Proa Questions: Atlantic vs Pacific

Isn't that the trend tho? Race boats influence the style of the rest?
It would be pretty cool if Rob could get some sponsorship together and get his race boat going.... At the same time - i don't see the point - as he is marketting safe family cruisers? Harry's are the most practical solution for this too. But it must be tough swimming against the current......

 

Perfectly fair point. I'm just one of those who's interest in proas isn't driven by racing. But there certainly are those whose interest is.

 

Lots of talk, not much action, although for a new concept pushed by a part time one man band, they aren't doing badly. I have built half a dozen or so prototypes from 5-15m and there are 4 harryproas over 12m sailing at present, with another couple of dozen (biggest is 22m) being built around the world. No real hotspots. There are half a dozen other large non harry proas that I know of and a bunch of smaller ones, including a low cost 5m production one. The map on the harryproa site is well out of date. Let me know where you are and I will tell you where the nearest one is. If you are ever on the Gold Coast, Aus, I will take you for a sail.

ISAF Offshore Safety Rules
SECTION 1 - FUNDAMENTAL AND DEFINITIONS
1.01 Purpose and Use
1.01.1 It is the purpose of these Special Regulations to establish uniform
minimum equipment, accommodation and training standards for
monohull and multihull yachts racing offshore. A Proa is excluded from
these regulations.

Who knows what ISAF would do. They are so tied up with special interests that anything could happen. These are the same people who banned multis from the Olympics and allowed motor driven keels, ballast pumps and winches on sailing boats.

Re racing: Proas have a lot of attributes for a good cruising boat, but many more for a fast racing boat. Now that a proa has crossed an ocean, this is the next barrier to acceptance. I started a 15m for the solo Transpac, had builder and money issues and sold it. I am now building another one, see Photos and Files folders on http://au.groups.yahoo.com/group/harryproa/ under Solitarry 2. Hulls and beam are finished, mast is next, when the big infusion table is finished. Maybe this year. Maybe Transpac 2012.

ThomD,
I don't expect to beat any of the elapsed time records for the 60'tris, but on a speed for dollar basis, I hope to write a whole new book. When I get it sailing.......

Alex, No reason why a family cruiser can't be fast, and a lot of reasons why it shouldn't be slow. There are a lot of good things you can get from racing boats if you are sensible. Lot of bad if you aren't.

Alik,
I doubt if there are any readers of this thread who would pay extra money for an overweight boat just because the bureaucracy in Europe demands it. If there are, I bet they are not happy about it.

Might I suggest another book for your library. You don't even have to buy it. http://www.coolmobility.com.au/Yacht/LightBrigade.pdf

Ostensibly a fascinating history of lightweight boats in New Zealand, but also a pretty good explanation of why there are so many kiwis at the leading edge of sailboat design.

rob

 

Compliments to Gary for such great book, looks interesting, will give it a read. Is it published? (like to read paper books).

Rob, I leave You with Your fans, show them some more videos, hope they are not interested in measurements

Also pls try to explain them why proa on this video is slower than a cat...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rAPkBpJ8ssU&NR=1

 

I have read this document many times and never noticed that. I guess being a monohull guy I didn't care about this.

So ISAF has not banned proas, only from "Offshore" events? Which I guess pretty much bans them since I doubt shunting makes them great for inshore events.

There must be a reason it was written in. Is it related to the clause that states multihulls should be designed to avoid capsize, since if they are caught aback it could be an issue for some types of proas?

It seems funny because the ORMA 60 tris sure don't seem to be designed to avoid capsize either.

Sadly Alik is correct about meeting standards. It is the world we live in, and it is getting worse. With the environment of today we would have never had a Bruce Farr, Ron Holland, Doug Peterson, Paul Whiting, etc. Probably no Brown or Cross either.

 

Here is the most radical large yacht ever designed and built, Guy Delage's Montpellier, Languedoc-Roussillon, and this Pacific proa appeared back in 1985. I remember the French guys off the Whitbread boats saying they had never seen such high speed, light air performance from a multihull - and that was a period of hotbed French yachting developments. However there were rigging breakages and the huge wing mast fell down, then later there were financial problems and now the big proa is discarded on the hard somewhere in a vacated back section.
Now put Rob Denney-type accommodation in/on the windward float .... and you have a race Harryproa. And, looking at the plan form of this boat, there is absolutely no way that it would be slow, I mean, it is the most minimal of hull and beam structures, extremely light and is powered .... take a look again, adequately is an understatement. This boat is not for the faint hearted - nor for mass production .... but what an animal! Delage should try again. The last jpeg is of his earlier Atlantic proa Lestra Sport during an Atlantic crossing - in which the boat broke the record, along with Elf Aquitaine.

 

Thanks for the PDF Rob - nice one Gary. That would be something to see......

 

Also for inshore events, if there is a category requirement, which there usually is. Nothing to do with avoiding capsize, afaik it has been there since the post Cheers Atlantic proas had all their problems (stayed rigs, very unequal weight distribution, gung ho sailors).

If you think how slowly cats used to tack, how everyone thought this could never be changed, and how quickly they tack now, then there is hope for speeding up shunting. There are small proas that shunt as fast as dinghies tack (with out the gain to windward), and others that make more gain to windward than dinghies do, but are slower to make the turn, so there is plenty of scope for improvement once they start racing and clever people get involved.

