True blue water boat extinction a fait accompli?

[downunder]

Originally Posted by Polux

It is all relative. For some this type of very beamy, flattish hull with all the beam pulled aft and with chines is not conservative at all (Boreal 44).
Glad to know that for you it is a conservative one

Now thats a more practical vessel. Some catamaran features.

[valhalla360]

Originally Posted by Cruiser2B

Of course they didnt know what we know today, don't be absurd. But to say they didn't know the strength or structural integrity of fiberglass is based on what?

I'll type this, I certainly dont have to worry about my keel falling off in the middle of the Altantic, that helps me sleep at night and make me feel good about taking my "engineering guess" tank sailing offshore. Mind you my boat was not intended for offshore use, but the old design inherently makes her safe for that purpose. i need to beef up my boats hull to deck joint. I will be adding tankage and upgrading a few things to make her more of a BW cruiser. One thing I know I do not need to worry about is the hull shape and design being a safe one.

Valhalla, sail whatever boat you want, I wish you the best of luck. I hope it lasts as long as my "engineering guess" of a design Alberg 30. More importantly I hope the boat you choose gives you that warm fuzzy feeling of security should you find yourself in storm.

You were the one who started with an absurd question. You asked a question you knew had no formal answer. When people do things by the seat of there pants, of course they aren't providing formal documentation that can be referenced. That is where clearly overbuilt structures is plenty good evidence they didn't fully understand what the materials could do.

I don't worry about my keel falling off either (technically, it could but I could keep sailing on and use the other one.). There aren't a lot of boats with keels falling off, espeically newer properly maintained boats.

The only ones I've heard of falling off are old poorly maintained boats or newer race boats pushed to the limits. Old poorly maintained tanks can have failures also, so if we assume reasonable maintenance, keels aren't falling off. Race boats often accept a much lower margin of safety and aren't relevant to a cruising discussion.

You have yet to convince me that the old guys just didn't know what they could do with the material, and as a result, stuck to overbuilding old designs because that is what they knew not because those designs are better.

[Dockhead]

Originally Posted by Polux

It is all relative. For some this type of very beamy, flattish hull with all the beam pulled aft and with chines is not conservative at all (Boreal 44).
Glad to know that for you it is a conservative one

I would actually agree that the Boreal is fairly conservative. The bottom is not all that flat, especially not the forefoot. Beam overall is moderate, and the beam aft is not wide at all -- at the waterline. This boat only superficially resembles a real wedgie. The chines are just construction features, like metal boats have had for decades.

Very nice boat, too. Love the mini-pilothouse with shelter behind -- clearly designed for the North Atlantic

[S/V Illusion]

While reading these threads,it's interesting to observe how the people who are doing it don't have the time to hypothesize about it. Hence, the futility of most of the comments here.

[Dockhead]

Originally Posted by colemj

. . .

There are very good reasons why the Dashews, Starzinger/Leonards, Cornells, etc of the world have chosen completely different designs than these old ones in which to do expedition and long-term offshore cruising. . . .

Certainly! But there is a whole lot of daylight between Dashew's boats, and the boats Evans favors for high latitude sailing, and the "wedgies" in favor with some builders these days.

In fact, the contrast between Dashew's Sundeers and a "wedgie" like a Hanse 505 is very illustrative -- these boats are probably more different from each other than either is from a full-keeler.

Dashew's Sundeer actually has a few things in common with traditional full-keelers -- narrow beam, fairly slack bilges, giving minimal form stability. And fairly shallow draft. The rig is fairly low. But he puts the volume of a 45 footer into 65 feet, with a 65 foot waterline. Very light, fully balsa cored construction. With the beam of a 45 footer, he has an extremely easily driven hull, requiring very little power to produce tons of speed.

