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Paradigm changing boats

12K views 54 replies 18 participants last post by  bobmcgov 
#1 ·
Just finished reading the full/fin keel debate and learned alot. Many noted you get the whole package and the keel is just part of it. Wonder which boats our esteemed panel think changed the game and why? e.g.
Valiant40/42- you can sail the world and expect to come home
Tayana 37- you can do it and not be a millionaire
Prout 39- you can do it on a multi hull
Deerfoot- 2 of you can do it on a big boat
Dana- you can do it on a small boat
J 24- the average guy can go fast
Cherubini- narrow and full keel doesn't mean slow
F27- go fast, fold it up and go home
Boreal 44- put all the weight in the middle then who needs a keel for a good ride
ETAP- who says only Boston Whalers are sink proof
Swan 46- it can be fast,beautiful and take what the sea hands out
etc.
All the best to you all
 
#42 ·
Is my take on this wrong, to be paradigm-shifting doesn't the design have to have a profound impact on what follows in sailing? Herreshof's catamaran was quite remarkable, but sailing in the decades that followed was not materially affected by it (perhaps sadly). On the other hand, the Westsail 32 opened the door that allows me to be sitting on my boat in South Africa, even though I have never had any interest in buying one. It shifted the paradigm. The Cal 40 made downwind sailing faster and that is useful, but not all that many boats followed that lead. Perhaps we need more categories of impact?
 
#46 ·
That's why I said Amaryllis might have changed sailing, but didn't. To be fair to the people who condemned the design in 1876, there is no way that boat could have survived a beating, not with spruce spars for the bowsprit and crossbeams. The forces on big multis are insane. It wasn't until aircraft alloys and carbon fiber that Herreshoff's vision could be implemented with any sort of margin, almost a hundred years later. Even then, those boats can fail catastrophically -- Alan Colas was lost racing PD4; and many big cats and tris continue to struggle with the engineering demands that come with their speeds & form stability.

Still, the paradigm has shifted. Banque Pop just rounded the world in 45.5 days -- two weeks faster than any powered vessel; maxi tris are the boat of choice for smashing records, and they all look rather likePD4. And apparently, the America's Cup is now the provence of bleeding-edge mutihulls. Look at the AC45s, then look again at Amaryllis. Nat's ideas were not a blind alley but just had to wait until materials science made them feasible.:)
 
#44 ·
So many great boats in this thread!

Ted Brewer wrote an article on my blog about 50 years of cruising boat evolution that includes a lot of boats that might fit in this thread.

Among those mentioned are Finisterre, the Rhodes designed Bounty II (very early FRP hull), Block Island/Bermuda 40, Alberg's Pearson Triton, and Lapworth's Cal 40.

There's also Brewer's Goderich/Huromic 35, which may be the first radius bilge metal hull sailboat.
 
#45 · (Edited)
Two relative new boats that had an huge importance in what regards the way two concepts were looked and used. Not properly created them but make them popular and after these boats many others were made around this criteria...and many more are still coming on the market.

Both fast, both beachable, one of them designed as a long range small cruiser the other as a polivalent cruiser. Curiously while both are fast neither of them was thought as a race cruiser and no attention was given to any improvement regarding possible rating. Both rate very badly:D

The two concepts are a swing very deep ballasted keel on a beamy hull adapted to solo sailing and the other twin keels but designed to perform very well with low draft on a small boat also adapted to solo sailing plus the possibility of being sailed from the interior. The RM reintroduced in the market a technology that was forgotten, the use of marine plywood, now mixed with modern materials like epoxy and kevlar.

The RM 1050 is a Marc Lombard design and the Pogo 10.50 a Finot design.

http://www.marclombard.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=36&Itemid=75&lang=en#RM1050

http://www.finot.com/bateaux/batproduction/structures/pogo1050/pogo1050.htm















 
#54 ·
Not sure at what point a paradigm shift occurs. Everyone credit Igor Sikorsky with the paradigm shift of the helicopter, but he was far from the first one to even fly one, let alone design one.

