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Jeanneau 52.2 vs. Fountaine Pajot Belize
Bryan wrote:
We generally beat the multi's with a mono although we were a slower boat. Why, because the course required dead upwind and dead downwind sailing, that is a weak point for multi's. When racing point to point reaching races, the multi's won. No surprise. Jeff wrote: PHRF ratings are based on round the buoy racing. Assuming the ratings for the Shock 35 (72?) and the F-27 (25-50) are fair, Are the ratings ever fair? One of the problems with issuing a single-number handicap for a light fast boat like a multi or sport boat is that their performance varies tremendously as conditions vary. For example, in the 1988 sneak-attack/mismatch catamaran America's Cup, the big monohull was demonstrably faster than the cat in light air. This appeared to be the case on all points of sail including reaches. I've raced a small sport boat against beach cats, and have some definite observations along the same lines. The funny thing is, that while there are some advantages for monos and some conditions wehre we couold dust them convincingly, a number of multihull seem to deny reality and insist that multis are faster just because they just are. .... then the F-27 is a faster boat in a round the buoy race. If you can consistently race at 25 to 50 points better than your boat's rating, you're a better sailor than I. (You probably are anyways, if you race a Shock 35!) The Antrim 27 rates about the same as the F-27 and they often beat F-27s, I'm told. The fact that cruising cats are even roughly the same as monohulls in phrf ratings implies that the upwind advantage of mono's is not that great. Agreed. Multihull design has progressed to where they can go upwind pretty well. And the mono probably has to use a spinnaker to keep up with or beat the cat (with no spinnaker) downwind. Since cruisers have been known to power when going upwind (yes, its true) its not clear phrf is particularly relevant at all to a cruising discussion. I disagree. It's releveant, since it indicates the sailing performance of the boats... under ideal conditions (remember PHRF assumes the boat is not loaded for cruising and tuned up for racing). However it's for sure not the be-all & end-all. We have a number of friends who cruise to the Bahamas every year from Beaufort, in a wide variety of boats. The speedboats (including a 44' fast cat and a J-44) don't seem to outperform the Island Packet by all that much. Usually their passage times are all within 24 hours of each other, often much less. Fresh Breezes- Doug King |