"Wedgies" are completely different -- all that beam aft increases wetted surface. You get a lot of form stability, so you can carry a lot of canvas with minimal heeling. Which you need to do, to overcome the resistance from all that wetted surface. "Wedgies" are typically mainsail-driven, with small, self-tacking headsails. They are good for blasting from port to port on high speed day sails. Less so for ocean voyages (although I would never say unsuitable, of course -- I would still far prefer one of these to a full-keeler). The great beam aft gives a twitchy motion at sea, the flat forefeet make for pounding, and the flat aft sections exacerbate rolling at anchor (my own boat, with a fairly modern hull and bulb keel but by no means any kind of wedgie, is much less comfortable at anchor than my previous old-fashioned boat, and pounds more upwind -- there are always tradeoffs). On top of that, the high SA/D required to deal with the wetted surface of a wedgie reduces efficiency in stronger conditions, and the little foretriangles don't give you any sail plan options.

That's why you see a lot of wedgies in the Med, and quite a few in the Baltic, but very, very few up here in the North North Atlantic.

Dashew's type of boat is perfect for the type of sailing I do. They are great for making tons of miles on a long passage with minimal effort; great contrast to the exhausting job of keeping a wedgie up to speed in ocean conditions. Even better the ketch version. This type of boat would be a poor choice, however, for Med or Caribbean sailing -- and the very small hull volume for their length is no good for people for whom voluminous accommodation is important. Makes no sense for anyone who predominantly does day sailing, like most sailors -- for that, a wedgie, or any kind of normal production boat, would be a better choice.

However much I like their hull forms and engineering and construction details, Dashew's boats are a bit spartan for my taste. Among the alternatives built with similar values I really like the new HR 65, by German Frers. Which on top of the narrow beam and modest draft and rig, has a 300 horsepower main engine , for when bashing upwind gets tiresome . If it only had a pilothouse . . .

Horses for courses. I like what Oldragbaggers said here:

"But mostly I truly do not get why these threads always have to take this same negative path. Why can't people just say, 'I like a certain type of boat for cruising because....,' without going into the realm of how out of touch a person must be if they like the 'other' kind of boat. It always has to be a 'I like my boat because owning the other kind of boat would be [insert negative implication here...]'."

Indeed

[colemj]

I made no comment on "wedgie" boats. I merely (and exhaustively) pointed out that the topic of this thread is about lamenting the lack of new old designs, and the extinction of "BWB's". I gave examples of "BWB's" that are not old designs - I didn't lump them together as similar designs.

One can like and prefer those old designs all one wants, but one will continue to be harder pressed buying new ones, and these designs will be extinct for all practical purposes soon.

There are good reasons for that.

This is not "bashing" or "going negative".

Mark

[sailorboy1]

Originally Posted by colemj

Such sensitivity. You should try owning a Hunter or a multihull...

Mark

Think of the fireworks if Hunter even started making a cat

[colemj]

Originally Posted by sailorboy1

Think of the fireworks if Hunter even started making a cat

Actually, they were for a while! But now Catalina is building it. I suspect it will move to Beneteau next...

Mark

[robert sailor]

Originally Posted by Dockhead

Certainly! But there is a whole lot of daylight between Dashew's boats, and the boats Evans favors for high latitude sailing, and the "wedgies" in favor with some builders these days.

In fact, the contrast between Dashew's Sundeers and a "wedgie" like a Hanse 505 is very illustrative -- these boats are probably more different from each other than either is from a full-keeler.

Dashew's Sundeer actually has a few things in common with traditional full-keelers -- narrow beam, fairly slack bilges, giving minimal form stability. And fairly shallow draft. The rig is fairly low. But he puts the volume of a 45 footer into 65 feet, with a 65 foot waterline. Very light, fully balsa cored construction. With the beam of a 45 footer, he has an extremely easily driven hull, requiring very little power to produce tons of speed.

