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Old 11-03-2006, 06:07   #1
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Opinions on Cruising Sailboat?

Am looking to purchase a offshore capable cruising sailboat. Require 3 cabins (2 parents and 3 boys) and adequate tankage.
Prefer ketch rig, but am looking at cutters, and sloops.
Boats I'm giving preference to are the Hylas 47, and 51, Pearson 53, Tayana 55 and 52, and the TaShing Orion.
Anyone with thoughts as to these boats or suggestions as to others that might fit the bill, would be appreciated.
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Old 11-03-2006, 10:27   #2
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All the boats you mention are fine. Only one I am not familiar with is the Orion. Other than those I would also look at Moody, Oyster, Hallberg-Rassey and Passport models that are in your price range. Those combined with your list hits most of major players that are up a level from mass production boats.
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Old 11-03-2006, 14:01   #3
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Hylas models would be the fastest of those boats.

I think the rest would be significantly slower sailing boats.

The Hylas models have "charter" optimized layouts that would serve you well, in my opinion.
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Old 11-03-2006, 14:52   #4
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SG fast is relative... my 'old and slow' Moody 47 has a PHRF rating of 108 as you are also Annapolis based that puts me square in A2 which is still some pretty quick company. A Hylas 49 on the bay carries a rating of 130 so I owe him 22 sec/mile which is a fair amount. And a Passport 470 carries the same rating as the Hylas. So all is not as it appears.

Also the charter layouts IMHO tend to chop up the living space into a lot of cabins which may not be the best full time live-aboard layout depending on kids etc...
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Old 11-03-2006, 18:35   #5
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I think with 3 kids and a wife -- generally some distance on a uper 40'ish or 50'ish boat is a good idea.

As for the speed, you're right -- it is relative.

As for the Passport -- I'm amazed. ;^) It's not your daddy's Passport.
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Old 20-03-2006, 04:48   #6
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Old 20-03-2006, 07:39   #7
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Charter layouts optimise space for bunks not stowage.

I would consider that you would need at least two heads compartments as well.
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Old 13-04-2006, 18:51   #8
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Choice of boat

The Hylas advertises wider stern sections ,which is a promise of poor hull balance , which can lead to control problems when sailing down wind in rough conditions. Wide sterns drasticaly reduce directional stability.
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Old 13-04-2006, 19:15   #9
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Wider Sterns?

That's a curious observations about wider sterns and stability in rough seas?

I don't think that's the differential that deals with stability is simply wide sterns -- I think that rudder, keel, underbody, and a number of other factors really work interactively.

As for the Hylas' performance -- I've only had one close acquaintance that had one, he roared down to Baja with his wife and couple of crew from San Francisco; and then let his wife and two other crew members bring the boat back to LA -- where he joined them on the beat back.

His description of the various sea states wouldn't have lead to believe the boat was anything but stable. His wife was one tough cookie.
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Old 13-04-2006, 21:02   #10
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Wide sterns

Interesting that all the boats that actually go fast off the wind have wide sterns. How can they go so fast if they lack directional stability. Marchaj wrote about a function of wide sterns that is bothersome but is easily corrected when sailing. Other authors have mentioned the benefits of wide sterns, like better power to windward. That some North American designers can not get a boat to balance well when it has a wide stern does not mean much. There are plenty of boats in other places that have wide sterns and steer as straight as can be. I have been on a 40 foot boat planing downwind that you could let go of the tiller. When some North American designs claim they are fast if they do 200 miles per day, the same size wide stern boat in NZ is doing 280 miles per day. As another poster stated, it is not just the stern, it is the overall balance of the hull, keel, rudder and rig. Tell me then that the wide stern boats are only good off the wind, and I will point you to a Farr 38 that would beat all the pointy stern boats to the windward mark, and then leave them for dead off the wind. How come a lot of the leading boat builders are going for wider sterns. Is Hallberg Rassey being trendy ?
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Old 14-04-2006, 02:44   #11
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Design paramenters are multiple and so devilishly interactive, it's no wonder we all struggle to put a firm finger on any one design variable. My conclusion is that wider sterns *may* lead to an increased tendency for the boat to round up and for more difficult steering control when off the wind (not just downwind)...but the tendency may be minimal (depending on hull form and how the boat is sailed) and may be mitigated by other design variables (not just of the hull but also the rudder). This tendency exists, to a great or smaller degree, due to the altered shape of the waterline plane - the shape of the hull at and below the waterline which the water sees for a given degree of heel.

To the degree the waterline plane is more grossly asymetric - and with a wide stern and a significant degree of heel, the waterline plane will be much broader back aft than up forward - the hull will have greater drag aft and steering control will constantly be fighting a tendency to round up. One reason this may not be experienced - e.g. with the Hylas 47 - is that these boats are pretty stiff, are sailed at relatively low angles of heel, and so the hull form at/below the waterline does not become grossly asymetric.

Of course, this is just one variable amongst many, with others having more influence both up and down wind.

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Old 14-04-2006, 04:21   #12
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This is from an earlier discussion of wide sterns but it touches on the hydrodynamics involved.

"There seems to be a lot of discussion about why newer boats have wider sterns. There are a lot of reasons that modern boats tend to have wider sterns but increased accomodations is not necessarily one of them. More on that later. If we look a little bit of history, after the Fastnet disaster a lot of attention was focused on what makes a good seaworthy boat. Motion at sea became a popular research topic. Hull forms and weight distribution was studied in great detail. One of the trends that came out of all of that study was boats with longer waterlines and finer bows. Moving the waterline forward reduced pitching and making the bow finer reduced the impact with waves in a chop.

