New Moody 45 : An interesting concept.

I have seen the relevant Yachting World article and I wondered why sailboats like this are not quite common (something similar was first (?) presented by the Atoll range of Dufour). It seems a very interesting layout, that combines good deck saloon visibility with plenty of cabin space. I don t understand why the boom is not just at the level of the roof, so the flow of air would be forced to go around the sail and the centre of effort would be lower. Any comments?

 

At 1st glance, I absolutely agree with you. For the majority of boat owners, this style of boat makes far more sense than the more common low-profile semi-racer. It provides living spaces that you can actually see out of and a confluence of indoor-outdoor spaces that comes close to matching many hardtop sportscruisers. This alone must surtely account for why so many people are flocking to powerboat ownership and abandoning sail.
I did some preliminary work on a similar concept. Though in my case the boat is even more closely alligned with the sportscruiser, having the galley and living spaces in a convertible open-air saloon

 

I have not seen the YW article. I am basing this on the picture found at www.premiermarinas.com the UK distributer. The main sheet/traveller will surely be integrated into the cabin top. Some space will be needed to get adequate sheeting angles/power. Also room is needed to give the rigid Vang adequate purchase. I don't think making the boom a roof sweeper will lower the Center of Effort much, the clean air is high away from the turbulence caused by the boat structure

 

Thank you KenJ,

But why one needs a rigid boomvang in the first place? I mean, wouldn t a specially designed slider traveller, integrated into the roof s surface, be quite adequate? Excessive windage seems a functional or aesthetical problem to such boats, so a roof sweeper boom would address at least one of them, I guess...

 

In this case the vang has 2 purposes. The first is to hold the boom up when the sail is furled, notice there is no topping lift. The second is to help hold the boom down to give the sail better shape in light air and down wind legs.