Your opinion of classic VS Modern Boat Design

[Polux]

Originally Posted by SV Windrush II

One of the problems I see with the new wide hulls is the length to width ratio. The 50-60ft new cruising boats are designed after the Volvo and Maxi racers but do not have the length required for the sailing characteristics of the racers. Obviously there are other factors involved, but the length is a major one.

For example, the 100' Wild Oats is one of the fastest if not thee fastest monohull, pizza hull design, but has a 6:1 length to width ratio. The 50' cruisers virtually have the same width as Wild Oats but half its length!

....

To call Wild Oats a Pizza hull design is a new record in what you call Pizza hull design. I guess, just a narrow pizza slice!!!!

All boat benefit from a Pizza design, meaning the beam brought back and a transom that is full beam wide. That is why recently Wild Oats was modified to change its old narrower transom for a Pizza one, to remain competitive at the highest level.

An no, Wild Oats it is not the fastest Pizza hull design. that title belongs to Comanche:


That is a fatter slice of Pizza, holds the monohull speed record and is faster than Wild Oats on a bigger range of wind conditions and points of sail, not needing to turn on its engine to sail.

Wild oats is a boat maximized for the conditions one finds on the Sydney Hobart race that are not the conditions that are usual on most places and most occasions and even so Comanche has managed to beat it on conditions that are probably the ones where he performs poorly.

Put those boats racing around the world on the trade winds, or on a transat and Wild Oats, even with its pizza transom, will be considerably slower.

Given the interior space of boat hulls it is clearly evident because it was the fattest Pizza slice that was retained for cruising sailboats. It not only works better overall as it offers a much bigger interior.

[Polux]

Originally Posted by SV Windrush II

...
The hull design worked well on the old Sandbaggers because of the movable ballast, moving the sandbags on the windward side of the boat. thus the name "Sandbagger". unfortunately the modern cruisers do not have movable ballast or canting keel as one of their options!

Here is a sanbagger of 1862, ironically resembles some of the new cruisers we see today.



The thumbnail is one of the designs I am working on, but its somewhere in the middle with a 70' length and 4.5:1 length to width ratio.

Those were seriously fast boats for the time and the design worked well because it was a design that provided lots of form stability (increased with sand bags) with a relatively small drag.

The problem at the time regarding using those boats as offshore cruising boats had to do with the technological impossibility (at the time) to provide that kind of hull with a deep draft torpedo keel, to provide the stability that was then not only given by the hull form but also by the sand bags and most of all to provide it with a good final stability and a good AVS. A canting keel is not needed for that. A deep draft keel with the ballast on a bulb or torpedo is enough.

Nathanael Herreshoff had done on the XIX century diverse experimentation with much more beamier boats than what they used to be at his time, designed several very fast coastal ones but the technological limitation that I refereed above prevented him to design an offshore boat with those characteristics.

[hasse_A]

I favour classic long keeled boats for cruising.
Speed is for me not a high priority.

I will stick out my neck quoting the response from me when
an insure refused to insure our boat with the reason that it was over 30 years old.

Our boat is an Allegro 33 made in the early nineteen eighties.

No, I do not understand your position in this matter.
Our boat is as you are aware of over 30 years, but :

1) She is long keeled with an external iron keel and can thus take a hard beating.
She will never loose her keel. My parents had an identical boat and ran over a 1 m
submerged rock at 6 knots. No damaged made. Do you insure newer Benetone
which seem to loose their keels at frequent intervals ?

2) She has got a tiller steering. It will never malfunction the way a steering wheel
often do. We keep it simple and secure. We have a secondary rudder in the form
of a Hydrovane wind gear we can use in the event something goes wrong with
the main rudder which I have never heard of in our type of boat.
Do you insure boats with steering wheels ?

3) She is as I said earlier long keeled. Thus obstacles in the water will not damage
the rudder like it is going to do on spade or skeg rudders.
Do you insure boats with spade or skeg rudder ?

4) She has her prop sitting in front of the rudder in a cut out in the hull.
This prevent any obstacle, i.e. fishing nets and such to tangle into the prop.
S-drives have a bellow which then can be damaged resulting in leakage.
Do you insure boats where the prop is mounted so that there is no surrounding
protecting the prop ?

