Dear Jim,
Thanks your response. Which indeed was very much interesting.
I was commanding large ocean going freighters for a number of years and the
basic knowledge I have in naval architecture deals with pure displacement
ships, stability, shearing forces and bending moments (most of which I have
forgotten after the electonic lodicators came on ships) and has nothing to
do with the pleasure boats. I didn't sail for the last 19 years. I am
located in Greece and there are many islands around, good places for summer.
The weather in the summer months in
the Aegean sea is nice warm but very often you face NNE-NNW strong winds
B5-6 and sometimes B7 or more and changing very frequently among the
islands.(something very exciting for sailing boat funs) .
I do not like sails. I am too old for this. So, three years ago I bought a
35 foot, cruiser, built 1992, 2 x 230 hp, which has not deep V and comes
to 15 degrees deadrise. I took her to the marina from the slip and I almost
smashed all the boats at the pier. The maneuvering software I had in my head
was for single screw and, believe me it is a bit difficult to erase the hard
disk and install the twin screw software. After I lived with the boat for a
while, and visited the nearby boats at the pier, I noticed that even
expensive boats were not built in a seamanlike manner. I asked some dealers
why the builders do not make the fuel tanks accessible and inspect, or why
they do not install a small booster pump before the separators or why they
do not put hand rails in the right places.
The dealers stared at me like I came from the Mars.
One told me : Look captain, we do not know what are you talking about but we
inform you that
the first question of the prospective buyer is what s the speed and the
final word comes from the wife, who looks at the bathroom, which make sure
is shining. The hand rail in the right place will
not make the boat look better.
I realized that in this industry of the small pleasure crafts the
Engineering Vs Design or vice versa
is very much respected.
When I encountered choppy seas, I realized that this thing is only a toy. I
joined my neihbor who has
a cruiser of about same length and I just saw another toy.
When I encountered (following) quarter seas I was surprised to see that this
is a dangerous toy.
Then I decided to build a custom boat 45-52foot, which will be a sea ship,
without christmas
trees of useless led lights, with the side lights at the proper height, with
inspectable fuel tanks, with the cables well secured and running above the
water pipes, with the batteries in a place where you
can remove them, with space between bulkhead and engine so you can change
the drive belts without scratching your hands etc etc etc - not to exhaust
your patience.

I understand you. I also understand that designing or choosing a boat is a
"sea of compromise"
All I want is not to pray when I encounter quarter seas and I am prepared to
pay for the extra fuel.
I beleive that the ballast tank, when necessary will make the boat stiffer,
I will make my hull lines
bit thinner in the quarters, I will lose surface to plane. I will be
overpwered and use more power to
plane/semiplane etc. Of course a planning hull cannot be a displacement
hull. If this doesnot pay, then I will go for a pure displacement boat,
slower but I will not be praying in heavy weather.

You sound like a man who knows the seas! I would much appreciate your
comments/advices.

My very warm regards
AP

"Jim Woodward" jameslwoodward at attbi dot com wrote in message
...
Of course, Fintry is different from your thoughts. That's why I said
"Broadly speaking ...."


I disagree with the thrust of this:
A deep V sails better through heavy seas, but you have to be prepared to
spent more
energy to make her push the water aside and make her way through it. A
planing
or semi-planing hull needs less power and is faster, provided the sea
is
calm. Once the sea gets rough, this advantage less power/speed is
lost,
you have to slow down to reduce the pounding and, if things get worse,
then you probably think that your choice of a semi or planing hull was
not
right.

Later you say
In every case I will be spending more fuel/mile.

With which I agree.


At a displacement speed (S/L ratio below around roughly 1.2 or so) the
displacement hull will use less power than the planing hull, assuming
speed
and weight are the same. As you go faster, eventually the planing hull
does
better, because it planes -- gets up and out of its wave train which
otherwise is making it go uphill. You feel this in the average outboard,
as
you go faster, the boat starts to push a lot of water, then suddenly it
gets
up on plane and you can actually throttle back, using less power, and
still
stay on plane. There is only a fairly narrow speed range where the planing
hull on plane actually uses less power than it does when it is not on
plane
and even in that range, it may use more fuel than the displacement hull at
the same weight and speed.

This is why the so called "trawlers" that will do twelve knots with a 36'
boat need a lot of power and at seven knots will use more fuel than their
full displacement sisters -- you can't have it both ways in "normal" hulls
(no Swath, cats, or other newfangled modern things here). This is one of
several reasons why we eventually turned down Tarapunga (see
http://www.mvfintry.com/boatsnotbought.htm) -- she was designed as a
patrol
boat and used too much fuel for a really long distance cruiser. For an up
and down the East Coast (of the USA) boat, she'd be great.

-------

Now, ballasting down could be a great idea if you wanted to be able to
work
in difficult, choppy water -- Lake Erie for example. It could make you a
lot more comfortable as the weather piped up. And yes, ballasted down
would
use more fuel, so it could be good to pump it out for flat-water work.

There are, indeed, multispeed marine transmissions. You raise an
interesting question. In ordinary boats, you choose the prop to use the
maximum horsepower available from the engine,usually at its top speed.
The
propeller law (hp required varies approximately with the cube of
revolutions) then protects you at every other speed, because the required
horsepower almost always is less than the available horsepower at any
shaft
speed.

