How Fast is Your Boat?

[Pirate999]

I once told a drunk power boater (he bragged about his 38' Formula, which was indeed a nice looking boat), after he challenged some folks to a stupid race, that I'd race him in my sailboat. I thought he was going to die laughing, until I told him I'd race him to key west from Houston. He thought about it and stopped laughing.

[a64pilot]

Originally Posted by Captaintim1

At times, my boat is pretty fast. I have an Island Packet. I can easily cruise at 10 knots...with the engine running, 3 sails up, 60 knots of wind, calm seas, and hooked up to a pod of 50 dolphins...

Other than that I'm not going anywhere fast.

We were bumping 10 kts on a broad reach in 20 to 25 kt winds, with a pretty big reef in the main. A lot better than I expected. Even with me doing the sailing she hits 7 kts in a 12 to 14 kt wind. She isn't the pig I expected, but she does like wind that's for sure.
( I have no idea what I'm doing, so someone who does could do lot better I'm sure.)

On edit, above about 8 kts the engine doesn't seem to make any difference, I tried out of curiosity

[FecklessDolphin]

PHRF is also comparison of unladen boats. Some of the boats with low PHRF values are light. I have wondered what the relative change in PHRF might be for different boats after adding typical cruising gear.

SA/D would seem to reflect a boats ability to accelerate, but not its top speed. And it would become irrelevant with high winds if you reefed. And the SA/D of a light boat (low D) would decrease proportionately more than that of a heavy boat if a fixed amount of weight is added to the boat in the form of cruising gear.

Let me know if I have gone astray with some of these thoughts. I think the only way I am going to really know which boat satisfies my sailing performance standards is to go out there and sail a bunch of them, but that is proving difficult to arrange so I settle for theoretical comparisons

[SkiprJohn]

I like the comparison. It really is good if you are into performance on all points of sail. Very valuable. Of course if you buy a Cal 20 and load it up to the gunnels she isn't going to go very fast compared to other boats of the same length that are unloaded.

[lifeofreilly57]

The boat my wife used to race on as crew was a custom built 40' racing dinghy, or pretty close. The skipper ran with no water and just enough fuel to get back to the dock to save weight.
My wife and the other woman on the 10 person crew threatened mutiny when he raised the idea of removing the head, it killed him to just have a shower curtain around it.
Such is the mindset of a racing sailor.
On the flip side, I learned more about sail trim and design in a short period racing than I would have in ten years cruising, even though it's not a race just a bit of tweaking can bring you returns in speed and consistency even on a lead sled cruiser with tons of gear.
I found that a good set of sails and proper trimming paid off more than getting rid of the fuel weight, even though I was a very mediocre racer I learned a ton about boat handling and proper setup.
I'm not sure if PHRF ratings will help when it comes to cruising boats but I would be curious to see how some popular models stack up, I'll post mine once they get it back to me just for sh*ts and giggles to see how it stacks up, that is if they can rate it. If it's favorable maybe I'll do some beer can racing and leave the icemaker on.
Did I mention mediocre racer? Maybe this is my chance for glory! Or not.

[Barefootnavigat]

My boats not on the list, whenever I enter a race they make up a handicap for me then take it away when I win Go figure.

[RainDog]

Originally Posted by Barefootnavigat

My boats not on the list, whenever I enter a race they make up a handicap for me then take it away when I win Go figure.

My experience in our local regattas is most skippers make up their own PHRF by filling out the handicapping form creatively.

[DoubleWhisky]

I think my boat is just fast enough for island hopping in East Med
I can make up to 60 miles, before my dearest Highest Authority is starting to be bored by sunbathing

[bobconnie]

Ive never thought of our Colvin as being fast, but we have had a large handful of 200 mile 24 hour days! Once we had 4 or 5 days at that speed !! Seemed like she was real fast to us !!! Guess it depends on what ya think fast is !!

[klmmicro]

My old Catalina is fast enough to keep me happy. Sometimes we even win at boat on boat races...but not too caring when we lose. As long as those on board are having fun, we are happy.

In 10 knot winds, it can keep up 5 knots pretty easily. This satisfies me.