5) She has got a single spreader mast head rig. This is the simplest and most forgiving
there is. The wire is upgraded to 8 mm. Our friends in an OE32, an almost identical
boat made a 360 degrees rotation last year. Rig still standing.
Do you insure boats with advanced riggings with multi spreaders?

6) She has got a hull, deck and superstructure much thicker than modern boats
where material is minimized to keep costs down. She is so firm she can be sailed
without any bulkheads mounted.
Do you insure boats where you have to watch out where you put the supports
when setting the boat on the hard ?

With the above I want to point out that modern boats involves higher risks than
some older do. Any of the above disadvantages of modern boats can result in
a total loss which I suppose is what will give you the highest costs.

[TJ D]

Hasse, just curious- did your letter change the insurance company's decision?

[hasse_A]

Originally Posted by TJ D

Hasse, just curious- did your letter change the insurance company's decision?

No it did not. Their polite response was this.

Many thanks for your email and advices, we have noted your comments.

I regret to advise that we unfortunately are still unable to assist with your insurance requirements due to the age and intended cruising of your vessel as our binder restricts this.

Please accept my sincere apologies for any inconvenience and please let me know should you have any further queries.

[TJ D]

Sorry to hear that. We've had good and bad experiences with insurance outfits too. Hopefully you found a better outfit to write you a policy.

[robert sailor]

The issue for many cruisers is that the average Mom and Pop don't have the sailing skills needed to safely sail a high performance boat and always be safe. Personally I have never owned a older designed full keeled boat but each to their own. I do know that like fin keeled boats not all full keeled boats sail the same, some are much quicker than others and sail better. As TJ D clearly pointed out you don't load up a performance hull with all of today's cruising gear and expect it to sail well because it won't. One of the problems with some of our modern "cruisers" is that because of the beam they are big and there is tons of room and many sailors add tons of weight to them, they don't sail so well after that. Minimalist sailing used to be really popular years ago and I was very much in that corner but these days there is no limit to what people add.

[TJ D]

Originally Posted by robert sailor

The issue for many cruisers is that the average Mom and Pop don't have the sailing skills needed to safely sail a high performance boat and always be safe. Personally I have never owned a older designed full keeled boat but each to their own. I do know that like fin keeled boats not all full keeled boats sail the same, some are much quicker than others and sail better. As TJ D clearly pointed out you don't load up a performance hull with all of today's cruising gear and expect it to sail well because it won't. One of the problems with some of our modern "cruisers" is that because of the beam they are big and there is tons of room and many sailors add tons of weight to them, they don't sail so well after that. Minimalist sailing used to be really popular years ago and I was very much in that corner but these days there is no limit to what people add.

Excellent points. I don't entirely agree about the skill level comment, though.
It takes a lot of skill and attention to get a higher performance boat to sail to near it's potential, but even average sailors (which we pretty much are- average) could sail a boat like ours safely. It's mostly a matter of being conservative, reefing early, etc. When it's just the two of us and we're feeling lazy or tired, we mellow out on the sail plan, and the boat's just as mannerly as any cruising boat, but still sailing fast. We do love kicking things into high gear when the conditions are right, though.

We recently had a really excellent Atlantic crossing, for example, getting across from Newfoundland to Ireland (+/- 1800 miles on our route) in just 8 days and change. This was big, big fun, and the higher than 'normal' speed allow a great deal of weather routing options. We pushed the speed pretty hard for the second half of this passage, as a big, deep low was forming behind us, and we wanted to keep from getting overrun by it. It was really great to have the option to push the daily runs up over 250 when needed.

I think this is the main advantage. A fast boat with good weather info can do a hell of a lot to stay out of harm's way, greatly diminishing the need for the full-keel/heavy boat's admittedly superior ability to go passive in a bad blow. It's better not to be there for the big blow in the first place!

If we do get caught out, I'm still confident that we'll do just fine either sailing very slowly, pinched up to weather, or running off with the JSD if the situation warrants. I don't think that we could heave to in the traditional sense with our underwater design.

