Modern Hull forms and Motion Comfort

[bobperry]

You might have some interest in reading my two articles in GOB. The first is out now and it's on the CCA and how it shaped the boats we know from that era. The second article is on the IOR and it will not be out for at least another month.

Sometimes I think I hear here the "old is good and new is bad" theory expressed. I think there are good and bad boats from every era and any extreme approach to a measurement rule, and the CCA had its own rule beating freaks, can produce boats that have idiosyncratic handling characteristics. The light boat vs heavy boat argument goes back father than I do and I'm 65. There is still no definitive objective answer ubnles you want to quantify exactly what you mean by "performance" and that can be a challenge. But it is hard to deny that most modern designs are far more efficient sailing boats compared to the boats of the 60's. Objectively speaking.

I think a lot of it depends upon just how you choose to sail. The "ideal" cruiser for one sailor may not be the "ideal" cruiser for another but that does not make each sailor's preference a "bad" boat.

[souljour2000]

I will be looking for those articles Bob...and I am sure there are more than a few IOR boats that are "freaks" though I cant name any off the top of my head I think we all know 'em when we see one. The CCA boats...well... not so many in that category I would think...but they were slow but steady "wins the race" kind of boats it seems to me. The CCA boats still on the market need alot of work these days to bring 'em back to coastal/near shore passage work if they havent been babied...bulkheads need re-tabbed if not replaced..etc...same could be said for the IOR boats though...and the CCA boats seldom need decks/hulls recored or keel bolt replaced...so I lean toward CCA boats for the sailor who aint got deep pockets like myself...would love a newer ericsson 29 from late seventies in good shape cheap but one like that hasnt dropped from the sky yet for under 10 grand and thats still above my budget ceiling....so many projects to do on the Columbia 29...

[SloopJonB]

Originally Posted by souljour2000

The CCA boats still on the market need alot of work these days to bring 'em back to coastal/near shore passage work if they havent been babied...bulkheads need re-tabbed if not replaced..etc...same could be said for the IOR boats though...and the CCA boats seldom need decks/hulls recored or keel bolt replaced

I beg to differ - ANY 40-50-60 year old boat is going to need serious work. Do you think restoring a 57 Chevy is any harder than a 72 Mustang? How about a carvel constructed CCA boat from 1955? Would you rather restore that than say a glass Rhodes Bounty II built by Aeromarine at the same time? (all things being equal)

My late CCA era Columbia 43 needed some epoxy injection to stick some deck delamination down and the keel fastenings were GONE - it had to be completely re-mounted. My IOR boat needed areas of recoring done on deck but the keel was like new.

An old boat is an old boat - the design rule in favour for offshore racing when it was constructed has nothing to do with how it will weather the years.

[souljour2000]

Yeah i did my homework a bit to make sure I didnt end up with a boat that needed the keel bolts re-done....that sounds like a nightmare that thankfully alot of the early and mid-sixties Columbias/Pearsons/Seafarers were not fraught with...my '66 Col29 MK II had bricks of lead lowered into and braced into the molded forefoot type full keel form. She has other issues for sure but rotting keel bolts is one I knew I could not afford due to the need for some yard work/heavy equipment renta/etc.

[bobperry]

2000:
You seem to think that IOR boats frequently need their keel bolts tightened or replaced. Why would you think that? That has not been my experience. I think you might be generalizing based on a couple of boatyard stories you may have heard. The IOR produced some great boats and many of them have made fine family offfshore cruising boats. Some of them were built as throw aways and they are best thrown away. But you need to take far more into account if you are accurately to compare CCA and IOR boats. If the CCA era had the technology that was available during the IOR days you probably would have seen throw away CCA boats.

[smackdaddy]

Originally Posted by souljour2000

On the other hand... Many of us would enjoy surfing at 8 knots in one of the newer offshore designs...in good conditions...but that doesn't ease my trepidation of what happens to "crew lucidity" in these types of boats when speed is no longer of any help in dealing with a raging sea. So I guess I'm skeptical whether the speed of these boats offsets their shortcomings...but I will gladly concede that speed is a huge factor...

For me - the answer to this question is that speed is generally far more appealing to me than "heavy". And the reason for this is that the percentage of time I will enjoy the speed of my boat will be far greater than the percentage of time I will be in a "raging sea" that really threatens "crew lucidity". And if I am, most likely won't be beating into it.

