Heavy sailboats are slower and

[wingssail]

Originally Posted by fatherchronica

We now own a near 50% ballast ratio with a narrow really heavy hull. Also very stable. We are happier sailing to windward in big seas and weather in our current boat as she very rarely pounds and we almost never, and I do not understand why, get blue water on board.

This is what people should seek: "happier sailing to windward"

[billnz]

Won a lot of light air sailing in a 45 ton Ketch, We can put up a lot of sail area (& blanket the light ones)

[CarinaPDX]

Originally Posted by wingssail

Greg, we've all heard this so many times nobody even questions it anymore, but if you are going into waves and your heavier boat, with weight in the ends, dives off a crest of a wave and plunges the bowsprit deep into the next wave, then rises off of that one with tons of water on the foredeck, and repeats this over and over...and they are going 2 kts and the motor is straining...

I have had this happen, rarely, mostly in fresh and/or shallow water, but out on the ocean the wavelengths are so long that it is not a problem. I have found that shortening sail to reefed main and stays'l is a killer, but once I put a blade in front of the stays'l she was off to the races - heading east from Bonaire into the trades. But mostly I try not to abuse myself going to weather in heavy going. And my engine was a whopping 18hp auxiliary - no motoring into it at 2 knots - it's a sailboat!

I don't see how that is more comfortable than a boat with a faster motion which rides up and over every wave, going 5-6 knots, and the motor is off.

Any sailboat pounding into wind and waves is going to be uncomfortable, just in different ways. If that becomes an issue then as boatie says, heave to. Otherwise carry on.

People with heavier boats, always motoring when the wind is on the nose, seem to complain more about the conditions than other people who sailed their lighter boats upwind through the same conditions.

You are hanging around the wrong sailors. It seems a lot of cruisers like to talk about the "gale" they endured, etc, and that has more to do with experience than choice of boat.

And considering the Cadillac and a sports car...a good road car has a firm suspension and is light in the ends.

Which is gloriously missing my point.

In my experience a lot of sailors with large, light, expensive boats are very resistant to the idea that a small, heavy boat can actually sail and be comfortable. We all have our biases - let's just be clear about that.

Let me cite an example: I left Gibraltar with a friend's "GoFast" 54, both heading for Madeira. Once out of the strait the north (beam) winds and seas built. My friends made it to Porto Santo in 3 1/2 days, but he spent the entire trip in the center cockpit because he was green the whole way and couldn't go below (he is a very experienced sailor BTW). That flat bottom, fin keel, spade rudder boat had a horrible roll. Now I showed up in 6 1/2 days quite rested - Carina's full keel with 7500# of lead had a very gentle roll in spite of the tall beam seas. I was very comfortable; so much so that I watched many TedTalks on my iPod and read a book on passage. And yet my friend refused to believe that I could have been more comfortable in my lead mine than his big boat. Bias. However it is true that he got there in half the time. I prefer the comfort over speed. YMMV.

Greg

[Don C L]

Stability... hmm, seems to me one better mention the distribution and depth of the weight when comparing two hulls with the same displacement, same water line and same sail area. Upwind the deeper the ballast the better and off the wind, not so much... but anyway, maybe Lee you oughta tell us which boat yer considering and I bet there are folks here who can tell you what can of speed you can expect and how comfortable it will be.

[Dockhead]

Originally Posted by hamburking

. . .For example, a "heavier" boat can have more sail area, which really helps in light winds.

But a heavier boat needs proportionately more sail area, to go the SAME speed, as a lighter boat with the same LWL.


To have proportionately more sail area, the heavy boat needs proportionately more ballast, with the same distribution of that ballast so the same center of gravity.


And even then, it will lose on form stability.


But the problem is that "heavy" boats aren't normally built like that. They are normally "heavy" because they are built with longer keels and often even a shallower draft. This hull form is inefficient -- wetted area goes up disproportionate to weight, so demanding disproportionate power to got the SAME speed, and are less efficient hydrodynamically.


People, there are METRICS for this. To compare any two boats, look at SA/D and D/L. That will tell you most of what you need to know about whether a boat will be slow or not. It is not controversial that the higher of the one and the lesser of the second one makes a boat faster.



SA/D is not a perfect proxy of power because not all boats have the same ability to stand up to all of their canvas. Just having more sail area does not translate directly into power if you don't have enough righting moment. But you get more righting moment with more ballast, lower down, and bulb keels are the king of this. So if you are comparing two boats with the same SA/D, and one of them has a deep bulb keel and the other has a shallow longer keel, you can be quite sure that the first one will be much faster.

Originally Posted by hamburking

And of course the most important thing in sailing....the sailor. A good sailor can make any boat go. And a poor sailor can make any boat slow.

A poor sailor can easily prevent a fast boat, from realizing its potential. But a good sailor cannot bend the rules of physics. All he can do is make a boat reach its full potential under a given set of conditions.

