Scow with a hint of bow?

(Norman Skene, Elements of Yacht Design, 1904)

The design of a sailing yacht for high competition = aA + aB + cC

A: the Course of the race and what percentage of uphill and downhill there are

B: race/regatta Rules

C: The insatiable desire for more and more and more and more "Sail-Carrying Power"

in fact it is the history of the MiniTransat, after increasing the beam, the stern, moving the Keel Lead (!) to windward ... it only remained to make the bow wider.

 

But the real tragedy is in the "cruising" sailboat and the Inexorable Law: the cruising sailboat imitates the high competition sailboat

and so we see sailboats that hoist 10 square meters per ton above Hull/Carenes that imitate sailboats that hoist 40 square meters per ton

The funny thing about this is that for a relatively slow cruising sailboat ... Scow shape allows to re-establish the Longitudinal Balance ... (that was lost by increasing the size of the stern) ... and so the Scow is -Haha- a "double ended".

 

A ship or boat with bow and stern of similar shape

Paul Erling Johnson in memoriam

In memory of Paul Erling Johnson https://classicsailor.com/2021/06/in-memory-of-paul-erling-johnson/

 

My uncle built a Venus 28 in ferro cement. Huge volume on a short boat. 10 tons.

 

+ Mini Transat 6.50
+ Route du Rhum
+ Transcuadra
+ Jacques Vabre

A handful of influential and trend-setting regattas ... have forged an explosive cocktail 'downwind + instead of hoisting an astronomical amount of sail hoist a sidereal amount of sail'

Good thing we have the Silverruder triumph to balance this trend

Silverrudder Challenge - Wikipedia https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silverrudder_Challenge

Anyway the "Scow" trend has obvious interesting aspects for downwind sailing: the "Pitch" control, and the Pitch control means the "Yaw" control.

Of the band of outlaws - "Roll, Yaw, Pitch" - Pitch is the most dangerous, because if you try to surf a wave and the bow sinks ... you're screwed

Why do "Venus "have a slender-slim stern ... Answer: to control Pitch

Now the logical question is whether with these very wide bows we will not be paying a price when sailing uphill.

 

August 2022

Where I live a lot of sailboats pass by, and we see everything

We know that sailboats designed for racing tend to overdo it

This Class 40 sailed up the coast from the south to the north, which in summer is uphill because of the Azores anticyclone, and went bouncing until its long and slender keel went to the bottom of the sea

luckily the sailor survived long enough inside the hull to be rescued.

 

But the funny thing is that this tendency towards very wide bows would suit very well relatively slow cruisers that cross oceans downwind

(and is the logical answer to the catamaran)

 

Depending on who you talk to, it could be "to split waves from astern", or more likely it balances the waterlines forward under heel and leaves a clean wake. Much like the fat and slow Tahiti letch, the Venus will take waves from either end without severe pitching due to lack of bouyancy in the ends, compared to a scow bow full stern boat. They do still hobby horse at anchor, but at least quiet about it compared to a fat transom slapper. Vito Dumas surfed his doubler ender in the Southern Ocean around Cape Horn, but in my experience, its more like the boat falling down the face of a steep wave, its just gravity at work.

 

"its just gravity at work"

E x a c t l y

'Falls with style'

Planing/Gliding/Surfing is ... falling ... with style

 

Planing/Gliding/Surfing ...

'falling with style'

 

In "Venus" we see classic themes

a) That the heel does not sink the bow, which was a typical problem at the end of the 19th century, in fact it is funny that in old books (ca. 1950/60) we read 'our current sailing yachts are not like the old sailing yachts with wide stern and fine bow'.

b) do not make it easy for the big wave coming from the stern to lift the stern and sink the bow.

c) spoon-shaped bow facilitating the vertical component of the high pressures.

d) longitudinal equilibrium: longitudinal position of the center of Buoyancy = longitudinal position of the center of Flotation

 

Then

So seen from this point of view ...
the current trend towards the "Scow" for me is ... wow, for once something reasonable and useful comes out of the regattas, haha.

 

Thanks

"Thanks largely to Thomas Harrison Butler (...) everyone is now (ca. 1950/60) aware of the importance of balance in yachts, as a result we have more easily handled craft (...) (in comparison with) their lean-bow, heavy-quarter predecessors"

(Eric Hiscock)

 

(Eric Hiscock, Wandering under Sail, 1939)

Of course, the position of the mast is usually a good indicator of where the sum of the lateral hydro-forces is located

I used to buy books, now I only buy old books, they are cheap and I learn, and I bought this book because Wanderer II seemed like absolute perfection to me and I wanted to have first hand information about its behavior.

Wanderer II (the second boat) the stern and bow are balanced; but in the text we read that it was hard at the helm sailing in big waves.

It's amazing how small geometrical differences affect the behavior.

And indeed we can suspect that the bow of Wanderer II facilitates the lateral component of the High Pressure, that is: the bow is more like a sharp knife and not like a spoon.

 

But Skene is wrong. When overall length is the restricted factor, many boats with fine bows win races. Look at Moths - the last scow to win a Worlds did so in about 1985. Since then, fine bowed boats have been victorious every year. It's the same with 18 Foot Skiffs - the scows won once or twice in the 1950s and then became completely uncompetitive. Look also at R Class skiffs, International 14s, etc.