Quote:
Originally Posted by markpierce
Some people have mistakenly called my boat a motorsailer. It is pure motor vessel, however. The sails are to help stabilize the boat during certain wave and wind conditions. They can add half a knot of speed with a decent beam wind if operating at less than hull speed.
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As others have said, that's a nice and interesting vessel.
If I were you, I would try to get more sail power out of that rig.
In stronger winds, you need very little sail area to get all the drive a
displacement hull can use.
Almost no cruiser goes upwind seriously anyway, so you will hardly miss upwind ability.
I have worked hard and spent a lot of
money making my boat capable of making miles upwind -- making her a good sailing vessel. I spent more than $50,000 on carbon fiber sails and have done a lot of
work optimizing the rig. My goal is to be able to make good 5 knots dead upwind in true wind up to 25 knots or so. I don’t know yet whether I’ve achieved it. Sails like these have useful life of maybe 10,000 miles, so $5/mile – could buy a lot of
diesel fuel for that.
Wiser people than me just motor, or stay in port, if the wind doesn’t allow for a nice reach or run – “gentlemen don’t go to weather” (final proof that I’m not a gentleman
). So in my opinion, nearly all of our boats are motor sailers, and we just pretend that they’re sailboats. Maybe if we stopped pretending, we could invent a better paradigm for a cruising boat.
Maybe something like this:
1. Much more power, enough to power upwind. I have 100 horsepower for 25 tons loaded – so 200 horsepower? Tankage to match – 2000 liters for a boat my size?
2. Give up optimizing the rig for windward
work. That means you can have a
ketch .
3. If you’ve given up optimizing for windward work, you can also relax a bit with the
keel, which can be longer and shallower. Don’t go
overboard, though, and don’t pig up the boat making it overweight. Efficient sailboat hulls are good for efficient motoring, too – see Wind Horse. Keep it as light and narrow as possible.
4. You reduce sail area compared to a pretend “pure sailing boat”, and this only hurts you in lower wind ranges. You will actually sail better in stronger wind with less sail area and a shorter rig. In light wind just add Dr.
Diesel. But don’t go
overboard with reducing sail area like many “motor sailers”. I think about 14 or 15 is the right SA/D, maybe even 13, but then you need a big light downwind sail for light days when you don’t feel like motoring.
Add a pilothouse, and wouldn’t that be a dandy long-distance cruising vessel?
Alternatively, you can just buy a
catamaran, which are superb motorboats right out of the box because of the lack of ballast and very efficient narrow hulls. And redundant power.
I’m still pushing my boat to be a superb true sailing vessel, capable of making thousands of miles upwind when needed, so not quite ready for either of these solutions, but I toy with these ideas. Someday I will get tired of bashing upwind heeled over, I am betting.