Lagoon 52S - 27.2 kn

[Factor]

Originally Posted by PaulinOz

"There's no need to get all worked up."

I am not worked up, but just for second, imagine that the video was instead, a home built, light weight, dagger boarded Schionning or similar vessel doing exactly the same thing.

Would you and Factor have responded the same way?

No need to answer, it's a rhetorical question.

Happy Easter guys.

Settle Petal, all I said was that 44C motors everywhere. Irrespective of the rightness or wrongness of the max speed reading it is a good demonstration of a boat handling tough conditions well.

[Stumble]

Originally Posted by Factor

Settle Petal, all I said was that 44C motors everywhere. Irrespective of the rightness or wrongness of the max speed reading it is a good demonstration of a boat handling tough conditions well.

That it absolutly is. Sustained 50kn winds are very harsh conditions and the boat looked really well behaved. The major concern in surfing down big waves is bow stear and i saw almost none. I wa also looking for any evidence of the bows digging, and she looked rock solid.

Extremely well bahaved for the conditions.

[44'cruisingcat]

Originally Posted by UpOnStands

Boat seems extremely well balanced.
There is no indication that the helm needs continual correction.
No drogues?

Interesting that the common criticism of cats is that they're unforgiving, need constant attention etc..

[PaulinOz]

Quote "Settle Petal, all I said was that 44C motors everywhere. Irrespective of the rightness or wrongness of the max speed reading it is a good demonstration of a boat handling tough conditions well."

Quote "Interesting that the common criticism of cats is that they're unforgiving, need constant attention etc.."

That's a lot better, no issue with either of those statements, could almost be construed as both of you saying something half complimentary about a condomaran.

Petal has well and truly settled, just spent 2 hours mopping out Sail Drive oil from the engine room due to a split "O" ring installed incorrectly by a so called competent marine mechanic. Discovered just prior to departing the marina we have been hiding in during the Easter madness out on the bay.

I need to get out of here, so will not be able to continue the banter for some hours. Please continue to argue amongst yourselves till I can return.

[UpOnStands]

Originally Posted by 44'cruisingcat

Interesting that the common criticism of cats is that they're unforgiving, need constant attention etc..

Would love to know more details as to payload since it appears the weather struck after leaving Gib (i.e. full stores?). The bows sail really full, not digging in at all. And in general the internal scenes are quiet. No rattles etc.

[downunder]

Generally speaking the NA's designing catamarans today have got it pretty well sorted on the majority of designs and they can handle most conditions well.

[44'cruisingcat]

Originally Posted by PaulinOz

Quote "Settle Petal, all I said was that 44C motors everywhere. Irrespective of the rightness or wrongness of the max speed reading it is a good demonstration of a boat handling tough conditions well."

Quote "Interesting that the common criticism of cats is that they're unforgiving, need constant attention etc.."

That's a lot better, no issue with either of those statements, could almost be construed as both of you saying something half complimentary about a condomaran.

Petal has well and truly settled, just spent 2 hours mopping out Sail Drive oil from the engine room due to a split "O" ring installed incorrectly by a so called competent marine mechanic. Discovered just prior to departing the marina we have been hiding in during the Easter madness out on the bay.

I need to get out of here, so will not be able to continue the banter for some hours. Please continue to argue amongst yourselves till I can return.

Honestly, raising the possibility that the boat didn't actually reach 27 knots wasn't intended to denigrate it. As I've said I have a similar plotter, and sometimes you do get false top speeds.

[PaulinOz]

Quote Stumble "On the other hand we have a claim that a boat with very well known and conservative performance was reaching speeds close to or faster than an America's Cup 50 on foils..."

Not even close to The AC50's Quote "Oracle Team USA, broke 46 knots (or 53 MPH) in their AC50 yacht, meeting the fastest speeds of the larger AC72 boats from the 2013 cup."

Quote Stumble "Saying the boat was surfing down waves doesn't help much. Waves that size simply don't move that fast. To find a wave traveling at 27kn you need a wave height of around 50'. The waves shown were high, but nowhere close to that."

I would have thought in order for a vessel to surf down the face of a wave (I admit I am no expert on surfing with boards or boats) that it would need to be traveling faster than the actual wave speed. That's why I assumed it is always refereed to as accelerating down the face of the wave. Not something I experience in my fat girl very often.

In the Video between 3:30 and 5:10 their boat not only appears to be running down the face of the wave, but also overtaking the next wave ahead and running that down well.

I am not trying to argue that they did or did not do 27.2 knots, in reality the way the boat handled the conditions is of more relevance to me, but I am interested in the sailing dynamics that accelerates boats and the avoidance of it.