If you chose the prop (or props) for top speed when your light/heavy boat
is
light and you have, say 1000hp, to get her going on plane while light,
then
the horsepower needed for eight knots or so when she's heavy is only
around
50hp. Since that's so much less than the max, you'll probably have
trouble
getting her to go slow enough, particularly while docking. A "trolling
valve", which essentially allows the transmission clutches to slip for
long
periods could solve this problem for, I think, less money, than a two
speed.
TwinDisc also has a new "QuickShift" as well as their "Omega Control"
which
address these issues. Tarapunga (see above) was built with Omega Control
so
she could run at very slow speeds for long periods for survey work.

As you say, free surface is an issue, but you'd probably always have the
tanks either full or empty.

As to
(1) my concept is wrong (2) my concept is right but
only few prospective buyers would make such choice- so no target group.

I think it is (2). Weight, complication, space taken away, are all
killers.
Remember, too, how few 45 foot power boats ever leave the marina for more
than a few hours.....


--
Jim Woodward
www.mvFintry.com


"AP" wrote in message
...
Jim, thank you for your posting.
What you have between Fr. 2-6 and Fr. 41-45 is sort of fore peak and
after
peak tank, which
as far as I understand the effect is to make a pure displacement vessel
even
heavier/deeper or
to change the trim. (this possibility was reduced since you converted
the
fore peak to a bow thruster
compartment.

Indeed, what I am talking about is a different thing.
I take for granted (if I am wrong please correct me) that
A deep V sails better through heavy seas, but you have to be prepared to
spent more
energy to make her push the water aside and make her way through it
A planing or semi-planning hull needs less power and is faster,
provided
the sea is
calm. Once the sea gets rough, this advantage less power/speed is
lost,
you have to slow down
to reduce the pounding and, if things get worse, then you probably
think
that your choice of a semi or planing hull was not right.
If we place the displacement hull on a scale on zero and the lightest
planing hull on ten, any hull
you find on the market will cover two points one the scale. No more.
Your
mv Fintry is 0-1, a
low powered Hatteras goes 3-4, a Sealine goes 6-7 and a Baja sport boat
goes
8-9 and competition boats go to 10. A prospectvie buyer will make his
choice according to his needs.
And the manufacturers of mass production try to make the best hull form
for
each (narrow) range.

What I want to do is to ample the range for a hull (lets say from 3 to 6
or
7) and I am prepared
to pay the price, which to my understanding is that I will have to be
overpowered and give the engines more fuel than that of the Sealine and
I
wil never peform like a Sealine in calm seas. Neither like a Hatteras in
rough seas. In evey case I will be spenting more fuel/mile.
Of course I will lose space for bigger engines and the ballast tank(s)
let
alone I will need good
tranfer pumps which are heavy and additional manhours and cost to make
transverse and longitudinal separations to reduce the free surface
inertia.
I will probably need Gear Box of two ratios (I have heard that ZF
started
producing something like that)

To cut a long story short, I want to be fast in calm seas and not to
start
praying in heavy seas. I will slow down, ballast and be closer to the
zero
on the "scale" I described you earlier. I would sail
not exactly like a Hatteras or a Bertram, but closer to them

I do not think that I have invented (or re-invented) the wheel. The fact
that manufactures of those
moving on the water machines have not made the slightset effort to ample
the
range using ballast/extra horsepower etc make me think (1) my concept is
wrong (2) my concept is right but
only few prospective buyers would make such choice- so no target group.

What makes me post this is my hope that somebody will reply and tell me
I
am
wrong because this
and that or will tell me : you maybe right but you are "minority"- most
people do not like it, or whatever..

I havent found any boat plans with ballast tank on the net.
Is my dream to build such a ballasted/deballasted boat an " utopia"?

Thanks for giving me your time to read this. Somebody has something to
say?

Regards
AP



"Jim Woodward" jameslwoodward at attbi dot com wrote in message
...
Broadly speaking, it's done all the time in larger vessels.

Fintry was built with tanks for 50,000 pounds of seawater ballast.
We'
re
putting a bow thruster in the forward one, so we'll replace the weight
there
with lead, but the aft pair (14,000 pounds each, p&s) allow us to get
her
up
to a draft of less than seven feet for sheltered waters or down to
over
eight feet at sea.

Actually doing it in a boat that will go between planing and
displacement,
is another thing. The hull forms are quite different and it might
prove
to
be a challenge. And, of course, you're talking about a lot of
water --
you
might not like what it does to the interior in a 46 foot boat. You
can
see
Fintry's tanks between frames 2-6 and 41-45 at
http://www.mvfintry.com/details.htm -- the scale on all the drawings
shows
frame spacing, which are 20" apart.

--
Jim Woodward
www.mvFintry.com

"AP" wrote in message
...
I want to build a cruiser with the following characteristics
46 foot with very deep V foreward. 25-28 degrees deadrise at
transom
Overpowered.
And I want to have a " ballast tank."
The idea is :
If the sea is calm I will have the ballast tank empty and I will
make
her
plan using my extra horsepower.
If the sea is rough (or I meet heavy weather on the way) I will
ballast
my
tank, increase the displacement, will slow down the engines and I
will
be
sailing like a deep V boat, good for
rough weather.
Does that make sense??
Comments/suggestions are kindly invited.
Regards
AP

Well.... That's certainly an open ended question.

I completely agree that almost all production boats are not suitable for
serious use. I go to several boat shows -- Maine Boatbuilders' Show,
Newport, Fort Lauderdale, Miami on the yacht side, the WorkBoat Show (New
Orleans), SeaWork (Southampton) on the commercial side, and the METS trade
show (Amsterdam) -- because each one gives me ideas and possibilities and I
continue to learn.