Originally Posted by hamburking

I owned a "heavy" 1972 Pearson 30. And it was quite fast.

The Irwin 30 is not a heavy boat at all -- D/L 210, SA/D 17.33, relatively short keel. https://sailboatdata.com/sailboat/irwin-30. PHRF rating around 200, so competitive in that size. This is not at all what people mean, when they talk about "heavy boats".

Originally Posted by hamburking

Every boat is a compromise. Every boat has its own strengths and features. And for every "rule" there is an exception.

Rules of physics don't have exceptions. Even Ben Ainslie couldn't make a Folkboat keep up with an average sailor in a J Boat.




For the OP: An excellent guide to what boats are tubby and slow, and what boats are relatively swift, can be had via the PHRF rating. See: https://www.ussailing.org/competition/offshore/phrf/. Notwithstanding what some people have said here -- there are big differences, between different boats.

[Dockhead]

Originally Posted by CarinaPDX

I have had this happen, rarely, mostly in fresh and/or shallow water, but out on the ocean the wavelengths are so long that it is not a problem. I have found that shortening sail to reefed main and stays'l is a killer, but once I put a blade in front of the stays'l she was off to the races - heading east from Bonaire into the trades. But mostly I try not to abuse myself going to weather in heavy going. And my engine was a whopping 18hp auxiliary - no motoring into it at 2 knots - it's a sailboat!


Any sailboat pounding into wind and waves is going to be uncomfortable, just in different ways. If that becomes an issue then as boatie says, heave to. Otherwise carry on.


You are hanging around the wrong sailors. It seems a lot of cruisers like to talk about the "gale" they endured, etc, and that has more to do with experience than choice of boat.

In my experience a lot of sailors with large, light, expensive boats are very resistant to the idea that a small, heavy boat can actually sail and be comfortable. We all have our biases - let's just be clear about that.

Let me cite an example: I left Gibraltar with a friend's "GoFast" 54, both heading for Madeira. Once out of the strait the north (beam) winds and seas built. My friends made it to Porto Santo in 3 1/2 days, but he spent the entire trip in the center cockpit because he was green the whole way and couldn't go below (he is a very experienced sailor BTW). That flat bottom, fin keel, spade rudder boat had a horrible roll. Now I showed up in 6 1/2 days quite rested - Carina's full keel with 7500# of lead had a very gentle roll in spite of the tall beam seas. I was very comfortable; so much so that I watched many TedTalks on my iPod and read a book on passage. And yet my friend refused to believe that I could have been more comfortable in my lead mine than his big boat. Bias. However it is true that he got there in half the time. I prefer the comfort over speed. YMMV.

Greg

You're talking about comfort vs speed, NOT saying that heavier boats can be just as fast as some have been saying.


And everything here is correct. There is a big compromise between motion comfort and speed, and everyone will have to choose his own optimum balance. Size helps with motion comfort, so a bigger boat can be lighter and still be just as comfortable, to some extent, but there are limits.



And very high performance boats with flat bottoms and especially the ones with the wide sterns ("wedgies") have a horrible motion in some conditions.

Someone questioned whether the faster motion of a lighter boat is really necessarily worse - but it really is worse, objectively - faster motion means greater acceleration and deceleration - and that is objectively unconfortable.

All other things being equal, lighter is always faster, and heavier is always more comfortable.

[gonesail]

Originally Posted by barnakiel

Extra stability from extra speed can be observed watching flat fast boats and foilers.

at least with a heavy boat you don't have to wear a hard hat

[JPA Cate]

We have a friend, with an easily driven boat, who, now, post 70 yrs. age, prefers to sail on the 10-15 forecasts, and when possible, use the Code Zero. It is that this wind range offers the flattest seas, and the best boat speeds, and extremely easy conditions.

Ann

[NormanMartin]

The OP question is a good one. We have the discussion regularly as we plan to sell our race boat and buy a cruiser without sacrificing speed. In our case, we are keeping the length around 35 feet.

One way to analyze the problem is to compare heavy and light boats built to the same race-rating rule. In this case I think about the IOR One Ton class. They were fairly heavy boats and considered quite fast until Doug Peterson showed up with Ganbare. It was light and faster than everything else but weight was not the principal reason. Peterson had figured out that flatter hull bottoms are faster than V-shaped hulls. He made everything else obsolete overnight, in my opinion. (He was following the lead of Dick Carter who really did the leading work on the new hull form) Carter and Ron Holland have both written interesting books about design that are worth reading.

Then, it was discovered that light boats cost less and were more fun to sail so "light is right" now. The exception that proves the rule was Ted Hood who designed, built and won with lead filled centerboarders. In the level racing field weight didn't matter as much as hull form and sailing skill. In the cruising market, boats with similar waterline lengths and sail area to displacement ratios should perform similarly. Kind of an over simplification but you all get the idea.

