Sailing a sloop with main alone...
 

On Fri, 19 May 2006 20:14:52 +0000, Roger Long wrote:

There's more than any rational and sane person would ever want to know
about the boat on my web site at:

Http://home.maine.rr.com/rlma/Boat.htm

Roger, I saw your website and it looks like a pretty nice boat -- maybe
underrated and therefore a really good buy right now. Of course we're all
always thinking about our next boat!

Websites like yours are a great resource, and hopefully an archive.
Sadly, despite the amount of techie brainpower in the sailing community,
most mainstream boating sites are terrible. Thankfully folks like
yourself are carrying the torch. If you ever have to let the site go, I
hope you'll put out an appeal for someone to continue hosting it.

Matt O.

Sailing a sloop with main alone...
 

so, question...what sailboat is most
effecient (overall) for sailing upwind?

i guess measured by ground track, or
a gps benchmark?

Sailing a sloop with main alone...
 

DSK wrote:
But if OTOH you locked the helm, like you have to do on your own boat?



Roger Long wrote:

Never tried it but it's had to imagine the Pearson 26 which I sailed a
lot would do it. I'm thinking back 20 years though.

If anyone knows of a spade rudder boat (except maybe for a long,
skinny, atypical, type) steering itself to windward, I'd be curious to
hear. Some skeg ahead of the rudder seems to help a lot.


I know of many... am pretty sure to have done it on a Pearson 26, one of
which I made a delivery trip many years ago.

All you need to do is get the helm set just enough to weather that the
boat will sail straight ahead when heeled a bit, bear away when the wind
slacks up or heads, and rounds up slightly when heeled too far. I've
done it on many fin keelers including quite a few with no skeg. The best
way IMHO is to use a piece of very strong shock cord across the cockpit
& clove-hitched to the tiller, so that you can make a fine adjustment by
slipping the hitch a few twists to one side or the other... and you can
also grab the helm and steer by hand if you have some urgent reason to
do so quickly.

You're right that an underwater shape with more longitudinal stability
helps a lot. But it's not necessary to get the boat to "sail itself" to
windward or close reaching. On a beam reach or off the wind, no dice!

Fresh Breezes- Doug King

Longitudinal stability?

Sailing a sloop with main alone...
 

You're right that an underwater shape with more longitudinal stability
helps a lot. But it's not necessary to get the boat to "sail itself"
to windward or close reaching. On a beam reach or off the wind, no dice!


Gary wrote:
Longitudinal stability?

Perhaps I should have said "directional stability" sorry,
I'm not good at explaining things.

The tendency of a boat to go straight rather than spin like
a top (or vice versa). Some high performance boats will
literally sling the crew out of the boat if allowed to turn
as fast as they want to. Personally, I don't think that's
necessarily a bad thing, but the skipper has to know the
boat's characterisitcs and how to successfuly use them to
advantage... or at least cope...

Fresh Breezes- Doug King

Sailing a sloop with main alone...
 

On Sat, 20 May 2006 13:22:40 -0700, ~^ beancounter ~^ wrote:

so, question...what sailboat is most
effecient (overall) for sailing upwind?

i guess measured by ground track, or
a gps benchmark?

Among monohulls, undoubtedly an America's Cup boat, but fast multis may do
better.

Matt O.

Sailing a sloop with main alone...
 

~^ beancounter ~^ wrote:
so, question...what sailboat is most
effecient (overall) for sailing upwind?

i guess measured by ground track, or
a gps benchmark?


By racing them, of course ;)

Matt O'Toole wrote:
Among monohulls, undoubtedly an America's Cup boat, but fast multis may do
better.


It takes a pretty fast multi to better an America's Cup
Class boat's VMG upwind, they get about 80% true wind speed.
I dunno if one of the new canting-keel superboats would do
it. But it depends on conditions, too. Light air and
relatively flat water? No question an IACC boat would romp
away from anything else. That's what they're bred for, and
they are very very highly bred. But once things get exciting
it's more an open debate. A lot depends on the sailor(s)
too... beasts of this nature tend to be fragile (actually
they're not at all fragile, it's just the massive amounts of
horsepower they generate make them easy to break) and any
boat with a broken mast or foil will be slower than one intact.

Fresh Breezes- Doug King

Sailing a sloop with main alone...
 

DSK wrote:


You're right that an underwater shape with more longitudinal
stability helps a lot. But it's not necessary to get the boat to
"sail itself" to windward or close reaching. On a beam reach or off
the wind, no dice!



Gary wrote:

Longitudinal stability?


Perhaps I should have said "directional stability" sorry, I'm not good
at explaining things.

The tendency of a boat to go straight rather than spin like a top (or
vice versa). Some high performance boats will literally sling the crew
out of the boat if allowed to turn as fast as they want to. Personally,
I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing, but the skipper has to
know the boat's characterisitcs and how to successfuly use them to
advantage... or at least cope...

Fresh Breezes- Doug King

Got it! Thanks.