Maybe in Europe, (but not even there, see below). No one needs to build to those standards elsewhere except for charter and to cover their behinds, as Alex pointed out. And the results are pretty obvious. Why build a Gunboat in vac bagged carbon if it is going to weigh 8 tonnes, which is almost double what a cedar strip/hand laid glass 50'ter in Australia weighs?

Alix,
I could just say it is video evidence, so you should not believe it as there are no instruments or polars, but this would be silly.

The proa is Ono, a Finnish harryproa built and modified by it's owner and competing in it's first race, midway through it's first cruise, with family and dog as crew. Ono has 72 sq m of sail vs 108 upwind and 188 down for the cat, which also has a rotating wing mast. The TRT weighs 3,200 kgs (another example of European multihulls not being bound by the silly standards), which is about the same as the proa, although the proa will probably be carrying more weight, unless the cat was also cruising.

In the video, the proa was initially ahead of the cat (if they were racing, the proa must have been faster until then?), made a lousy shunt (looks like they were sorting something out at the mast as there is no other reason to be there), then looks (difficult to tell as the angle changes) like it was footing at similar speed, but maybe not pointing as high.

Given the difference in sail areas, sailing weight and the probability that the cat crew were more experienced on their boat than the proa crew, I would say that the proa was doing much better than comparative polars would suggest.

Interested in your opinion, and how it matches your theories.

From the owner about the race:
We managed to sail up wind like a Louisiane cat (double centerboards) quite easily, actually we outsailed it , but when the wind ceased, it outsailed us. We also managed to follow a TRT1200 cat same speed and course for a minute or two, but we had some too careless steering and the boat stalled. The TRT1200 sailor was surprised and came to talk to me afterwards. Down wind we are fast. We outsailed cruising cats with spinnakers. end quote

None of this explains why the proa took 75% longer to sail the course (do you think it is going that much slower in the video?) so presumably there were other factors (the "wind ceasing" maybe?) involved.

rob

 

Rob, can we get measurements of performance, for some proa with known particulars? Say, for given windspeed (measured at available height but corrected to 10m considering speed gradient), apparent wind angle (say, every 10-20 degrees) and speed (measured by GPS with fluctuations filter or taken as average in time interval). Measurements on flat water are preferable because it will be easier to verify the calculations. This will be very useful info, I am sure everyone involved in proa would benefit.

Regarding European standards - I understand the issue of bureaucracy, etc. but these is the rules we have to play with. Given some experience and creativity, one can make quite light designs within rules, of course not in budget materials. We did comparison for 10m/40kts planning powercat, for example - weight of structure in basic CSM/WR is about 1970kg but in sandwich/AirexR63bottom/E-galss multiaxials/Kevlar reinforcements is 1230kg. Both options are ISO-compliant... This is just only one sample, we do such comparisons for many projects.

 

Absolutely agree, but the answer is no. The best we have is the 2 and a bit tonne Blind Date sailing at 8 knots in 8 knots of breeze measured at 15m up, no idea of sail angle, but probably a reach.
Rare Bird (3 and a bit tonnes) sailing at wind speed from 10-15 knots on a tightish reach in the first video. Wind speed measured by appearance of the water and very experienced sailing journo on board at the time, boat speed by gps.
Rare Bird sailing at 16 in 20 ish on a very broad reach in the other video. Speed by gps, wind a guess by me.
Ono sailing at close to TRT speeds in the video you posted.

All pretty useless for polars. I am relaunching my 7.5m (unstayed una rig, 150 kgs, offset rudders, double ended, rockerless high Cp hulls), in a couple of weeks and hope to be sailing it fairly regularly. Once I figure out how to download the gps data, and the local wind data, we may get something useful from that. Ditto with the 2 x 15m, whenever they go in. Would be great to use your brains and my data to come up with some prediction numbers.

That is only a 40% weight saving, much of which would presumably be resin from the csm and the fewer frames the cored boat should need? Could you let us know the actual laminate over the majority of the boat, please?

rob

 

Pacific Proa

Something seems messed up here - most of the proa's out there are small... lake/protected or coastal and yet the best application is open water (ocean)? Also all (nearly all) pacific proa's..... One Last thought - is there no future for pac proa's in a larger size / as cruiser? Doesn't the pod work - or is it the Grail of anti-capsize?
Does a pod make it a tri-maran
Is a proa really a mono-maran?!

 

You mean like this Pacific proa?

http://www.harryproa.com/visionarry.htm

 

Is that cheek in tongue

 

No. But certainly not meant in a smart-assed manner. Just addressing your literal question. Harry Proas are of Pacific configuration therefore....

 

So let's make it; if there are questions on measurements pls ask.

Savings are due to a) resin b) less fibers (CSM/WR option has single-skin bottom) c) less stiffeners. The major saving is bottom.

bottom for heavier version consists of 11 x CSM450;
bottom for lightest version is CSM300+BX1200KE+BX400+AirexR63/140+BX400+BX1200KE

Can not be compared with sailing boat, bottom load is much higher (displacement 5800kg at 40kts design speed)