When I first approached the boat design 20 yrs ago, CFD was used almost exclusively by the aeronautical industry. The theory, the turbulence models the numerical techniques were in a quite advanced stage of development, but the required hardware was still slow and costly. It was absolutely out of reach of an average boat designer, let alone a poor student like I was.
So I had to learn from books.
Many of them were about the history of yacht design, dealing with designs from big caliber names like Robert Stevens, Colin Archer, Dixon Kemp, Uffa Fox and others.
And as soon as I read the subject of this thread, I have recalled the story about the schooner yacht Sappho, designed by William Townsen. After she was built, she had started attending the regattas. There was a considerable money circulating in the betting industry, hence so many regattas were held for big yachts at that time. But she had lost all the races she attended, so the owner took her to England with intention too try making her compete for the America's Cup. It was supposed to be an easy task, because American boats were routinely winning against the British fleet in AC of the time. Sappho raced the Isle of Wight race but she lost even that one, ending up last. The first place was won by the schooner Cambria.
After getting back to the US, she was sold and the new owner ordered a rebuild of the hull. The central part of the hull was stripped of the planks, new wood was added to the outer edge of her ribs in order to increase the waterline beam of the hull, and was re-planked again. In other words, she has been "hipped" - that's the term used by Dixon Kemp to describe this kind of refit (the on-line version of Kemp's dictionary can be found here:
http://www.thecheappages.com/kemp/).
After the refit was over, she was taken back to racing fields. The first race of the "hipped" Sappho was again Cambria, previous year's winner. Three races, three large victories by Sappho. And she kept winning after that.
What's the point of this story? Well, I guess there are two of them:
1) The technique of "hipping" of the hull as a way for increasing the speed of the boat was well-known by experienced yacht designers and builders back in 19 century.
2) Studying the history of ship and yacht design, even the anecdotal one, can be as important as studying the modern ship technology. It gives a good insight into what has been done in the past and which direction can one go in search for new solutions.
Cheers
P.S.
Sorry for the poor quality of attached pictures. I don't have a scanner at home, so have scanned them from one of my old books with a smartphone.