"Wedgies" are completely different -- all that beam aft increases wetted surface. You get a lot of form stability, so you can carry a lot of canvas with minimal heeling. Which you need to do, to overcome the resistance from all that wetted surface. "Wedgies" are typically mainsail-driven, with small, self-tacking headsails. They are good for blasting from port to port on high speed day sails. Less so for ocean voyages (although I would never say unsuitable, of course -- I would still far prefer one of these to a full-keeler). The great beam aft gives a twitchy motion at sea, the flat forefeet make for pounding, and the flat aft sections exacerbate rolling at anchor (my own boat, with a fairly modern hull and bulb keel but by no means any kind of wedgie, is much less comfortable at anchor than my previous old-fashioned boat, and pounds more upwind -- there are always tradeoffs). On top of that, the high SA/D required to deal with the wetted surface of a wedgie reduces efficiency in stronger conditions, and the little foretriangles don't give you any sail plan options.

That's why you see a lot of wedgies in the Med, and quite a few in the Baltic, but very, very few up here in the North North Atlantic.

Dashew's type of boat is perfect for the type of sailing I do. They are great for making tons of miles on a long passage with minimal effort; great contrast to the exhausting job of keeping a wedgie up to speed in ocean conditions. Even better the ketch version. This type of boat would be a poor choice, however, for Med or Caribbean sailing -- and the very small hull volume for their length is no good for people for whom voluminous accommodation is important. Makes no sense for anyone who predominantly does day sailing, like most sailors -- for that, a wedgie, or any kind of normal production boat, would be a better choice.

However much I like their hull forms and engineering and construction details, Dashew's boats are a bit spartan for my taste. Among the alternatives built with similar values I really like the new HR 65, by German Frers. Which on top of the narrow beam and modest draft and rig, has a 300 horsepower main engine , for when bashing upwind gets tiresome . If it only had a pilothouse . . .

Horses for courses. I like what Oldragbaggers said here:

"But mostly I truly do not get why these threads always have to take this same negative path. Why can't people just say, 'I like a certain type of boat for cruising because....,' without going into the realm of how out of touch a person must be if they like the 'other' kind of boat. It always has to be a 'I like my boat because owning the other kind of boat would be [insert negative implication here...]'."

Indeed

The other thing I liked about Dashes boats is in the detailing and construction quality. I don't know about the FG boats so I can only refer to his aluminum ones. I only had a chance to look at one and it was very impressive in the thought and there design. If you ever want to see a spade rudder that is unlikely to fail just have a look at how her builds them. I alsobliked the manifold system that required a single thru hull.

[Dockhead]

Originally Posted by colemj

I made no comment on "wedgie" boats. I merely (and exhaustively) pointed out that the topic of this thread is about lamenting the lack of new old designs, and the extinction of "BWB's". I gave examples of "BWB's" that are not old designs - I didn't lump them together as similar designs.

One can like and prefer those old designs all one wants, but one will continue to be harder pressed buying new ones, and these designs will be extinct for all practical purposes soon.

There are good reasons for that.

This is not "bashing" or "going negative".

Mark

I didn't accuse you of bashing or going negative at all.

I agree with you about the premise of the OP -- that only a full keel boat is a real blue water boat.

Full keel boats have certain advantages, but as I wrote in a post above in this thread, the tradeoffs involved are not ones that hardly anyone anymore is willing to make, so, yes, I agree, these types of boats are nearly extinct.

The point of my post was only to point out that the fact that one type of boat is almost extinct, does not mean that there is only one true path to the light. There is tremendous diversity among the types of boats which are still viable, and no single path of "progress" in boat design.


Another point worth making here is the powerful role of simple economics. Full keel boats are very expensive to make, requiring a great volume of material for a given length or hull volume. With the same amount of material, so a similar cost, you can make a much longer and much more voluminous boat with a fin keel. The greater length will partially, or maybe entirely make up for the relative loss of seakeeping ability, compared to a full keel boat. That's why the average cruising boat these days is 40 - 45 feet, compared to 32' just a couple of decades ago, and maybe that's something like actual progress -- by which I mean a change which has no real tradeoffs.