I am tired of laughing at the 56' Long Range Cruiser (sail) with a queen
size bed in the middle of the master stateroom and no bunkboards or division
to keep a sleeping person off the floor and off his/her partner. (I should
add that Fintry will have a king size bed, but it will be set up with two
mattresses that form a square, so that we can sleep either f&a or p&s, with
strong bunkboards on three sides and down the middle in either direction).
Or of a Long Range Cruiser (sail) with single bunks against the side of the
hull aft where the hull narrows rapidly, so the sleeper's head is outboard
of his feet and therefore below them if the boat heels.

I am tired of boats with large saloons and no handrails anywhere. Of
lifelines 30" (75cm) high. Of boats over 65' (20m) with r&g sidelights
forward of the steaming light and/or the steaming light well aft -- almost a
third of the large boats at Fort Lauderdale this year were illegal in these
respects. Why? Because having the steaming light on a mast forward is ugly.
(We usually say "steaming light" here to mean the light that the rules call
"masthead light" because "masthead light" is confused with the anchor
light.) Of powerboats with essentially no visibility aft from the wheelhouse
and no way to look aft without going outside and walking aft. Of the 60'
power cat with computer and TV screens in front of the driver, so when
sitting down at the wheel you couldn't see forward except with a TV camera;
this same boat had no side decks at all, bow to stern, so dock lines had to
be handled from the bow and stern two levels up and there was no place for
any lines amidships. Of the 125' sailboat with the captain's cabin in the
bow, access only down a ladder from the foredeck, with two bunks, a toilet
between them, and very little floor space -- would you trust your $10
million boat to a person who would live like that?

I overheard a conversation this past weekend at Fort Lauderdale in the booth
of one of the Big Three of yacht electronics manufacturers. Seems that a
recent radar unit needed a software upgrade. Owner had to choose between
having it done free if he brought the radar display (box maybe a third of a
meter on a side, 20kg, four cables to disconnect) to the dealer, or to pay a
couple of hundred dollars to have the tech bring the software to the boat on
a computer. The display was so hard to remove that the owner chose to have
the tech come to the boat.

Why do we need a little light next to a circuit breaker to tell us the
breaker is on? Seems to me the handle position tells us it's on and the
light is just a waste of electricity. Why are most of our light bulbs rated
for 12 volts (or 24) when they have to run at 14.5 (or 29) when the
batteries are charging and therefore cut their life by a factor of ten
(tungsten bulb life is proportional to the inverse twelfth power of the
voltage).

And so forth. Now there are a few production boats that do a pretty good
job -- Nordhavn and Swan come to mind -- but even with them there are many
details I would change. Which is why we're starting with an absolutely rock
solid strong ex Royal Navy hull and pretty much doing everything else over
again. This gives us the chance to do it our way and to know exactly how it
was done in every case.

The Fleet Tender hull is almost ideal for us. Tough, with 10mm steel where
it counts. Very little deadrise in the middle third of the boat, so the
main hold is almost twenty feet (six meters) square at the bottom, and yet
has a very nice entry and run. And, as I mentioned at the start of this
thread, with ballast tanks allowing us to use the USA East Coast
Intra-Coastal Waterway at less than 2 meters draft and still ballast down
for comfort at sea.

You, on the other hand, are going to have a hull built from scratch -- a
hull with features that are unconventional. I'm not qualified to discuss
the details of a planing hull -- I sort of understand them, but I've never
really studied them. You must know you're taking a risk -- even though
modern computer analysis will tell you a lot about how a new design will
work, the programs are based on designs that have already been done, so
something that is at the edge of the envelope may not come out in real life
quite the way the computer thinks it will. So there's a risk that you'll put
a lot of money into a project that doesn't solve your problem. You might
also consider that it could be difficult to sell -- most very personal boats
are. As an example of this, we changed Swee****er's lifelines from 30" tall
to 36" tall (75cm to 90cm) -- entirely appropriate for a large boat that
would be used at sea, with no problems at all. When we sold her, the new
owner wanted the old stanchions so he could return her to "standard Swan
57".

The other question I would ask is do you really need it? We passed through
Greece on our circumnav in May and never felt the meltemi, so I know only
what I've read. I ask, though, whether a planing boat that can do 20 knots
or more cannot almost always make it to a sheltered place when difficult
conditions are forecast -- shelter is never far away in Greece. Thus you
never have to stay out there and take a beating the way you do when you're
crossing an ocean. Now, I know that running for shelter is not particularly
appealing to a person who has spent much of his life at sea, but it might be
the best compromise. Of course this means you must then stay in the
sheltered place until the meltemi stops blowing.

You could also just go larger in the best possible production hull. It will
almost certainly be cheaper than a custom design, particularly if you
consider resale value. Larger will be more expensive to dock, but the fuel
might be similar, given the large engines your special boat would require.
Larger will be more stable and safer than your present boat -- perhaps equal
to your special -- and will have a lot more room inside -- a bigger boat to
begin with and no dead space for tanks.

And finally, I ask if you've really done the math on the volume required. A
cubic meter of water is about a metric tonne. She's going to be around 15
meters long, 4 meters wide, so her waterplane is going to be around 80% of
15x4 equals 48 square meters. To take her down 10cm, you're going to need
4.8 cubic meters of seawater. Now, 10cm isn't very much, but 4.8 tonnes and
4.8 cubic meters is a lot in a 50 foot boat. You can put a small galley in
4.8 cubic meters and 4.8 tonnes is going to require strong framing, even if
you assume that the tank will always be either full or empty -- no free
surface. This is made even harder by the fact that the larger engines are
going to need larger than normal fuel tanks.

