SV 14 with Movable Ballast

Interesting system: https://www.facebook.com/sv14.org/?fref=ts

 

Project description video;

https://www.dropbox.com/s/wtt9n1y3u6udg69/SV14 Project v1.mp4?dl=0

Design available free to all after development.

 

Simple and somewhat effective.

A possible improvement might be to forgo the side deck, put a sturdy frame between the two chairs, and put the two chairs on tracks.

This way, the upper bodies of the two sailors can be pushed nearly up against the sides, which could have a slope matching that of the seats.

Each seat would then have its own winch, so it can be moved independently.

This would facilitate boarding.

It may even be better to have the seats facing forward and have the hull more vertical sided. This way the crew will not have to swivel their seats on every tack.

It will be interesting to see how well this boat works out.

Best of luck to its developers. They deserve a lot of credit for even trying.

 

I just scanned through the FB and class sites so I could be wrong, but I saw no indication that they are trying to move the crew to add righting moment. The boat is designed to be a fine keel boat and the seats only tilt for comfort. I didn't see anything more than a picture of the actuator, no specs, control, or cost info. The actuator looks powerful. I can't see why it should be exposed and sealed. The material cost they are posting so far on the sites seems very low -like it only covers wood and epoxy/glass. When prototypes are complete they say they will post BOM with costs.

The backstory video says that the motivation for the design was a car crash disability that was keeping a sailor from participating with his buddy. This is a fairly common need. The design looks great for a mixed ability crew. Able crew could act as a grinder for the disabled and disabled crew and skipper could compete with electric power grinding. I mention this because everything I read says this is a cheap Paralympic boat -rare need, costly but funded. I can't help thinking that they are making a mistake. This boat could be much more significant as an "any ability" boat.

Sailing with disabilities has seen lots of action since the olympic oversight. It appears they got organized and funded. It would be nice if we had a resource here on BD that categorized sailors abilities so designs could be validated for those abilities.

 

Sv 14

Tilting the seats adds some RM but it's not the primary reason for doing it on this boat. I think the Skud 18 a while back used a tilting seat or two and I looked at it for the Crossbow.
The Crossbow system appears to have the max RM of any small mono for a singlehanded person confined to a seat.....

 

SV14 for Disabled Sailors

Here is Manie's build thread for this boat here on boatdesign:

http://www.boatdesign.net/forums/boat-building/sv14-disabled-sailors-56649.html#post789114