The same factor has killed off ketches, but I think we've lost more there, than we are losing as full keel boats become extinct. They are not as fast upwind, and they are much more expensive to make. So almost no one wants them anymore, and they are just about dead. But for a larger boat, say anything over 50', they have tremendous advantages, for an "ocean passagemaker" (Don's excellent alternative to the term "blue water boat"). Not the least of these is that the sailplan is broken up so that it is not only easier to handle, but you can use ordinary Dacron sails, not laminate ones like I am about to spend $50,000 for on my cutter rigged boat.

[Dockhead]

Originally Posted by robert sailor

The other thing I liked about Dashes boats is in the detailing and construction quality. I don't know about the FG boats so I can only refer to his aluminum ones. I only had a chance to look at one and it was very impressive in the thought and there design. If you ever want to see a spade rudder that is unlikely to fail just have a look at how her builds them. I alsobliked the manifold system that required a single thru hull.

Oh, how I agree with that! There are so many touches of genius in those boats. The GRP ones like the Sundeer, no less than the alu ones. So many things I would imitate if I were building a boat from scratch. The Sundeers have watertight bulkheads fore and aft, and all of the through-hulls are outside of the main hull volume. So they are practically unsinkable . Brilliant. And the chain locker is midships, to keep the weight out of the bow. Etc., etc., etc. Everywhere you look, there is something brilliant.

If they just weren't so spartan and ugly inside, they would be the perfect cruising boat for my taste.

[downunder]

Originally Posted by Dockhead

Oh, how I agree with that! There are so many touches of genius in those boats. The GRP ones like the Sundeer, no less than the alu ones. So many things I would imitate if I were building a boat from scratch. The Sundeers have watertight bulkheads fore and aft, and all of the through-hulls are outside of the main hull volume. So they are practically unsinkable . Brilliant. And the chain locker is midships, to keep the weight out of the bow. Etc., etc., etc. Everywhere you look, there is something brilliant.

If they just weren't so spartan and ugly inside, they would be the perfect cruising boat for my taste.

No real need to be spartan if you are building one. Essentially built to your reqts. Don't think there is anything missing in their new powerboats.

[Polux]

Originally Posted by Dockhead

I would actually agree that the Boreal is fairly conservative. The bottom is not all that flat, especially not the forefoot. Beam overall is moderate, and the beam aft is not wide at all -- at the waterline. This boat only superficially resembles a real wedgie. The chines are just construction features, like metal boats have had for decades.
...

I am glad you think the Boreal 44 is a conservative boat (you really should like very modern sailboats) but I am perplexed you don't find it beamy. Modern mainstream cruising boats are beamy with large transoms and all or almost all beamy pulled back and the Boreal 44 is no exception.

One of the boats that is paradigmatic of the new concept based on open sail racers type of hull is the Oceanis 45 (Finot/conq design). The boat is bigger than the Boreal 44 and has only more 0.2m beam (4.50m to 4.30m). Both boats have big transoms with the beam pulled back.







Off course the Oceanis 45 is the more extreme in what regards beam considering the other main market mass production sailboats the beam of the Boreal 44 is bigger the the one of a Jeanneau 44ds, bigger then the one of the Bavaria vision 46 and the new Hanse 445 has just more 0.08m, so unless you don't consider the modern mass production cruisers beamy boats (I do), no doubt the Boreal is a beamy boat on line with some hull characteristics of those boats.

Regarding those boats having a small beam at waterline (compared with the maximum beam) they all have and it has to do with them being light boats.

In what concerns forefoot and rocker not a big difference too. The boat is beamy and light, not as light as the Oceanis 45 and that shows on the immersed wet surface, but that has more to do with the boat weight than with the hull design (12 200kg to 10549kg). The kind of short keel where the Boreal 44 has the ballast may induce you in error but if you look only at the hull line you will see that the boat seat relatively high on the water.

