"Peter Ward" wrote in message
m...

I guess I was thinking of seaworthiness in the fairly narrow sense of
being able to survive something like 'The Perfect Storm'; &
particularly the ability to quickly self-right in the event of
capsize. According to Czeslaw A. Marchaj
in 'Seaworthiness : The Forgotten Factor' the "point of vanishing
stability" et.al. of most modern yacht designs is woefully inadequate
- deficiencies he attributes to the pervasive influence of
International Offshore Rules & the 'floating gin-palace' ethos of the
charter-boat industry, on modern yacht design & construction. This
observation appears to have been borne-out empirically by the 1988
Sydney to Hobart Yacht Race http://www.radford-yacht.com/stablty1.html

In the Sydney-Hobart, the main lesson is don't get caught where the
conditions are bad. The analysis showed that it didn't really matter
what type of boat you were in - heavy narrow boats, light beamy ones,
and everything in between got capsized.. But the boats in a certain
area, the area with the worst conditions, were most likely to capsize.
John Rousmaniere in his excellent book Fastnet Force Ten came
to a somewhat similar conclusion about the Fastnet - that boats
in a certain area were more likely to be capsized. That doesn't
validate poor design, but it tells me that if you are in the wrong
place at the wrong time, it doesn't matter what kind of boat you're
in. Personally, Id recommend a boat with a limit of positive
stability of greater than 120 degrees, with all the cruising gear
included in the calculation (which is probably not the design
condition). And make sure your boat is ISAF Category 1 or
zero compliant.

Design is one element of seaworthiness, but the crew (and luck)
is equally or more important. Consider that the boat that won
the 98 Sydney-Hobart was a light 35 footer that consistently does
well in that race and you'll start to get a feeling that those
guys could probably sail a crappy old raft through just about
anything. And it sounds like you've read the books about the
guys with no experience who cross oceans, so you can see
the part that lady luck plays as well.

More books that would probably be of interest to you:
Heavy Weather Sailing has lots of good info, including chapters
about desingn features. The Drag Device Data Book if you're
really serious about going offshore. Fastnet Force 10. There's
also a book about the Queen's Birthday Storm that hit a
bunch of cruisers in the South Pacific, but I can't remember
the name right now.

As a natural pessimist, I want to build the 'ultimate-unsinkable'
craft, which will weather the worst that the sea can inflict;
however, I get the distinct impression leafing through all the myriad
yachting magazines, that most boats out there are little more than
flimsy eye-candy. Just another prettified escapist consumer commodity
designed more to part you from your hard-earned lucre, than to be
truly "worthy of the sea".

Well, there are good boats and bad boats. There are quite a few
seaworthy ones available for good prices. Some of them are
lightweight flyers, and some are heavy tanks. It's hard to make a boat
unsinkable but it is possible to minimize the probability. Watertight
subdivision is one way to do it, but you will find that only the Amel
boats come from the factory that way.

Ramblin' Matt