  • 400 BC, Chinese children playing with bamboo flying toys.
  • 1480 Leonardo da Vinci designed an "aerial screw" flying machine.
  • 1861 Gustave d'Amecourt demonstrated a small steam powered helicopter made of aluminum. It didn't get off the ground, but it was the first use of the word "helicopter".
  • 1877 Enrico Forlanini in a park in Milan flew an unmanned steam driven helicopter 13 meters in the air. It stayed aloft for 20 seconds.
  • 1878 in France Emmanuel Dieuaide flew a model more than 12 meters (40 feet) high for 20 seconds. It had two opposite spinning rotors and was powered through a hose from a boiler on the ground.
  • 1885 Thomas Edison in the US built a helicopter but it failed to take off, exploding and burning one of his workers.
  • 1901 Ján Bahýľ, a Slovak, used an internal combustion engine (petrol) to fly a model helicopter that flew 0.5 meters (1.6 feet) above the ground. In 1905 his helicopter flew 1.5 km at a height of 4 meters (13 feet).
  • 1907, two French brothers, Jacques and Louis Brequet developed the Gyroplane No.1. The plane lifted its pilot up into the air about two feet (0.6 m) for a minute but it needed two people on the ground to keep it balanced.
  • 1907 French inventor Paul Cornu designed and built a Cornu helicopter that lifted its inventor to 1 foot (0.3 m) and remained aloft for 20 seconds. This machine was later abandoned.
  • 1908, Thomas Edison patented his own design for a gasoline powered helicopter with box kites attached to a mast, but it never flew.
  • 1912 William J. Purvis and Charles A. Wilson applied for and received a patent for a "Flying Machine" of the helicopter type on June 4, 1912. With Purvis at the controls it flew 20 feet into the air.
  • 1924, in Argentine RaĂşl Pateras Pescara's helicopter No. 3 could fly for up ten minutes. He also developed the idea of tilting the engine and blades to make the machine fly forward.
  • 1927 Abert Gillis von Baumhauer received the first patent for a true working helicopter.
  • 1937 The German Fw 61 broke all the helicopter world records and several of the aircraft flew during World War 2.
  • In the US LePage had the patent rights for the German Fw 61, and he built the XR-1.
  • Igor Sikorsky was competing with LePage to build the first military helicopter. Sigorsky developed a single small rotor on the tail to keep his VS-300 steady. His later model, the R-4, got military orders for over 400 before the end of the World War 2.
  • At the same time Arthur Young was working for Bell Aircraft to eventually develop the Bell 47, the most popular civilian model for the next 30 years.

I think the old adage, "history is written by the victor" was never more true.
 
#55 ·
An editorial from 1876 on Amaryllis, for your reading pleasure:
A REVOLUTIONARY YACHT.
The defeated yachtsmen in yesterday's race are entitled to sincere commiseration. It is a well-established fact among Americans of a yachting turn of mind, that the American yacht embodies in her model all the fairy tales of science and the long results of time. It is supposed to be almost the perfect model for speed under canvas, and it is supposed that any improvement on it will be merely an extension of it. Yet yesterday all the yachts of this approved model were beaten ridiculously by a vessel of outlandish model and rig. She is literally 'outlandish,' for according to the description of her the nearest approach to her afloat is the famous 'flying proa' of the Ladrone Islands, of the speed of which wonderful stories are told. Nobody protested against entering her for the race yesterday, for the reason probably that everybody expected to beat her, but everybody seems to have objected to being beaten by her. Next time we advise our yachtsmen to ponder the words of MILTON, And think twice ere they venture to "Sport with Amaryllis in the shade."

In form the entry seems to have been perfectly fair, since the yachts were taxed only according to length, and were permitted as much extension in all other directions as their owners chose. But in fact, it is clearly unfair to race boats of radically different models, and built for entirely different purposes, against each other. The model of the Amaryllis evidently would not do for a sea going vessel, and nothing in the way of the practical 'improvement of naval architecture ' which yachts and yacht clubs are supposed to promote, can come out of a flying proa. But on the other hand, none of the boats engaged in the race with her are supposed to be good for much except to engage in such races. The tendency of yacht-racing is everywhere to-produce 'racing machines;' in ENGLAND by narrowing, deepening and ballasting yachts out of all reason, and here by making broad and shallow 'skimming-dishes.' In either case the result is not a good type of sea-going vessel. So the owners of racing-machines have really no reason to complain that somebody should invent a racing-machine to beat them. This the inventor of the Amaryllis has done. It behooves the owners of the large schooners, however, to take counsel together lest somebody should build an Amaryllis a hundred feet long and convert their crafts into useless lumber. It is a matter quite as important as keeping the America's Cup, and may demand quite as ingenious and elaborate devices as were put in force against Mr. ASHBURY.
Source: Anon. (Editorial). "A Revolutionary Yacht." The World, June 24, 1876, p. 4.

From this web page.

Remarkably clear-sighted and prescient.:)
 
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