I agree that it is a great sailboat even if I would not call it conservative. Some tend so say that a sailboat to be good has to be conservative. I would say that the Boreal in what concerns the hull is mainstream regarding modern cruising design, precisely the type of hulls you seem not to like

[Dockhead]

Originally Posted by Polux

I am glad you think the Boreal 44 is a conservative boat (you really should like very modern sailboats) but I am perplexed you don't find it beamy. Modern mainstream cruising boats are beamy with large transoms and all or almost all beamy pulled back and the Boreal 44 is no exception.

One of the boats that is paradigmatic of the new concept based on open sail racers type of hull is the Oceanis 45 (Finot/conq design). The boat is bigger than the Boreal 44 and has only more 0.2m beam (4.50m to 4.30m). Both boats have big transoms with the beam pulled back.







Off course the Oceanis 45 is the more extreme in what regards beam considering the other main market mass production sailboats the beam of the Boreal 44 is bigger the the one of a Jeanneau 44ds, bigger then the one of the Bavaria vision 46 and the new Hanse 445 has just more 0.08m, so unless you don't consider the modern mass production cruisers beamy boats (I do), no doubt the Boreal is a beamy boat on line with some hull characteristics of those boats.

Regarding those boats having a small beam at waterline (compared with the maximum beam) they all have and it has to do with them being light boats.

In what concerns forefoot and rocker not a big difference too. The boat is beamy and light, not as light as the Oceanis 45 and that shows on the immersed wet surface, but that has more to do with the boat weight than with the hull design (12 200kg to 10549kg). The kind of short keel where the Boreal 44 has the ballast may induce you in error but if you look only at the hull line you will see that the boat seat relatively high on the water.

I agree that it is a great sailboat even if I would not call it conservative. Some tend so say that a sailboat to be good has to be conservative. I would say that the Boreal in what concerns the hull is mainstream regarding modern cruising design, precisely the type of hulls you seem not to like

That Bene 45 is a perfect example of a wedgie . It is a very different hull form from the Boreal, with a much flatter bottom and forefoot, and more beam aft at the waterline.

You make a big mistake by assuming that I dislike wedgies -- I like them fine. They are great for their intended purpose. I especially like Pogos, among them, as a more purely purposed example, and of course I like Open 60's, the wedgie par excellance.

If I day-sailed in the Med -- which is a lot of fun; I've done a fair amount of that -- I would definitely choose some kind of wedgie for that, if I were in the market for a new boat. Actually, a good bit of my Med day-sailing I did in Salona 45's -- not wedgies, but light, performance boats -- great for this use. But that's not the kind of sailing I do these days -- now I sail long distances at high latitudes -- a very different use, for which these boats are not perfectly suited. I would prefer my own boat for this use, or even more, a pilothouse ketch with narrow beam, and about 65 feet on deck, with a large main engine.

Horses for courses, as they say!

Actually, for Med day sailing I might very well choose a catamaran, rather than a wedgie. Or for the Caribbean.

But not for the English Channel. It's remarkable, but in nearly 6 years sailing up here, I've only seen three catamarans underway! And one of those was upside down! Whereas, they were the majority of boats when I was cruising in the Carib.

Horses for courses!

[Steadman Uhlich]

To Polux:

Welcome back and best wishes for a speedy recovery. Your input on this topic is appreciated.

______

Regarding the comparison of the Boreal and Beneteau, thanks for providing the helpful illustrations to the discussion. Seeing the boat designs/plans is helpful.

Since you follow these boats closely, please post the average price for the Beneteau Oceanis and the Boreal 44, or some good guess of the market price. I know Price is not a matter of design (or is it), but I am curious how they compare on that point alone, Price. Of course the Boreal is made of aluminum so I expect it to be more expensive, but I am curious as to the relative cost (price) of these two similarly shaped boats and sized.

One is obviously intended for a mass market (production built Beneteau) and the other is aimed at a smaller market segment (high latitude and/or high budget sailors who want "Exploration Boats").