[SloopJonB]

Originally Posted by souljour2000

Yeah i did my homework a bit to make sure I didnt end up with a boat that needed the keel bolts re-done....that sounds like a nightmare that thankfully alot of the early and mid-sixties Columbias/Pearsons/Seafarers were not fraught with...my '66 Col29 MK II had bricks of lead lowered into and braced into the molded forefoot type full keel form. She has other issues for sure but rotting keel bolts is one I knew I could not afford due to the need for some yard work/heavy equipment renta/etc.

It's definitely a big job and not for the inexperienced but it isn't difficult or complicated. The worst part was fairing it in after it was mounted. The boat has a fairly large "garboard radius" where it fairs into the hull and sanding the filler there was a backbreaker. I had previously installed a lead fin on a quarter tonner I built so I had an idea of what was involved. I WAS lucky to survive THAT job though - there is a special god who looks after fools and drunks. When I think of things I did that could have killed me on that first job....

I do get a sense of satisfaction when looking back on them though, knowing I accomplished a job that many, if not most people would never even consider doing. Almost lets me think of myself as a boatbuilder.

[souljour2000]

Hope I wasn't the thread-killer here..but I did try to re-suscitate it too I guess...Anyways...I think this is one of the best threads I have seen on this forum...the brief that Jeff laid out a while back in the thread was well..not so brief..but it was well-explained and a good platform for the thread...hope we can keep it going...I like this topic...jeff as I said made alot of good points and laid out the landscape..it just seems that there is alot of mumbo-jumbo that is so very relative...the only hard data seemed to be the tank-testing where certain newer wide-beam boats did better with successive wave action in terms of resisting complete knockdown...that could be but do we all really want to go to sea in boats that pound and have a lead bullet hanging precariously 8 feet below a rather flat hull...this might be fine for offshore racing with $$$ and testosterone in the balance...and a crew on land giving regular satellite weather updates and support...

[Jeff_H]

SoulJour; With all due respect, at least in part, this is a good example of something which I had just been talking about in the full-keel vs fin keel thread. I apologize for the cut and paste comment.

In my mind the problem with discussing this in the abstract, versus analyzing this in the specific, is that for the most part, the majority of fin keel boat which have been built have been aimed at the racing, coastal cruising and value oriented communities. These boats have purposely developed for their use which is clearly different than that of boats intended for dedicated offshore passage-making and cruising. By the same token, a much larger percentage of full keel boats built in recent years were designed with the intent of offshore use.

It is easy to say that a purpose built, offshore cruiser- no matter what its keel type, should have a more comfortable motion, more carrying capacity, and a more seaworthy hull form no matter what its size or displacement than would be expected on a dedicated race boat, racer cruiser, coastal cruiser, or even a boat designed to make occasional offshore passages.

Where these debates go off the rails is that comparasons are often made between purpose built offshore cruisers versus purpose built race boats, racer-cruisers, value oriented family cruisers and coastal cruisers and so on, when each may be well suited and optimized for their secific intended use and so do not represent a fair example for comparason on the issue being debated.

I think that your comment about lead bullet hanging precariosuly 8 feet below the rather flat hull falls in that category. I think that the current trend in race boats and coastal cruisers has moved in a direction which is far less suited to offshore use than I personally would consider ideal. At the time when I wrote the original post of this thread, performance hull forms were more moderate and moved away from high form stability, flat bottomed model to which you refer.

At this point the pendulum has swung wildly in the other direction, and so if one were talking about the current trend in racers, and coastal cruisers you would be very right about their ill-suited nature to distance offshore cruising, as was the case with many of the racer, and coastal cruiser type forms from earlier eras mentioned above.

[SloopJonB]

Personally, I think this "question" was answered decades ago when the Maestro designed the Valiant 40. Shortly afterwards Peterson did his 44 along much the same thinking. Thereafter flowed many boats - the LaFittes, Nordics and so forth, that were, by any measure, offshore boats and were also, by any measure, far better boats than the full keeled half tide rocks that preceded them.

I love the looks of the old boats (pre-Valiant) and generally don't care much for the looks of the current "no-ended" running shoe boats but I don't kid myself that the old full keelers were better in any way but esthetics.

I also like Auburn Boat Tail Speedsters but I can't imagine anyone trying to argue that they are somehow "better" than any contemporary car - other than those same esthetics.

We have learned a few things about design and engineering over the last 1/2 century or so.