"Wayne.B" wrote in message
...
On Wed, 05 May 2004 16:26:56 GMT, jeff feehan
wrote:

Even starting off with a boat that has decent light air performance,
once you load it down with cruising gear, fuel and water, performance
goes out the window in most cases. Add in a 3 blade fixed prop, a
slightly dirty bottom and heavily built cruising sails, and you might
as well figure on motor sailing in anything under 12 kts or so.

I have a different take on this. I race on a moderately heavy 42'er
(24k lbs ~11k kg). I have been on this boat both when she was
loaded down for a trip around South America and also racing light.
She sails really well in all conditions no matter what her load. I think
the big thing here is that she has plenty of sail area to keep her moving
(SA/D is around 20).

I have also seen boats like an ultralight Olson 40 loaded down with a
couple thousand pounds of crew and they still go upwind and down
like a scalded cat. Of course, in cruising mode they won't go
upwind quite as well unless you want to move the Dinty Moore
to the windward rail at each tack. But downwind and reaching
they'll still be fast. Slower than if she was not burdened with
a bunch of extra weight, but it will still walk away from the
Baba 40, with a lot less effort to boot.

If you take a light boat and don't give her enough sail power, then when
you load her down she may fall into the poor performance range.

Personally, I think one of the reasons people don't sail in the light
stuff is that their boats don't have enough sail area to keep going
without the hassles of a big overlapping genoa. But if you have a
relatively high SA/D ratio, then when you make all the compromises
for your cruising sails (like a high clew and less overlap) you still have
enough power left over to actually make light air sailing rewarding. But I
also think that if you have a decent performing boat then you're more likely
to pay attention to things like dirty bottoms (and take care of that), and
are less likely to put a three blade prop on the boat. The skipper of the
42'er considered a two blade fixed prop for the trip up the coast from
Califonia to Washington because he thought he might need to motor
against the wind a lot. He never did it though, he's too much of a
sailor at heart and kept the old folding prop on. He couldn't stomach
the half knot hit on the sailing performance.