To the weight, we're not really terribly austere on board, but we are mindful not to carry anything more than we need. I would say that we're running around with about half of the weight that we used to, but we aren't missing anything, really. It's more about a change in mindset. I actually find it liberating, keeping the boat free of clutter and unnecessary crap.

But, you're absolutely right, it's silly to load up a modern boat to the gills with heavy gear. The impact will be far more drastic than with a more traditional boat. One would be better off just getting the heavyweight if that's the plan.

TJ

[robert sailor]

That was a great passage, averaging 250 mile days for a cruiser is fantastic. I agree that a performance boat doesn't have to be sailed at top speed by professional sailors, my point was your boat would not attract your typical Mom and Pop cruiser because many are extremely conservative sailors. They sure would not be belting off 250 mile days offshore. I was commenting to Polux not that long ago that in order to get a performance boat that when loaded for cruising, very carefully I might add, that we would need a 55 or 60 foot boat and I was too cheap to cut the cheque. It's easier for me to read about your experiences, lol. My bet is that if we sat down and talked sailing we'd probably been in agreement most of the time. Thanks for posting, always nice to hear from someone who is out there doing what so many others are just talking about.

[TJ D]

Originally Posted by robert sailor

That was a great passage, averaging 250 mile days for a cruiser is fantastic. I agree that a performance boat doesn't have to be sailed at top speed by professional sailors, my point was your boat would not attract your typical Mom and Pop cruiser because many are extremely conservative sailors. They sure would not be belting off 250 mile days offshore. I was commenting to Polux not that long ago that in order to get a performance boat that when loaded for cruising, very carefully I might add, that we would need a 55 or 60 foot boat and I was too cheap to cut the cheque. It's easier for me to read about your experiences, lol. My bet is that if we sat down and talked sailing we'd probably been in agreement most of the time. Thanks for posting, always nice to hear from someone who is out there doing what so many others are just talking about.

Thanks for the kind words.

I think we're on the same page, and you're absolutely right! Mom and Pops walk by our boat and flatly tell us we're freaking insane to sail our beast with just 2 people... I blame the '70's sailors who wrote all the books about the 'proper' cruising boat. (35 feet and heavy as hell, or something like that)

Typical exchange:

"Cool boat, how many people do you need to sail her?"
"Well, two, but really just one since one's off watch"
"That's fine for daysails, but to sail offshore, you need a full crew"
"Ok, but we've sailed this boat over here from San Francisco with lots of meanderings mostly doublehanded"
"You just got lucky"

Then they walk away shaking their heads at the two morons they just met. We don't take it personally. We just smile at each other knowingly, and then go sailing, loving every mile. Well, almost every mile. Ok, maybe half of the miles...

[Polux]

Originally Posted by robert sailor

The issue for many cruisers is that the average Mom and Pop don't have the sailing skills needed to safely sail a high performance boat and always be safe......

There is some true there, many cruisers are below the average sailors that only buy a sailboat to fulfill their cruising dreams at retirement age after having charted some boats on sheltered waters for all their live. I see some boats in sunny days without wind, motoring already with a reefed main, just in case.

But that is not the case with all Mom and Pop, far from that, many had several sailboats before the one that they are buying now and are experienced sailors. Others had even a past on sail racing dinghies, or other racing sailboats and they are not as a small number as that.

However I only agree with you in what regards a performance boat to be more demanding in what regards to sail if the boat is sailed FAST, because in what regards to sail them at the speed of a main market boat, they are easier to sail not harder. Here applies that saying: "I can go slower but you can't go faster"

Off course that I agree that it is a waste of money to buy a performance boat if one is not an experienced sailor, they are much more expensive (quality for quality) and the extra money can be spent while cruising.

Edit. It seems that TJD had beat me in speed, regarding this point . We both are saying about the same.

Originally Posted by TJ D

...
But, you're absolutely right, it's silly to load up a modern boat to the gills with heavy gear. The impact will be far more drastic than with a more traditional boat. One would be better off just getting the heavyweight if that's the plan.
TJ

But I think here TJD is referring to performance boats. If we was referring to a beamy modern mass market cruiser with a large transom, a boat that is not designed to plan anyway, the effect of more load would have a lesser effect on performances, compared with an older narrower boat, for the simple reason that the narrow boat with an extra load would go more deep on the water than a beamier one, in relation to its optimal water line.

