How to speed up a Snowgoose?

[sandy daugherty]

Older Prouts were designed in an era when cats were radical, and not to be trusted. Prout changed that. The Prout Era was marked with wonderful stories of safe transits in bad conditions. Prout added the terms "dependable", "safe", and "long legged" to the multihull vernacular. But not "fast".

"Fast" meant light scantlings, big sails, dagger boards, awkward accommodations, and few frills like showers or ovens. It also meant that a few accidents had happened. It may be that Prout wanted to distance their boats from those known as fast.

So your Snowgoose can be described as anti-fast, but sure. You could spend three prices to sort of change that, or nurture your investment by staying with the designer's intent; maximize her advantages. There will always be a market for safe, reliable, go anywhere cats, especially very well maintained Prouts.

You need a different cat. But wait until your Prout has taught you everything it can about foul weather, maintenance at sea, crew coordination, and more. Sail some "faster" boats. Watch the market. Get cozy with someone who has access to the soldboat databases. I say no-one buys their last boat first unless....

[barnakiel]

Originally Posted by Snowgoose35

As I said she'll do 6 knots all day long in 12-14 of wind on a reach and 7 in 15-18 which is fine (waterline length is only 31 feet) under genoa and skinny main and 9 downwind under spinnaker - its not so much that she suffers anywhere in particular (though light winds forward of 120 degrees are a problem with the symmetric ) its just that after my first and only sail in a mono where 15 knots wind on the beam translated to 8.5 knots I wanted to try and get more. The mono in question was a 40 foot and a much taller mast so its not at all like for like but it set me wondering how I could make mine faster.

I think, if looking for improvements via you sail department, look at which conditions / angles you will be sailing most. Then get a new gun.

E.g. a lighter genoa of the Code 0 style might vastly improve your speeds upwind in light conditions. Etc.

b.

[hellosailor]

A sailmaker may have some advice for you on what new sails--and ditching the mainsail furling entirely--can buy you. There are decisions to be made about battens, or not, and roach. And of course whether money can buy magic extra sail speed but "new" sails generally will be faster than old ones that have lost some of the optimum shape.

I don't think I've ever heard a complaint about Baltoplate, possibly because it just looks so damn nice to see a shiny graphite bottom on a boat. If there are better products, certainly none looks any better.(G)

" but is there any way to quantify weight loss against speed? " Against speed, sure. Against acceleration, not your concern here, right? Every pound less will make you accelerate faster after every tack, but once you reach Vmax, the speed will remain the same. Except, as you move weight on or off the boat, the hull length and wetted area will change. More weight=more wetted area below the waterline=more drag=slower boat. Depending on hull shapes, there should be an optimum point where you have the least wetted area, but the longest hull length immersed. Odds are the less weight you carry, the less wetted area and the faster the boat will be.

And one way to dump a lot of weight might be to convert to LiFePo4 batteries, which can weigh 1/3-1/4 of conventional lead acid batteries. They may also cost 4x more and require a battery management system that doubles the price again, and there is an incredibly long thread here discussing a lot of that. No one "in the business" has arrived at any consensus about how to install these on boats, but the weight savings are substantial if you go for it.

Replacing hardware with titanium, replacing panels with honeycomb core instead of playwood, these are all great ideas but you have to look at the labor and material costs versus the dollar savings for each one. And if you have a head door, replace it with a curtain, there's ten pounds of wood gone in an instant.(G) Dinnerware in the galley? Sure, but a set of titanium sporks and mugs is all you really need and once you dump the stove and go to cold rations....Heheh. You see what happens when you REALLY want to lighten the boat?

Certainly makes it worth considering: Buy a case of good rum, put a bag over the knotmeter, just enjoy the trip?

[thinwater]

I will always suggest building a speed polar for YOUR boat first, based upond GPS data. Otherwise you will never know what you've done.

First, all the stuff people have suggested. After that, it's about picking specific items that could have been disinged better.

But my guess is that the Prout hull sections are not built for more speed than you have observed.

You did not talk about tacking angles. That is actually the area where the best gains are possible.

[clockwork orange]

As I said before and others have reiterated, weight savings will yield the most gain for the least cash outlay. Write this down "Take care of the ounces and the pounds will take care of themselves" (or the metric equivalent) Once you start seeing things this way the pounds will just drop off. Example, when I bought my Gemini cat it had years of bottom paint buildup to the point where it was flaking off in patches, so I scraped it back to the gelcoat with a Gelplane carbide scraper which has a hollow handle that you hook up to a vacuum cleaner and collect the paint. By the time I was done I had filled 3 bags for a total of about 80lbs, which was replaced with less than 30lbs of new paint. Getting rid of the 14 gallon holding tank in favor of an airhead was a nice weight savings too.

Steve.

[rbrentp]

The comment about The Snowgoose "loaded up".... Can't imagine a heavier load than what we hit 8 knots in. So maybe the question is how fast do you need to go? I also have an Iroquois 30. Have had it at 14 knots and a hull starting to lift. I bought the Snowgoose knowing she was slower but a very safe cruising boat. Most of the Snowgoose stuff I have read seems to say they go about half wind speed, dependong on the cloth that is up. I am a lazy sailor I control everything from the cockpit, like to set the autohelm and watch the dolphins.