As bows became finer the center of bouyancy moved aft as well. At first this produced boats that developed a lot of weather helm as they heeled and which tended to jack their rudders out of the water and wipe out easily. As designers got better at modeling hull forms this became far less of a problem.

This combination of fine bow and powerful stern sections were found to offer exceptional upwind performance and reaching speeds that are substantially higher than theoretical hull speeds. So this fine bow, more powerful stern hull forms were really a win-win design trend that offered greater speed, coupled with better motion comfort and seaworthiness.

In a couple year old issue of Sailing World there was an interesting couple paragraphs dealing with theoretical hull speed which touched on the issue of theoretical hull speed as it relates to these new hull forms. I am quoting here:

"Waterline's affect on hull speed is theoretical and not absolute. As a hull goes faster, the bow wave stretches to the point where the bow and stern wave become one wave cycle, whose wavelength is equal to the waterline length. This brings us to wave theory. "

"The speed of a wave (in knots) is equal to the square root of the wavelength (in feet) multiplied by 1.34. If your boat has a waterline length of 32 feet, the theoretical hull speed is 7.6 knots. The waterline length is thought to limit the hull speed because if the boat goes any faster the stern waves has to move further back taking the trough between it and the bow wave along with it. As the trough moves aft, it causes the stern to drop, making the boat sail uphill."

"Except for planning designs, sailboats typically can't generate enough power to go any faster and climb their own bow wave. But a boat with extra volume in the stern can exceed its theoretical hull speed because the extra bouyancy prevents the stern from dropping into the trough. By the same token, a fine-ended design might not achieve its theoretical hull speed if buoyancy in the stern is insufficient." (Written by Steve Killing and Doug Hunter).

Historically, the combination of a fine bow and wider stern meant a boat that would round up at small heel angles, and would roll steer, meaning alter course as it rolled from side to side. (To some extent, my Farr 38, mentioned above, is an old enough design that it tends to roll steer.) But in the age of comparatively high speed computer and readily available design software, fine bow-broad stern hull forms have evolved to minimize the the kinds of wiping out and roll steering that was typical of older light weight, fine bow-broad stern designs. Careful hull modeling of newer boats has resulted in hull forms that do not become as asymetric when heeled as earlier designs. The point being that fine bow-broad stern hull forms require a lot more care in their modeling to be well behaved than more traditional hull forms.

I also think that it is a bit of a stretch to say that these broader sterns resulted from trying to stuff in too much additional accommodations. I say this because as the stern gets broader, displacement is removed from the bow thereby reducing usable accomodations volume in the bow. If anything the accomodations are just shifted aft a bit. That is not necesarily a bad thing because underway the stern is generally a quieter area with less motion than the bow.

Respectfully,
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Old 18-04-2006, 14:06   #13
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Wide sterns

Boats that go down by the bow when they heel will always be skittish on the helm regardless of where their underbody parts are. The only exception I've heard of was a frenchman I met a year ago who had daggerboards either side of the rudder. He said that with both dagger boards down you can't get her to go anywhere but dead downwind , even pulling the helm hard over.
To put her on more of a reach , you just pull the dagger boards up until she steers where you want to go.Possibly a good cure for a naively designed hull.
My last boat was badly balanced, and had little directional stability. For my current boat, I fined down the stern lines by 3 inches and filled out the bow waterlines by 3 inches. I moved the transom and rudder further aft and squated her a bit. She was then able to take any angle of heel without changing her fore and aft trim.The difference was incredible. I went from a boat which was very difficult to get any self steering to work on , to one that would self steer without a windvane on a broad reach in 15 knots of wind.Harrison Butler made similar changes to his designs with similar results.He was the designer who first made the connection between hull shape and directional stability. Sadly many modern designers have not learned from his experiences, and they have to put expensive and powerful hydraulic steering systems on to cover up their mistakes, and lack of understanding the matter.
A friend who crewed on a Beneteau said that he couldn't leave the helm for a second without her broaching. On my boats you can leave the helm , walk foreward , take a leak, then walk back to the cockpit , without her having wandered off course more than ten degrees.
Another friend had Bob Perry design him a boat. Perry told him that more assymetrical hulls have better directional stability. That is absolute ********. The exact opposite is true. At the time Perry was his Guru. Many years later , Very dissapointed with the total lack of directional stability of the Perry designs, he went back to building Spencers, with far less assymetry and thus better hull balance . He learned his lesson the hard way.He is very happy with the Spencers, with their narrow sterns and thus far better directional stability.
There was a boat called Allied Bank in the round the world race that was a wedge , with an extremely wide stern. By the time she got to South Africa , she had to drop out ,as she had so little directuional stability that she kept buring out autopilots , quicker than they could be replaced.
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Old 18-04-2006, 15:43   #14
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Unfortunately, I think many production boats today are built around cabin furniture. The sailing characteristics are minimized so the interior can be large and lovely. Fine for many but not my cup of tea.

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Old 18-04-2006, 17:01   #15
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we love our amel

I think our boat is an amazing boat for cruisers.
check it out www.amel.fr and go to the video.
there are also many used 53 footers on the market.
fair winds,
eric
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