Now, with all of that said, I don't want to end as discouraging. There's
nothing more satisfying than having your own thing, just the way you want
it. We've done it a number of times with houses and three times with boats
(Fintry is the third) and it's just great to end up with something that
represents the best possible compromise for you. As you say, all boats are
a sea of compromise, and most have the sea tilted towards making them easy
to sell to landlubbers.....

--
Jim Woodward
www.mvFintry.com


..
"AP" wrote in message
...
Dear Jim,
Thanks your response. Which indeed was very much interesting.
I was commanding large ocean going freighters for a number of years and
the
basic knowledge I have in naval architecture deals with pure displacement
ships, stability, shearing forces and bending moments (most of which I
have
forgotten after the electonic lodicators came on ships) and has nothing to
do with the pleasure boats. I didn't sail for the last 19 years. I am
located in Greece and there are many islands around, good places for
summer.
The weather in the summer months in
the Aegean sea is nice warm but very often you face NNE-NNW strong winds
B5-6 and sometimes B7 or more and changing very frequently among the
islands.(something very exciting for sailing boat funs) .
I do not like sails. I am too old for this. So, three years ago I bought a
35 foot, cruiser, built 1992, 2 x 230 hp, which has not deep V and
comes
to 15 degrees deadrise. I took her to the marina from the slip and I
almost
smashed all the boats at the pier. The maneuvering software I had in my
head
was for single screw and, believe me it is a bit difficult to erase the
hard
disk and install the twin screw software. After I lived with the boat for
a
while, and visited the nearby boats at the pier, I noticed that even
expensive boats were not built in a seamanlike manner. I asked some
dealers
why the builders do not make the fuel tanks accessible and inspect, or why
they do not install a small booster pump before the separators or why they
do not put hand rails in the right places.
The dealers stared at me like I came from the Mars.
One told me : Look captain, we do not know what are you talking about but
we
inform you that
the first question of the prospective buyer is what s the speed and the
final word comes from the wife, who looks at the bathroom, which make
sure
is shining. The hand rail in the right place will
not make the boat look better.
I realized that in this industry of the small pleasure crafts the
Engineering Vs Design or vice versa
is very much respected.
When I encountered choppy seas, I realized that this thing is only a toy.
I
joined my neihbor who has
a cruiser of about same length and I just saw another toy.
When I encountered (following) quarter seas I was surprised to see that
this
is a dangerous toy.
Then I decided to build a custom boat 45-52foot, which will be a sea ship,
without christmas
trees of useless led lights, with the side lights at the proper height,
with
inspectable fuel tanks, with the cables well secured and running above the
water pipes, with the batteries in a place where you
can remove them, with space between bulkhead and engine so you can change
the drive belts without scratching your hands etc etc etc - not to exhaust
your patience.

I understand you. I also understand that designing or choosing a boat is a
"sea of compromise"
All I want is not to pray when I encounter quarter seas and I am prepared
to
pay for the extra fuel.
I beleive that the ballast tank, when necessary will make the boat
stiffer,
I will make my hull lines
bit thinner in the quarters, I will lose surface to plane. I will be
overpwered and use more power to
plane/semiplane etc. Of course a planning hull cannot be a displacement
hull. If this doesnot pay, then I will go for a pure displacement boat,
slower but I will not be praying in heavy weather.

You sound like a man who knows the seas! I would much appreciate your
comments/advices.

My very warm regards
AP

"Jim Woodward" jameslwoodward at attbi dot com wrote in message
...
Of course, Fintry is different from your thoughts. That's why I said
"Broadly speaking ...."


I disagree with the thrust of this:
A deep V sails better through heavy seas, but you have to be prepared
to
spent more
energy to make her push the water aside and make her way through it.
A
planing
or semi-planing hull needs less power and is faster, provided the
sea
is
calm. Once the sea gets rough, this advantage less power/speed is
lost,
you have to slow down to reduce the pounding and, if things get
worse,
then you probably think that your choice of a semi or planing hull was
not
right.

Later you say
In every case I will be spending more fuel/mile.

With which I agree.


At a displacement speed (S/L ratio below around roughly 1.2 or so) the
displacement hull will use less power than the planing hull, assuming
speed
and weight are the same. As you go faster, eventually the planing hull
does
better, because it planes -- gets up and out of its wave train which
otherwise is making it go uphill. You feel this in the average outboard,
as
you go faster, the boat starts to push a lot of water, then suddenly it
gets
up on plane and you can actually throttle back, using less power, and
still
stay on plane. There is only a fairly narrow speed range where the
planing
hull on plane actually uses less power than it does when it is not on
plane
and even in that range, it may use more fuel than the displacement hull
at
the same weight and speed.

This is why the so called "trawlers" that will do twelve knots with a
36'
boat need a lot of power and at seven knots will use more fuel than
their
full displacement sisters -- you can't have it both ways in "normal"
hulls
(no Swath, cats, or other newfangled modern things here). This is one of
several reasons why we eventually turned down Tarapunga (see
http://www.mvfintry.com/boatsnotbought.htm) -- she was designed as a
patrol
boat and used too much fuel for a really long distance cruiser. For an
up
and down the East Coast (of the USA) boat, she'd be great.

-------

Now, ballasting down could be a great idea if you wanted to be able to
work
in difficult, choppy water -- Lake Erie for example. It could make you
a
lot more comfortable as the weather piped up. And yes, ballasted down
would
use more fuel, so it could be good to pump it out for flat-water work.

