Articles discussing my thoughts on sources for boat design information for performance, structures or boat handling – with a bias towards repeatable information.
It could be from competitive sailing or through interpretation of careful testing by others including my design peers. It all ends up applying to my boat plans
In the end … if it doesn’t appear on the racecourse somewhere … it probably doesn’t work.
This may be an overstatement, I have a soft spot for those who work through several versions of an idea over time.
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A new lightweight 12ft plywood dinghy under development. This prototype by Canadian Rick Landreville. It won’t have a cloud of sail area,but will be light enough low drag enough to hit consistently high speeds relative to other boats of this length.
So how does a lug rig boat go in club racing? My designs won’t be outclassed in club racing. I’m really keen to find out how the yardstick (handicap) changes as George and crew get used to the realities of course racing making the boat sail faster. We end up with an estimate of PY – Portsmouth Yardstick for the Goat Island Skiff.
Slightly arrogant I!
I visit the Philippines then Malaysia and also find a large community of Filipino boat builders there. I find they know much more than me about boat design and varieties. Stunning mix of different boats from curvaceous to plywood and boxy.
But Gosh … the shapes they come up with!
Nice little video showing the easy speed of the Goat Island Skiffs in moderate conditions. Venue is the Small Reach Regatta.
It also shows the standard cat rig and the optional Yawl rig.
Malcolm Eggins, boat builder and designer has passed away.
A small tribute to one of the many people that has influenced me and many other sailors and designers. He was a part of the development of Moths, NS14s, VJs, VeeEsses and many other Australian racing dingies as a builder and designer along with his son Darryl. He won several State Championships.
BETH sailing canoe – The designer has lots of fine things to say about the sailing performance of BETH – but Andrew Barclay has been racing his against mixed fleets in British Columbia where she sails equal with Laser Radials in light wind and gradually outclasses them in stronger.
I provide some tips about getting a bit more from the boat.
OK … it IS a rant. But it was prompted by the very legitimate question about why have a mizzen sail.
But sadly I descend into a rant about how expense is a really poor predictor of performance.
Why is every boat different despite the best aim of the designer?
It’s because every customer is different. Which is OK!
Some examples of sailing nicely in the Goat Island Skiff, reversing, sailing at nice speed in comfortable conditions.
Locations are San Diego, Australia, Texas, Florida and Maine
A small collection of the many videos of the Goat Island Skiff Planing fast in different places around the world.
Some basic questions were asked on my forum about the design of amas.
There are so many permutation of ama length, crossbeam width, ama volume with performance ranging from very poor to very good. But what are some of the basic criteria?
Joe sent me a question about why his self designed sailing rig for my Electric Quick Canoe design works better if he moves the leeboard forward of the theoretical point for a balanced helm.
He has stumbled upon a nice observation of a design element called “lead” (I lead you … not the metal Lead).
I explain
It always bugged me about how people said that some powerboats and fast sailing dinghies would “plane” to reach high speed. But multihulls reach higher speed, but they “don’t plane”.
It’s illogical to have two different explanations.
Also how a classical “displacement hull” go much faster on an ocean wave. Theory says it has a speed limit no matter the power you throw in.
I worked out a reasonable explanation for all this but it shows “planing” does not exist.
The new OzRacer RV is a much simpler build of the original OzRacer concept. It also is a direct relative of the slightly larger and much faster OZ Goose
The Quick Canoe Electric is a simple to build cartoppable square back canoe.
It can be quickly and simply built in plywood.
Peter Caspari’s boat is shown here.
The rudderbox design I use has distinct advantages over normal swinging rudder setups. Once you try this design you will never be satisfied with a swinging blade again. But some of the details are important!
In the late 70s as a sailing teenager I drew boats on every available paper surface.
A new book “a lighter ton” describes the exciting development of racing yachts to create newer, lighter, faster and cheaper and FUNNER boats.
Many of the developments were from New Zealand designers such as Bruce Farr, Paul Whiting and Laurie Davidson. A new book by Richard Blakey covers this exciting experimental period in yacht design
This is an article about how bias in thinking produces weird results in terms of boat designs.
I compare a silly boat design trend of 100 years ago with modern canting keel maxi yachts.
Personally I don’t think they should be allowed to use engines to run the keels and the various systems – if they do then they should be disqualified from the event results. The conventional human powered boats should be listed as the winners of events.
The above photo was taken on the third day of our Canoeing trip on the Loire River in France. The two black canoes didn’t even exist a week ago.
When I wrote the original article on Disposable Canoeing I had no idea at all what it would lead to me and a bunch of adventurers, wine and cheese connoisseurs. Most of us didn’t even know each other! The picture above is the result of this adventurism, but what happened to make it happen?
What technology was involved to make the boats faster to build than most stitch and glue boats and what weather conditions did we have to overcome to make it all happen.
Golfballs go further because of those dimples on the surface. Would it make sense to have those dimples on a boat hull?
It is not quite that simple as this little article attempts to explain.