Not to bash the Lagoon, which I would love to have, but a captain friend of mine was in a snowgoose in a 65-70 knot blow. 16-20 foot seas...so the tale goes... Reefed like hell was still making 12 knots. A lagoon in that blow broke apart. My point is, do you want to go fast or safe. Do you want a boat that will survive about anything or avoid those tricky situations. I dont race tractors and I don't plow with a Ferrari. You can do a lot and spend a lot of money for an extra knot. Only you can determine if that knot is worth it on a cruiser.

[Snowgoose35]

I bought the Prout precisely because she was safe and would survive almost anything - it sounds like I'm getting pretty good speeds out her for what she is and I'll work on the bottom and the weight for now (without going mad and living in a shell with a heads bucket and a small box of freeze dried food) and look at the sail wardrobe.

I'm amazed that old bottom paint can weigh so much - 50 lbs of extra paint - as clockwork orange says - it wouldn't surprise me if mine had as much old build up so when I haul her out to paint with Baltoplate I may do the same trick and bag up the old stuff to weigh; just out of interest.

[clockwork orange]

[QUOTE=Snowgoose35;1644964]I bought the Prout precisely because she was safe and would survive almost anything - it sounds like I'm getting pretty good speeds out her for what she is and I'll work on the bottom and the weight for now (without going mad and living in a shell with a heads bucket and a small box of freeze dried food) and look at the sail wardrobe.

I'm amazed that old bottom paint can weigh so much - 50 lbs of extra paint - as clockwork orange says - it wouldn't surprise me if mine had as much old build up so when I haul her out to paint with Baltoplate I may do the same trick and bag up the old stuff to weigh; just out of interest

Snowgoose,

Most people don't give as much thought to weight as i do, i have a nice digital scale that weighs up to 400lbs and i weigh everything that goes on or off any boat i own. Bottom paint is very heavy, i just weighed a gallon can of the paint i used on my Gemini that is nearly full and it weighs 14 1/2 lbs, if i remember correctly i used about a gallon per coat. A lot of boatowners just keep adding paint until it gets so thick it starts flaking off, before they finally strip it and start fresh, such was the case with my Gemini prior to my purchase. I actually didn't save any weight because the boat had never been barrier coated (no blisters at all though) so i applied 5 coats of interprotect 2000 and 2 coats of bottom paint plus a 3rd coat around the waterline so i probably put more back on than i removed but such is life.
While i may be fanatical about controlling weight i am not stupid about it, for example, if you are fortunate enough to have glass windows, i would never replace it with acrylic or polycarbonate, you have the gold standard.

Steve.

[Stumble]

Not that removing 50lbs of bottom paint isn't a good idea, but where people really get weird is in tools and spare parts. Not things like replacement fuel filters, but the box of old stainless that was found in the bilge and no one knows what it goes to but we keep it anyway parts. One boat I was hired to prep for racing had 20lbs of this stuff in a steel tool box hidden in the aft lazarette. Or things like cans of spam tucked into crevices... Or really old beer at the bottom of the freezer.

[clockwork orange]

A few years ago I took a very nice little 1980 C&C24 that had lost its rig as a trade for some work on a friends boat, I re rigged it with the rig from a J24, I never intended to race it but we did do the end of season race put on by a local marina 2 years in a row, the first year I loaned the boat back to the guy I got it from and he did really well and would easily have won had they not given him a 171 rating, the following year my son and his girlfriend and I did the race with a 183 rating and easily won only being beaten over the line in the jib and main class by a C&C 35, a Catalina 42 and a Beneteau 47.7 or something and not by much,and we even passed 2 of the spinnaker class boats with their spinnakers up that started 5 minutes ahead before the turning mark less than half way into the race. Now the reason they gave for the harsh rating, (a 48 sec/mile penalty over the stock boat in a 10 mile race) was that they always assume you make these kind of mods to gain performance which is normally true but i only did it because a complete rig was available locally for $500 with a dent at deck level which is where i cut it off to mount on the cabin top on the C&C. The rig was perfect for the boat but was actually a little less sail area in all combinations, the performance gain was i believe to come more from the fact that i had faired the bottom and used vc17, i had borrowed a great set of J24 race sails and although the interior was absolutely complete i had stripped it out when i got it and pressure washed it and there was nothing superfluous on board, not even food. I firmly believe that a racing bottom, performance oriented sails and ruthless attention to keeping weight out of the boat can pay huge performance dividends.

Steve.

[atoll]

here you go problem sorted,should add at least 2 knots of boat speed........

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_0sHe4q613s

[weavis]

LOL I watched this guy do this months ago with my heart in my hands..

[atoll]

Originally Posted by weavis

LOL I watched this guy do this months ago with my heart in my hands..

it is actually a really cost effective way of getting better performance out of a smaller catamaran!

[weavis]

Originally Posted by atoll

it is actually a really cost effective way of getting better performance out of a smaller catamaran!

ok.. I have been meaning to ask someone about this. The method he used, is it intrinsically as strong with the join as opposed to being one single molded piece? Especially as its more or less in the middle of the vessel?

[Snowgoose35]

Doen right a join can be as strong as a single piece moulding - after all most moulds use overlapping layers of grp rather than a continuous piece so its made in many "sections" anyway...

However, despite this I shall not be doing this to my Snowgoose - though a sensible way to lengthen the stern (which with full height rudders would be more difficult) would add to waterline length and increase aft buoyancy and basically make it in to a pre-elite 37 ...