FRANCIS LEE sails

Francis Lee:




We can talk about this design if you like. It is the real deal.

 

Francis Lee

She sure is gorgeus ,Bob! Welcome to the forum......

 

Thanks Doug. I thought this boat might be of some interest to all the design fans here.

 

This is the one that was built in Port Hadlock? How about some performance figures? I'll bet she rightly scoots pretty well, particularly upwind.

 

Par:
We have raced the boat once. First to fisnish and first in class despite racing with a spin rating and we had no chutes on board. But we smoked them boat for boat.

We have no instruments yet so I am hesitant to give you any performance numbers. But what I am seeing is the boat is extremely close winded with an AWA in 10 to 12 knots TWS around 18 degrees and 9.5 knots of boat speed. In those conditions we sit at 15 degs heel. We have reached at an effortless 14 knots in 10-12 TWS, using an iphone nav app.

I can give more performance details afer we get some instruments. We are racing the boat again this weekend. We race with a crew of four. We do not need weight onthe rail.

 

Bob, thanks for the photos are preliminary performance report. Sounds like it's as a lot of fun in addition to looking great.

I found a page with some basic information about Francis Lee and construction photos on the Northwest School of Wooden Boatbuilding website:
http://nwboatschool.org/boats/bob-perry-double-ended-day-sailor/
https://www.flickr.com/photos/nwswb/sets/72157634502626642/

 

DC:
You are welcome.
The boat is tiller steered. I made the tiller too long and we are building shorter and lighter one now. We are taking 8" off the end. Helm balance is pretty much perfect. I have been steering witrh m y hand back about 15" from the end of the tiller and upwind I move the tiller about 1.5" each side to keep the boat in the groove. There is a slight weather helm and that's what we want with our big rudder. If anything has surprised me about the boat I'd say I thought, given our VPP's that the boat would feel more tender. It feels stiff. I also am surprised at just how close winded thge boat is. I look up at the Windex and think "WTF?"

 

congratulations. you may just bring the double ender back in style with performance like that.

 

Hold on just a cotton pickin' minute there Petros,,,,are you saying that double enders actually went out of style?

Well I'll be hornswoggled.

 

This flies in the face of the old Swede that declared, concerning a double ender, "She'll go a long vey, and take a long time a gettin' dere too."

 

I try to not make generalities about double enders.

The tall rig Baba 40 AIRLOOM owns the Blakely Rock race in it's class. It is an habitual winner on Puget Sound. There are fast DE's and slow DE's. FRANCIS appears so far to be very fast.

 

Bob,

How much does the hull sheathing contribute to the strength and stiffness compared to the wood strips?

 

DC:
You'd have to ask the engineer Tim Nolan for an excat answer to your question. But I think the asnwer is nothing. The glass skins are to protect the soft red cedar hull. There has to be some miniminal strength contribution. I'll ask Tim the next time I talk to him.

Note: I drew the boat's structure the way I wanted to see it. Tim Nolan did the engineering to make sure my structural image would work. A lot of work went into how to support the keel loads on the cedar hull. We ended up with a solid grp "pan" in the way of the keel and an extensive steel floor system to carry the keel bolts. Jim Franken did all the 3d modelling and CNC setup work. Jim and Tim are a formidable team. I was very lucky to have thor help in this project.

 

Greetings,

Have watched progress on this boat for maybe two years now and its great to hear good reports. Since you are likely the most famous sailboat designer alive and have designed many fine boats it gets my attention to hear you talk about how surprised you are about the boats performance. I think this is because you don't very often get a chance to go 6-1 length/beam (if ever). It seems all the right parameters were followed to get out the speed potential so hope to see others build upon this foundation for other long boats.

The only other boat of comparative slenderness that I know you designed is Far Harbour 40 and think that one is a good performer as well but a little funny looking versus your other boats (to others peoples eyes, I infact like the way it looks).

Peace.

 

"Since you are likely the most famous sailboat designer alive "

My dogs would agree with you but I don't think Bruce Farr would.

I appreciate your comments Goody. Seems I at least have you fooled.
I like the Far Harbor too and I agree with you that it is weird looming but a good weird.

I am a seat of the pants designer. I do numerous VPP studies when I do a new design and I analyze them pretty carefully. They are wonderful tools and can answer a lot of questions. But the one thing they can't do is to give you a FEEL for the boat. Stability numbers are great on a print out but I need to feel that stability personality in the seat of my pants, where I do my processing.

You are very correct. I have never done a boat to this extreme L/B so it was new ground for me. I think I know enough about naval architecture to understand what happens. But, while I have sailed so many different boats I have lost count, I have never sailed one quite like this. I've sailed 12 meters, 6 meters, Etchels , Solings, 110's, 210's, Dragons, PC's and any number of other skinny boats. But I have never sailed one this skinny, this light and in this specific shape.

I will keep you guys updated on how the boat works out as we move into "Chute time".

You guys here get all technical. I kind of think that is too simplistic. It's just too two dimensional in most cases. The focus is too restrictive. I wouldn't know a Reynolds number if it hit me in the head. I don't care about Reynolds numbers. I graduated from high schgool with a 1.69 gpa.

It's an adventure. I think I am very lucky that I have a lot of my brains in the seat of my pants. My gift. But it is counterbalanced by a very poor singing voice.