There are, indeed, multispeed marine transmissions. You raise an
interesting question. In ordinary boats, you choose the prop to use the
maximum horsepower available from the engine,usually at its top speed.
The
propeller law (hp required varies approximately with the cube of
revolutions) then protects you at every other speed, because the
required
horsepower almost always is less than the available horsepower at any
shaft
speed.

If you chose the prop (or props) for top speed when your light/heavy
boat
is
light and you have, say 1000hp, to get her going on plane while light,
then
the horsepower needed for eight knots or so when she's heavy is only
around
50hp. Since that's so much less than the max, you'll probably have
trouble
getting her to go slow enough, particularly while docking. A "trolling
valve", which essentially allows the transmission clutches to slip for
long
periods could solve this problem for, I think, less money, than a two
speed.
TwinDisc also has a new "QuickShift" as well as their "Omega Control"
which
address these issues. Tarapunga (see above) was built with Omega
Control
so
she could run at very slow speeds for long periods for survey work.

As you say, free surface is an issue, but you'd probably always have the
tanks either full or empty.

As to
(1) my concept is wrong (2) my concept is right but
only few prospective buyers would make such choice- so no target
group.

I think it is (2). Weight, complication, space taken away, are all
killers.
Remember, too, how few 45 foot power boats ever leave the marina for
more
than a few hours.....


--
Jim Woodward
www.mvFintry.com


"AP" wrote in message
...
Jim, thank you for your posting.
What you have between Fr. 2-6 and Fr. 41-45 is sort of fore peak and
after
peak tank, which
as far as I understand the effect is to make a pure displacement
vessel
even
heavier/deeper or
to change the trim. (this possibility was reduced since you converted
the
fore peak to a bow thruster
compartment.

Indeed, what I am talking about is a different thing.
I take for granted (if I am wrong please correct me) that
A deep V sails better through heavy seas, but you have to be prepared
to
spent more
energy to make her push the water aside and make her way through it
A planing or semi-planning hull needs less power and is faster,
provided
the sea is
calm. Once the sea gets rough, this advantage less power/speed is
lost,
you have to slow down
to reduce the pounding and, if things get worse, then you probably
think
that your choice of a semi or planing hull was not right.
If we place the displacement hull on a scale on zero and the lightest
planing hull on ten, any hull
you find on the market will cover two points one the scale. No more.
Your
mv Fintry is 0-1, a
low powered Hatteras goes 3-4, a Sealine goes 6-7 and a Baja sport
boat
goes
8-9 and competition boats go to 10. A prospectvie buyer will make his
choice according to his needs.
And the manufacturers of mass production try to make the best hull
form
for
each (narrow) range.

What I want to do is to ample the range for a hull (lets say from 3 to
6
or
7) and I am prepared
to pay the price, which to my understanding is that I will have to be
overpowered and give the engines more fuel than that of the Sealine
and
I
wil never peform like a Sealine in calm seas. Neither like a Hatteras
in
rough seas. In evey case I will be spenting more fuel/mile.
Of course I will lose space for bigger engines and the ballast tank(s)
let
alone I will need good
tranfer pumps which are heavy and additional manhours and cost to make
transverse and longitudinal separations to reduce the free surface
inertia.
I will probably need Gear Box of two ratios (I have heard that ZF
started
producing something like that)

To cut a long story short, I want to be fast in calm seas and not to
start
praying in heavy seas. I will slow down, ballast and be closer to the
zero
on the "scale" I described you earlier. I would sail
not exactly like a Hatteras or a Bertram, but closer to them

I do not think that I have invented (or re-invented) the wheel. The
fact
that manufactures of those
moving on the water machines have not made the slightset effort to
ample
the
range using ballast/extra horsepower etc make me think (1) my concept
is
wrong (2) my concept is right but
only few prospective buyers would make such choice- so no target
group.

What makes me post this is my hope that somebody will reply and tell
me
I
am
wrong because this
and that or will tell me : you maybe right but you are "minority"-
most
people do not like it, or whatever..

I havent found any boat plans with ballast tank on the net.
Is my dream to build such a ballasted/deballasted boat an " utopia"?

Thanks for giving me your time to read this. Somebody has something to
say?

Regards
AP



"Jim Woodward" jameslwoodward at attbi dot com wrote in message
...
Broadly speaking, it's done all the time in larger vessels.

Fintry was built with tanks for 50,000 pounds of seawater ballast.
We'
re
putting a bow thruster in the forward one, so we'll replace the
weight
there
with lead, but the aft pair (14,000 pounds each, p&s) allow us to
get
her
up
to a draft of less than seven feet for sheltered waters or down to
over
eight feet at sea.

Actually doing it in a boat that will go between planing and
displacement,
is another thing. The hull forms are quite different and it might
prove
to
be a challenge. And, of course, you're talking about a lot of
water --
you
might not like what it does to the interior in a 46 foot boat. You
can
see
Fintry's tanks between frames 2-6 and 41-45 at
http://www.mvfintry.com/details.htm -- the scale on all the
drawings
shows
frame spacing, which are 20" apart.