[johnyhask]

I was approached by a big cat mid Atlantic a few years ago who saw us on the AIS only going 1.5 knots and asked us via VHF if we had broken a mast in the previous nights storm. He was amused and came over the horizon for a look when I explained we were a two man rowing boat and we never had a mast. We were battered and bruised from the storm but doing ok. He offered us a bag of beer which we gratefully accepted. But as he pulled away in front of us a swell picked us up and put our very sharp bow into the side of his hull luckily above the water line.
Where I'm gong with this is in the previous nights storm we were coming down some of the waves at tremendous speeds, fastest logged was 18kn. Trust me 6 inches from the water it felt like 40.
If anyone who knows a big cat by the name of Jaffa who would have arrived in Barbados in Jan 2012 please say hi and I'd like to buy them a beer back.
And thanks to the OP loved the vid. Awesome sailing and awesome boat. Thanks for sharing. Best wishes, john

[Stumble]

Originally Posted by downunder

Generally speaking the NA's designing catamarans today have got it pretty well sorted on the majority of designs and they can handle most conditions well.

True, but bow steer is tricky. It takes a lot of designer and builder discipline to keep weight out of the bows, and ensure that when fully loaded the bows are still lightly immersed. To little weight forward and the bows lift going upwind and you loose a lot of waterline length, too much weight forward and the bows dig in running down big waves and you get bow steer. As always with boat design there are tradeoffs. But it looks like they did a really nice job getting it right here.

I would be interested to see the tank conditions on departure, but assuming these were pressed the designer did a nice job locating them.

[Stumble]

Paul,

To initiate surfing on a wave you start from a pretty much dead downwind run and reach up to accelerate, as the wave lifts the stern you pump the sails and turn down. The hope is that by reaching you have built up enough speed to get the boat locked into it. Basically that you are going fast enough to hold on to the wave. Just like a surfer paddeling as fast as they can down a wave face. Do it right and you are off to the races, do it wrong and the wave just passes you by.

Is is why on very big waves surfers have to be towed into the wave by jet skis btw. They can't padddle fast enough.

In the video the boat is outrunning the waves until around 4:30, at which point the waves are big and fast enough that the waves are moving faster than the boat. At this point they could consider trying to surf, but they don't seem all that interested in trying, and there are good reasons not to.

They instead are just sailing along with the waves, letting the waves pass by and picking up a little speed boost every time a wave passes by. But trying to hold onto a single crest is... well it's fast, and allows you to sail deeper, but at the very real risk of plowing into the wave in front of you. Just like a surfer you have to constantly be scalloping up and down to keep your SOG the same as the waves. Too fast and you bury the bows into the wave in front of you, too slow and you loose the ride.

For a racing boat it's critical for a cruising boat it's a lot of work, you are already making very good time, and it can be dangerous. Slamming into the wave in front of you can do a lot of damage really fast.

[John Holbrook]

I was on a 52F that left Bordeaux for St Martin via the The Canarys mid Feb. We had some heavy weather off Spain and again departing the Canarys. I was pretty impressed with the way the boat handled the bad weather. The max wind we saw was 47kn and the GPS showed a peak speed of 20kn plus a few times. I'm guessing we were averaging 13kn an hour with 30-35kn of wind from the aft with two reefs and a half furled headsail.

The 52 had very few problems considering this was a circa 5000nm trip with some heavy weather and a brand new boat launched 4 days before we departed. What I didn't like was the slamming from the bridge deck which is compromised to allow more accomodation.

[Windmagic]

How much sail did they have up ? . I can see they have no genoa up , have they got 2 or 3 reefs in the main

[PaulinOz]

Quote: "Just like a surfer you have to constantly be scalloping up and down to keep your SOG the same as the waves."

So as the surfer scallops back up the wave to stay on it, their SOG is slower than the wave, because they are heading back up it in the opposite direction to that which the wave is traveling.

Then as they head down the face of the wave their SOG is faster than that of the wave as they accelerate down the face of the wave. But their average SOG as they scallop up and down the wave remains equal to the wave they are scalloping up and down on. Hence they stay with the wave.

The point I am trying to get to is that an instantaneous SOG reading has more to do with the position and direction of travel on the wave than the actual SOG of the wave. In the case of a high windage vessel like the 52 the speed and direction of wind in relation to the wave direction will greatly add or subtract to this acceleration / deceleration as well.

Quote: "Waves that size simply don't move that fast. To find a wave traveling at 27kn you need a wave height of around 50'."

So I do not believe you can invalidate or for that matter validate the instantaneous SOG reading of a surfing object, based on a believed wave SOG for it's given height.

It's my belief that a surfing/sailing object can accelerate to a lot higher SOG than the wave it is surfing down. Given that you not only have the force of wind acting on the object (if it is in the same direction as travel), but also gravity accelerating it down the face of the wave as well.

In reality nun of this means diddly squat, as long as the beer is cold, the weather warm and the company amiable when you drop anchor at the end of the sail. (It usually is)

[44'cruisingcat]

Maybe we did hit 655 after all?