"The main benefits I am seeing are:
1. Increased efficiency.
2. Improved performance overall.
3. Increased volume."
All those points appear to only apply IF you have a boat that is limited in overall length and that has a big rig. Given what we see in other craft, if you took a scow shape and drew the bow out to a point, it is likely that it would be faster and have more internal and external space for little, if any, extra cost.
Let's flip the concept around. Take a typical boat; maybe the Seascape 27. Now, cut the front 1.5m off to turn it into a scow. Exactly what has been gained? There is some loss of skin material in the bow so some weight has probably been dropped - but you have a bow that smashes into waves, less deck space, less interior space, and less waterline length. Yes, it would be faster for its length overall, but it's certainly not a better boat overall. Apply the same to another boat, even a Laser, and we see the same effect. You make the boat shorter, but not better.
The point is that increasing a hull's volume for its length overall does not make a boat better per se. It makes it "better"
if the boat is under a class rule that forces boats to be short for their rig size, cost, and speed - but a short, fat boat with a big rig is not a great overall recipe for speed. The boats are NOT all that fast overall if you look at their sail area, beam, cost, etc; look at the French national PHRF style handicap, OSIRIS. It rates the Mini Proto at 24, the same as a Seascape 24. The Mini has about 49m2 of upwind sail, 109m2 of downwind sail, and a Pogo Foiler costs around 199,000 Euros. The Seascape figures from the same source are 42m2 of upwind sail area, 92m2 of downwind sail area, and a price of 42,000 Euro. Why may FIVE TIMES as much to go the same speed with a Mini scow and have less space down below and a boat that is far more complicated to sail, run, and tow? How is that "efficient"?
If we ignore the foilers and Protos, then look at the Pogo 3. It is still more expensive than a Seascape, but significantly slower than the Seascape, with a rating of 21. Again, the Mini style makes sense for Mini racing, but not overall.
A J/88 is rated at 27 by Osiris, so it's significantly faster than a Mini Proto. The J/88's figures from the same source are 47.5 upwind sail area, 122.5m of downwind sail area, and 92,000 Euros. So what is "efficient" about a design that requires spending twice the cash to go slower, have less accommodation, and a more complicated rig?
Similarly the Open 40 rates a bit faster than a "conventional" boat like a Farr 40, but the Open 40 is a bigger boat - it has more beam, more waterline length, significantly bigger upwind sail area and much larger downwind sail - so whether it is actually faster for its true size is another issue.
The effect of the hull shape is shown, and the pros and cons well summarize here:
↑
This show that, within the frame of class rules with a beam restriction but otherwise open, this design can give a slight but determinant bonus of performance. In the pro's are, with heel, a floatation surface more leeward and more parallel to the boat axis, leading to more RM and sooner/faster planning when downwind (as long as the boat is light enough). In the con's are more wetted surface in light winds and a bumping bow in short waves when upwind.
As for increased drag (relative to a standard hull of the same length), that is easily countered by increasing the sail area:
Sure, you can "easily" add sail area - but adding sail area means adding structure to handle the higher rig loads; adding bigger winches and sail controls to handle the bigger sails; adding bigger spars, and having bigger, costlier sails. So why is that better than having a more slender but longer hull with a rig of similar (or smaller) size that will go the same speed or faster?
"Clearly, the hull shape has such significant advantages that anyone who cares about speed is pushing towards it as hard as rules permit."
Nope. Look at a TP52, the new Julian Bethwaite sportsboat, the European lake boats like the Psaros 33 and 40, International 14s, A Class catamarans, Cape 31..... no scow bows there.
Re reading the press - sadly, the sailing press these days seems to consist almost entirely of people who don't own boats like the ones they enthuse about (at least in the English-speaking countries). Speaking as a former sailing magazine editor, many sailing writers don't write from a position of knowledge about boat ownership, they are biased towards novelty for a bunch of reasons connected with their job, and examples like the totally unrepresentative nature of coverage and recent "boat of the year" awards show that most of them are very bad at working out what it actually going to sell. Plenty of boats that the press have raved about have not sold many boats at all; look at the Flying Phantom cats that got so much publicity and are now out of production. The Quant 23 was European Boat of the Year, I think, and production stopped at about 12 boats.
It does seem funny that a year or two ago, people were going ape about wave-piercing bows as if they were something inherently better than a "normal" bow. Now people are going ape about scows, which are completely opposite to wave piercers. It seems to just show that rules and fashion, not function, are ruling many of the choices in design.