--
Jim Woodward
www.mvFintry.com

"AP" wrote in message
...
I want to build a cruiser with the following characteristics
46 foot with very deep V foreward. 25-28 degrees deadrise at
transom
Overpowered.
And I want to have a " ballast tank."
The idea is :
If the sea is calm I will have the ballast tank empty and I will
make
her
plan using my extra horsepower.
If the sea is rough (or I meet heavy weather on the way) I will
ballast
my
tank, increase the displacement, will slow down the engines and I
will
be
sailing like a deep V boat, good for
rough weather.
Does that make sense??
Comments/suggestions are kindly invited.
Regards
AP

Dear Jim,

I think you are right. A lot of trouble in building a boat (I mean a tailor
made boat),
no name, no resale price, no guaranteed results etc . To go for a larger
boat seems
to be a better idea. This is what an economist would say, a naval
architect, a boat
owner or a prospective buyer. But a man in love would not think that way.
When I am in my home I sleep early after 30 minutes of TV. When I am on the
boat
with friends, we can blabla about boats (and not only) until 5 in the
morning.
I cannot do that in a bar. I sleep in my home and my back hurts me in the
mornong.
I sleep on the boat and my back does not hurt me in the morning. I do not
touch
anything in the house. No screw drivers no nothing. I do not care. When I go
to
boat, I lift the cover and see if the bilge water is transparent-clean. I
look around
to find a spot to clean. If I dont find a spot, then I make a spot and clean
it.
And then I sit doown and start sketching the boat I dream off.
I do not know if I will finally do the right thing. In fact, I do not know
what is
right. I only know what is nice. I do not know what I will finally do.
Your comments, however, were very much of help to me.
Thanks.

PS
I have very carefully explored your site. The mv Fintry is a sea ship. Long
range thing.
I wish her following seas, whoever is onboard.


"Jim Woodward" jameslwoodward at attbi dot com wrote in message
...
Well.... That's certainly an open ended question.

I completely agree that almost all production boats are not suitable for
serious use. I go to several boat shows -- Maine Boatbuilders' Show,
Newport, Fort Lauderdale, Miami on the yacht side, the WorkBoat Show (New
Orleans), SeaWork (Southampton) on the commercial side, and the METS trade
show (Amsterdam) -- because each one gives me ideas and possibilities and
I
continue to learn.

I am tired of laughing at the 56' Long Range Cruiser (sail) with a queen
size bed in the middle of the master stateroom and no bunkboards or
division
to keep a sleeping person off the floor and off his/her partner. (I should
add that Fintry will have a king size bed, but it will be set up with two
mattresses that form a square, so that we can sleep either f&a or p&s,
with
strong bunkboards on three sides and down the middle in either direction).
Or of a Long Range Cruiser (sail) with single bunks against the side of
the
hull aft where the hull narrows rapidly, so the sleeper's head is outboard
of his feet and therefore below them if the boat heels.

I am tired of boats with large saloons and no handrails anywhere. Of
lifelines 30" (75cm) high. Of boats over 65' (20m) with r&g sidelights
forward of the steaming light and/or the steaming light well aft -- almost
a
third of the large boats at Fort Lauderdale this year were illegal in
these
respects. Why? Because having the steaming light on a mast forward is
ugly.
(We usually say "steaming light" here to mean the light that the rules
call
"masthead light" because "masthead light" is confused with the anchor
light.) Of powerboats with essentially no visibility aft from the
wheelhouse
and no way to look aft without going outside and walking aft. Of the 60'
power cat with computer and TV screens in front of the driver, so when
sitting down at the wheel you couldn't see forward except with a TV
camera;
this same boat had no side decks at all, bow to stern, so dock lines had
to
be handled from the bow and stern two levels up and there was no place for
any lines amidships. Of the 125' sailboat with the captain's cabin in the
bow, access only down a ladder from the foredeck, with two bunks, a toilet
between them, and very little floor space -- would you trust your $10
million boat to a person who would live like that?

I overheard a conversation this past weekend at Fort Lauderdale in the
booth
of one of the Big Three of yacht electronics manufacturers. Seems that a
recent radar unit needed a software upgrade. Owner had to choose between
having it done free if he brought the radar display (box maybe a third of
a
meter on a side, 20kg, four cables to disconnect) to the dealer, or to pay
a
couple of hundred dollars to have the tech bring the software to the boat
on
a computer. The display was so hard to remove that the owner chose to
have
the tech come to the boat.

Why do we need a little light next to a circuit breaker to tell us the
breaker is on? Seems to me the handle position tells us it's on and the
light is just a waste of electricity. Why are most of our light bulbs
rated
for 12 volts (or 24) when they have to run at 14.5 (or 29) when the
batteries are charging and therefore cut their life by a factor of ten
(tungsten bulb life is proportional to the inverse twelfth power of the
voltage).

And so forth. Now there are a few production boats that do a pretty good
job -- Nordhavn and Swan come to mind -- but even with them there are many
details I would change. Which is why we're starting with an absolutely
rock
solid strong ex Royal Navy hull and pretty much doing everything else over
again. This gives us the chance to do it our way and to know exactly how
it
was done in every case.

The Fleet Tender hull is almost ideal for us. Tough, with 10mm steel
where
it counts. Very little deadrise in the middle third of the boat, so the
main hold is almost twenty feet (six meters) square at the bottom, and yet
has a very nice entry and run. And, as I mentioned at the start of this
thread, with ballast tanks allowing us to use the USA East Coast
Intra-Coastal Waterway at less than 2 meters draft and still ballast down
for comfort at sea.