All of which is to say, heavy boats need not be slow.

[Dockhead]

Originally Posted by NormanMartin

. . . In the cruising market, boats with similar waterline lengths and sail area to displacement ratios should perform similarly. Kind of an over simplification but you all get the idea.

True, and even less of an oversimplification if you include D/L into the mix.

Originally Posted by NormanMartin

All of which is to say, heavy boats need not be slow.

I'm not sure that you can draw that conclusion, from what you wrote before. A heavier boat needs proportionately more sail area, to get the same SA/D as a lighter boat -- by definition.


In order to use that sail area, you need proportionately more righting moment. There are limits to that, so there are few cases of "heavy" boats with equal SA/D to lighter boats of the same size, which can actually use the additional sail area.


Possible in some cases, but almost always only by using less efficient keel shapes.


And increasing D/L will slow the boat down all by itself -- two boats of equal waterline length and equal SA/D and EVEN with proportional righting motion, will not sail the same, if they have different D/L.

[Joli]

Very true.
“In the cruising market, boats with similar waterline lengths and sail area to displacement ratios should perform similarly. Kind of an over simplification but you all get the idea.

All of which is to say, heavy boats need not be slow.”

Compare a J35 to a Hobie33, on paper the Hobie should be faster than the J. This rarely proved true unless the race was majority down wind in a big breeze. Otherwise the J was always faster.


https://sailboatdata.com/compare/results?utm_source=lab&utm_medium=web&utm_campaign =compare

[barnakiel]

The slower motion of a W32 is only one aspect. It does not tell the whole story well.


The motion may be slower alright BUT the range of this motion is broader. So much that it may go beyond the tolerance level of the crew. Read into the Dashews on human heel/roll angle and G tolerances.


The problem gets worse when you are trying to use a W32 for a long downwind passage. The boat will roll like a pig, rolling your guts out.


Flatter lighter boat may have sharper movement but will roll less on a downwind course in heavy swell - fewer oscillations and less amplitude. This may be preferred by some crews (like my humble me myself I and my sailing partner).


I am quite fine with older heavier hulls working upwind, they are slower but comfort onboard is at least as good as in modern light boats. Noise is often less. (I hate noise as much as I hate rolling).


Horses for the courses.


b.

[barnakiel]

I strongly disagree with 'the cruising market' heavy need not be slower.


Where do you guys take your inputs from?


About 2009 I downloaded all ARC data I could (I think 8 editions) and also I believe 3 or 4 Transpacs results. I ran that data in excel and looked for time to finish / displacement / length relationships.


It is clear that also in the cruising market light boats arrive first and heavy boats arrive last.


Not to say there are no outliers but outliers do not make valid generalizations.


Light is faster, heavy is slower. Few pigs fly, many birds do.



On the race course and on the coconut milk run.



Cheers,
b.

[Dockhead]

Originally Posted by fatherchronica

. . . We are happier sailing to windward in big seas and weather in our current boat as she very rarely pounds and we almost never, and I do not understand why, get blue water on board. . . .

I never, ever get blue water coming aboard my boat. Now GREEN water, that's another story

[Sailor 99]

Originally Posted by boatman61

Love to see it performing in 4metre seas and 35kts of wind..

Yes.. with the right video equipment we could get live action video of those foils being torn off the boat. Looks like a lot of money was spent to build a boat that looks cool and is totally impractical and that will likely be sailed very few times.



There are lots of examples of short and long heavy boats with terrible fat blunt nosed keels and small sail plans that can barely get out of their own way. Think any Bayfield or Gozzard design. Island Packets are not noted for their speed either.



There are lots of examples of well designed heavy boats with well shaped keels and large sail plans that can be reefed as needed that shoot through the water going to weather at 7 to 8 knots close hauled and do north of 12 knots on the beam.



I would not give you much for most of the light modern production boats. Shallow hulls, wide wide sterns and vertical bows. Imagine hitting anything with one of those flush bows. Most of these boats are nice lake boats or dock boats. Go well if their skippers are competent. But take it out on the ocean and do a passage. Given what I know about fiberglass they will not fall apart but the crew would be pretty exhausted and beat up.


The other day we were sailing beside a new 42 foot Beneteau with its 40 foot water line. We have a 38 ft waterline. He has all sails up and we had a head sail only. His boat might weigh in at 24K. I know ours is fully loaded and pushing close to 45k. Wind was 15 knots and we were both close hauled in 3 ft - 1 meter seas.



We walked past him like he was standing still. We would likely be able to do that every single day all day if there was 10-12 knots or better.


On the other hand we got close to shore well off the wind in flat water behind an island and we got in beside a C&C 34 with a 155% Genoa only and we really could not shake him. A 34 is pretty light and thats lots of sail.


So that answer to the OP's question is that it all depends on hull shape, sail area, displacement, wind strength, sea state, point of sail and crew ability.