[robert sailor]

I know exactly how you feel. When I started crossing oceans close to 30 plus years ago I chose a C&C and we kept it very light. Certainly were much faster than our friends but back then a proper offshore boat was a Westsail 32. Even boats like the then fairly new Valiant 40 was just so so as it was fin keel. When I announced to my sailing friends we were putting in an offer on a Santa Cruise 50 and planned on turning it into a cruiser people really thought I had lost my marbles. Sailing is extremely conservative and it takes the mainstream a long time to really change. Personally I'm not that crazy about some of the new high production cruisers but if one went up a notch and bought a lighter and better built boat that would make more sense to me but that's not the mainstream market, people want big and bright and performance usually comes last, very evident in the multihull cruisers as well. So TJ D your a bit of an outlier..cool!

[barnakiel]

Originally Posted by SV Windrush II

(...) So keep in mind I would like to at least single-hand sail at times when I cannot find a crew.

(...)

I think neither (Swan 54, Atlantic 60, Tayana 55) is a single-handed minded boat. A converted Maxi is imho completely out of question.

I think you are looking in the wrong direction.

IMHO: If you want decent performance and a boat to be sailed single handedly, then you must look at ... boats sailed single-handedly.

I would look at boats like a Pogo 40 or 36, an Atlantic (but the Dutch one from Zaal, not the French one), a Cigale, a Django 12.7, etc.

If you are happy with a bit less performance, then I would look at X-Yachts and J-Boats then at Arcona, Grand Soleil, First or JPK. All these require a conversion though.

The boats you mentioned are all big heavy boats that sail poorly downwind (given you single handed option) and only acceptably upwind. Some (e-g Tayana) are nowhere close to performace sailing, others (e.g. Swan) will deliver, under a crew of 12. Pretty tubs and good homes, but not what a single hander wants in a blow.

Today performance single handed sailing is simply elsewhere. Look at a MiniTransat boat the scale it up to your personal taste. X-Yachts and J-Boats and Firsts are a fine compromise, if you care for more furniture and the need to adjust the deck fittings for single-handing.

BTW Webb Chiles spoke highly of a She36. I think these are like 70'ies tonners with more touristy interiors. Maybe a boat like this will be a happy step up from a Mariner???

I believe he sailed his single handedly too.

1979 She 36 Sail Boat For Sale - www.yachtworld.com

I am not vested. The link is only for demo purposes. More info here:

SHE 36 sailboat specifications and details on sailboatdata.com

Cheers,
b.

[robert sailor]

I also think it depends "where" you are planning to single hand. If your just doing day sails where you can pick and choose your weather or you are sailing in protected areas then most boats under 60 feet can be single handed. Docking, especially in a breeze is more work for me than sailing the boat offshore in high winds and seas. Also depends on the design, some boats are real pigs in tight spaces.

[TJ D]

Originally Posted by robert sailor

I also think it depends "where" you are planning to single hand. If your just doing day sails where you can pick and choose your weather or you are sailing in protected areas then most boats under 60 feet can be single handed. Docking, especially in a breeze is more work for me than sailing the boat offshore in high winds and seas. Also depends on the design, some boats are real pigs in tight spaces.

Since you mentioned docking, and windrush is interested in twin rudder designs, allow me to chime in.

Twin rudder boats SUCK MASSIVELY around the marina. Think about it, the prop's on the centerline, and the rudders are way outboard. There is zero control unless the boat's making at least a couple of knots. There's no putting the wheel over and giving the engine a shot to kick the stern in-the water from the prop goes down the middle, missing the rudders.

A thruster helps (we don't have one), but still, the lack of low speed control is an issue. We have a good deal of anxiety when docking in a tight marina in wind, which never happened on any of the other boats.

I'm saying this as a guy who drives a 170' fishing boat around for a living in Alaska. I'm a good boat driver, but the 2 rudders cause some problems.

I like them at sea a lot, but at the dock? Nope.

TJ