You, on the other hand, are going to have a hull built from scratch -- a
hull with features that are unconventional. I'm not qualified to discuss
the details of a planing hull -- I sort of understand them, but I've never
really studied them. You must know you're taking a risk -- even though
modern computer analysis will tell you a lot about how a new design will
work, the programs are based on designs that have already been done, so
something that is at the edge of the envelope may not come out in real
life
quite the way the computer thinks it will. So there's a risk that you'll
put
a lot of money into a project that doesn't solve your problem. You might
also consider that it could be difficult to sell -- most very personal
boats
are. As an example of this, we changed Swee****er's lifelines from 30"
tall
to 36" tall (75cm to 90cm) -- entirely appropriate for a large boat that
would be used at sea, with no problems at all. When we sold her, the new
owner wanted the old stanchions so he could return her to "standard Swan
57".

The other question I would ask is do you really need it? We passed
through
Greece on our circumnav in May and never felt the meltemi, so I know only
what I've read. I ask, though, whether a planing boat that can do 20
knots
or more cannot almost always make it to a sheltered place when difficult
conditions are forecast -- shelter is never far away in Greece. Thus you
never have to stay out there and take a beating the way you do when you're
crossing an ocean. Now, I know that running for shelter is not
particularly
appealing to a person who has spent much of his life at sea, but it might
be
the best compromise. Of course this means you must then stay in the
sheltered place until the meltemi stops blowing.

You could also just go larger in the best possible production hull. It
will
almost certainly be cheaper than a custom design, particularly if you
consider resale value. Larger will be more expensive to dock, but the
fuel
might be similar, given the large engines your special boat would require.
Larger will be more stable and safer than your present boat -- perhaps
equal
to your special -- and will have a lot more room inside -- a bigger boat
to
begin with and no dead space for tanks.

And finally, I ask if you've really done the math on the volume required.
A
cubic meter of water is about a metric tonne. She's going to be around 15
meters long, 4 meters wide, so her waterplane is going to be around 80% of
15x4 equals 48 square meters. To take her down 10cm, you're going to need
4.8 cubic meters of seawater. Now, 10cm isn't very much, but 4.8 tonnes
and
4.8 cubic meters is a lot in a 50 foot boat. You can put a small galley in
4.8 cubic meters and 4.8 tonnes is going to require strong framing, even
if
you assume that the tank will always be either full or empty -- no free
surface. This is made even harder by the fact that the larger engines are
going to need larger than normal fuel tanks.

Now, with all of that said, I don't want to end as discouraging. There's
nothing more satisfying than having your own thing, just the way you want
it. We've done it a number of times with houses and three times with
boats
(Fintry is the third) and it's just great to end up with something that
represents the best possible compromise for you. As you say, all boats
are
a sea of compromise, and most have the sea tilted towards making them easy
to sell to landlubbers.....

--
Jim Woodward
www.mvFintry.com

I completely understand. We believe Fintry is a good and practical project
for us -- our vision is that we will move aboard and then go to strange and
wonderful places, not another circumnav, but certainly off the beaten track,
where a tough boat will be better than a pretty yacht.

Now, if that comes true, she will make sense -- but if all we do is go up
and down the USA East Coast, then we will have spent a lot of money on
unnecessary systems, reliability, fuel capacity, and so forth. But she is
our dream, so we go with.

May our boats live up to our dreams.





Jim Woodward
www.mvFintry.com


..
"AP" wrote in message
...
Dear Jim,

I think you are right. A lot of trouble in building a boat (I mean a
tailor
made boat),
no name, no resale price, no guaranteed results etc . To go for a larger
boat seems
to be a better idea. This is what an economist would say, a naval
architect, a boat
owner or a prospective buyer. But a man in love would not think that way.
When I am in my home I sleep early after 30 minutes of TV. When I am on
the
boat
with friends, we can blabla about boats (and not only) until 5 in the
morning.
I cannot do that in a bar. I sleep in my home and my back hurts me in the
mornong.
I sleep on the boat and my back does not hurt me in the morning. I do not
touch
anything in the house. No screw drivers no nothing. I do not care. When I
go
to
boat, I lift the cover and see if the bilge water is transparent-clean. I
look around
to find a spot to clean. If I dont find a spot, then I make a spot and
clean
it.
And then I sit doown and start sketching the boat I dream off.
I do not know if I will finally do the right thing. In fact, I do not know
what is
right. I only know what is nice. I do not know what I will finally do.
Your comments, however, were very much of help to me.
Thanks.

PS
I have very carefully explored your site. The mv Fintry is a sea ship.
Long
range thing.
I wish her following seas, whoever is onboard.


"Jim Woodward" jameslwoodward at attbi dot com wrote in message
...
Well.... That's certainly an open ended question.

I completely agree that almost all production boats are not suitable for
serious use. I go to several boat shows -- Maine Boatbuilders' Show,
Newport, Fort Lauderdale, Miami on the yacht side, the WorkBoat Show
(New
Orleans), SeaWork (Southampton) on the commercial side, and the METS
trade
show (Amsterdam) -- because each one gives me ideas and possibilities
and
I
continue to learn.

I am tired of laughing at the 56' Long Range Cruiser (sail) with a queen
size bed in the middle of the master stateroom and no bunkboards or
division
to keep a sleeping person off the floor and off his/her partner. (I
should
add that Fintry will have a king size bed, but it will be set up with
two
mattresses that form a square, so that we can sleep either f&a or p&s,
with
strong bunkboards on three sides and down the middle in either
direction).
Or of a Long Range Cruiser (sail) with single bunks against the side of
the
hull aft where the hull narrows rapidly, so the sleeper's head is
outboard
of his feet and therefore below them if the boat heels.

