages to being down below.

Some of the heavier boats don't lose too much stability with the crew off the rail. Swan 48s etc are pretty damn heavy and stable and have a fairly low deck profile; but the pros from the Swan worlds runner-up assured me it's very very important to have the crew hiking out. They have looked at the question.

I agree that it's crap that people must sit on the rail. It's a major reason I have given up ocean racing. I wish there was evidence that it was faster to stay warm, refreshed and rested down below. Unfortunately, there just seems to be a lot of evidence on the racecourses of the world that indicates that it's faster to be stuffed, cold and tired and sit on the rail.

 

4 inches, Chris, not 4 feet. The system altered the inch symbols to feet when I first posted it. It has let me edit the numbers, though. 4 inches. Sorry.

Dave

 

All the ideas of having crew below were indeed done to death in the 60's and 70's. Where the 12M's went everyone else followed. Every boat with any off shore ambition had a plexyglass bubble popping up from the deck or hatch.

But CT is right, it all fizzled away because people hated it. I sailed on a 6M where there were 'murals' of pretty sea scapes painted on the inside of the hull so the grinders would think they had a view. But even they weren't thick enough to be happy with that.

Having said that, I do think we have swung the other way. 'Wind drag' is the commonest objection to better cockpit protection, but I would love to see some wind tunnel tests of good looking, streamlined systems as a percentage of the total drag. Where are all those final year students looking for projects when you need them?

 

CT, the links you have posted (and the photos) refers to Crand- Prix Racing and those are relatively short races.

For big ocean races like the Route du Rhum, those boats have some protection for the lonely skipper (including “Geant”).

Dave, Orma 60's are extreme boats and those guys really go to the limit. The boats are many times at the edge and a mistake can easily lead to a capsize. These are not easy boats to sail. I believe that there are not many sailors that can race those boats at that rhythm.

For example, Franck Camas, one of the best skippers, had said that he had never been inside the boat more than 3 minutes (each time) during the entire race. This can give you an idea of the needs and demands of these sailboats.

If they can see the waves and the sea, they can go faster, and they have a much better view outside the boat. Believe it or not, they had said that one of the things that had permitted that incredible average speed of 20 Knots was moonshine; they could also see the “race track” during good part of the night, and for that they would have to be outside.

But regarding the IMOCA open 60, that are much more forgiving boats, what you say does not only makes sense, but it is already a tendency.

For really long races, like the Vendee Globe, the new boats offer a lot more protection.

See, for example, one of the latest designs by Groupe Finot (post 4).

 

Kiteship
I get your point now. And there is some merit to the question. But in all ocean racing, fatigue is such an important factor that it is only compromised in exchange for speed if it is believed to be manageable. The mental and physical condition of solo racers as in the Vendee plays a big role in their performance. Management of sleep diet and exposure are big in the Volvo as well. There is a lot of money spent in consideration of this.

The new Vendee boats are actually trending toward giving up some of the comforts of the last generation. The broad houses you are seeing, although they provide some protection for the crew, probably have more to do with meeting the AVS requirements.

Then again, when you consider all the effort that is put into reducing drag on these hulls and decks, you do have to wonder about all those guys out there.

I'm not 100% sure that sitting on the rail is as far as you can get to windward on a lot of heeled hulls. Couldn't you get farther outboard on the inside? Think about it?

 

In 2000, I went over every one of the Transat tris after the finish, apart from Joyon's Eure et Loire. I spent about three hours with my camera. I can recall being amazed at how exposed (considering the nature of the boats and race) the helm positions were, but I can remember that the initial positions on '80s ORMA 60s were even more exposed.

The only pics I can find on the net (my own rolls of pics are in the attic) from 2000 is Eure et Loir, which has NO protection. They may have today, but singlehanded 60 foot tris are very different boats to VOR 70s. Saying that monos should have what multis have seems a bit like saying VOR 70s and 60s would be quicker if they had the massive air drag of a bunch of roller-furling headsails in front of the rig. We know that's a massive amount of drag, but it works. Maybe it's the same with crew weight on the rail in a mono?

Top small cat sailors don't try to hunch in a breeze to reduce windage; they get as much extension as they can, because leverage is more important than windage.

I was amazed at how cramped the ORMA 60s were down below. I'd have thought more comfort would have made them faster, but surely since I don't win and those guys do, I should start from the position that they are right?

 

Have you seen the Stonehenge part of "This is Spinal Tap"?

"Those two little squiggles mean inches, not feet.....there was a Stonehenge monument on the stage that was in danger of being *crushed* by a *dwarf*. Alright? That tended to understate the hugeness of the object."