I am tired of boats with large saloons and no handrails anywhere. Of
lifelines 30" (75cm) high. Of boats over 65' (20m) with r&g sidelights
forward of the steaming light and/or the steaming light well aft --
almost
a
third of the large boats at Fort Lauderdale this year were illegal in
these
respects. Why? Because having the steaming light on a mast forward is
ugly.
(We usually say "steaming light" here to mean the light that the rules
call
"masthead light" because "masthead light" is confused with the anchor
light.) Of powerboats with essentially no visibility aft from the
wheelhouse
and no way to look aft without going outside and walking aft. Of the 60'
power cat with computer and TV screens in front of the driver, so when
sitting down at the wheel you couldn't see forward except with a TV
camera;
this same boat had no side decks at all, bow to stern, so dock lines had
to
be handled from the bow and stern two levels up and there was no place
for
any lines amidships. Of the 125' sailboat with the captain's cabin in
the
bow, access only down a ladder from the foredeck, with two bunks, a
toilet
between them, and very little floor space -- would you trust your $10
million boat to a person who would live like that?

I overheard a conversation this past weekend at Fort Lauderdale in the
booth
of one of the Big Three of yacht electronics manufacturers. Seems that
a
recent radar unit needed a software upgrade. Owner had to choose
between
having it done free if he brought the radar display (box maybe a third
of
a
meter on a side, 20kg, four cables to disconnect) to the dealer, or to
pay
a
couple of hundred dollars to have the tech bring the software to the
boat
on
a computer. The display was so hard to remove that the owner chose to
have
the tech come to the boat.

Why do we need a little light next to a circuit breaker to tell us the
breaker is on? Seems to me the handle position tells us it's on and the
light is just a waste of electricity. Why are most of our light bulbs
rated
for 12 volts (or 24) when they have to run at 14.5 (or 29) when the
batteries are charging and therefore cut their life by a factor of ten
(tungsten bulb life is proportional to the inverse twelfth power of the
voltage).

And so forth. Now there are a few production boats that do a pretty
good
job -- Nordhavn and Swan come to mind -- but even with them there are
many
details I would change. Which is why we're starting with an absolutely
rock
solid strong ex Royal Navy hull and pretty much doing everything else
over
again. This gives us the chance to do it our way and to know exactly how
it
was done in every case.

The Fleet Tender hull is almost ideal for us. Tough, with 10mm steel
where
it counts. Very little deadrise in the middle third of the boat, so the
main hold is almost twenty feet (six meters) square at the bottom, and
yet
has a very nice entry and run. And, as I mentioned at the start of this
thread, with ballast tanks allowing us to use the USA East Coast
Intra-Coastal Waterway at less than 2 meters draft and still ballast
down
for comfort at sea.

You, on the other hand, are going to have a hull built from scratch -- a
hull with features that are unconventional. I'm not qualified to
discuss
the details of a planing hull -- I sort of understand them, but I've
never
really studied them. You must know you're taking a risk -- even though
modern computer analysis will tell you a lot about how a new design will
work, the programs are based on designs that have already been done, so
something that is at the edge of the envelope may not come out in real
life
quite the way the computer thinks it will. So there's a risk that you'll
put
a lot of money into a project that doesn't solve your problem. You
might
also consider that it could be difficult to sell -- most very personal
boats
are. As an example of this, we changed Swee****er's lifelines from 30"
tall
to 36" tall (75cm to 90cm) -- entirely appropriate for a large boat that
would be used at sea, with no problems at all. When we sold her, the
new
owner wanted the old stanchions so he could return her to "standard Swan
57".

The other question I would ask is do you really need it? We passed
through
Greece on our circumnav in May and never felt the meltemi, so I know
only
what I've read. I ask, though, whether a planing boat that can do 20
knots
or more cannot almost always make it to a sheltered place when difficult
conditions are forecast -- shelter is never far away in Greece. Thus
you
never have to stay out there and take a beating the way you do when
you're
crossing an ocean. Now, I know that running for shelter is not
particularly
appealing to a person who has spent much of his life at sea, but it
might
be
the best compromise. Of course this means you must then stay in the
sheltered place until the meltemi stops blowing.

You could also just go larger in the best possible production hull. It
will
almost certainly be cheaper than a custom design, particularly if you
consider resale value. Larger will be more expensive to dock, but the
fuel
might be similar, given the large engines your special boat would
require.
Larger will be more stable and safer than your present boat -- perhaps
equal
to your special -- and will have a lot more room inside -- a bigger boat
to
begin with and no dead space for tanks.

And finally, I ask if you've really done the math on the volume
required.
A
cubic meter of water is about a metric tonne. She's going to be around
15
meters long, 4 meters wide, so her waterplane is going to be around 80%
of
15x4 equals 48 square meters. To take her down 10cm, you're going to
need
4.8 cubic meters of seawater. Now, 10cm isn't very much, but 4.8 tonnes
and
4.8 cubic meters is a lot in a 50 foot boat. You can put a small galley
in
4.8 cubic meters and 4.8 tonnes is going to require strong framing, even
if
you assume that the tank will always be either full or empty -- no free
surface. This is made even harder by the fact that the larger engines
are
going to need larger than normal fuel tanks.

Now, with all of that said, I don't want to end as discouraging.
There's
nothing more satisfying than having your own thing, just the way you
want
it. We've done it a number of times with houses and three times with
boats
(Fintry is the third) and it's just great to end up with something that
represents the best possible compromise for you. As you say, all boats
are
a sea of compromise, and most have the sea tilted towards making them
easy
to sell to landlubbers.....

--
Jim Woodward
www.mvFintry.com