42' and 50' Cruising Yacht Designs

Innovative Wood Hull Editorial

Racing sailboat and racing-cruising sailboat hulls vs. the well designed cruising sailboat hull.

Drawbacks of sailboats over 25 ft designed for cruising and racing and boats designed for racing that have received a coat of anti-fouling paint:

Ø      The surfaces of hull, keel and rudder painted with antifouling paint have lost the finish so essential to the hydrodynamic characteristics of these major components.

Ø      Such boats will not meet the performances of speed as specified in the brochures.

Ø      They cannot sail to weather as intended due to excessive drift.

Ø      Performance will deteriorate even more as the wind speed and thus boat speed go down.

Ø      Maneuverability, especially at low speed in a crowded harbor, is difficult.

Ø      Such boats are like horses sent into a race with a lame leg and are like bucking broncos in the paddock when in crowded spaces.  

Therefore, the qualities for speed and maneuverability have been undone or drastically reduced and very often, the sails and rigging, also, have been neglected or are worn so that these are worthless in competition. In addition, such boats are not as comfortable, roomy and spacious when used for cruising. Pre-owned racing, and hybrid racing boats that have or have had an anti-fouling paint coat are bad deals all around.

Of course, there is an alternative to anti-fouling paint. One can add a good percentage of copper flakes to a quantity of finish quality paint. The theory is that as the paint wears off, new copper flakes will continuously come to the surface inhibiting the growth of weeds and barnacles on the hull. I do not know how the finish of such a paint coat will affect hydro-dynamic action. This stuff is very expensive, yet I will advice people to use it on their boats

Since all racing-type sailboats are designed according to the specifications of a set of rigid racing rules, these boats have lost individuality and in many respects are scaled up or down look-alikes. They lack the variety of design, grace and beauty of sailing yachts of the mid twentieth century.

I feel that yacht clubs should sponsor more cruising type get-togethers to a more distant destination and allow the participating members to set up their own little races. This way the would-be racers can pick boats their own size, with similar encumbrances to speed, etc. There would than be several or many races to the destination, and no matter who wins, all have a great time getting together afterwards in a place off the beaten track.

Large, badly maintained racers and their hybrid cousins are losers in the class of racing sailboats and they are losers in the class of cruising boats. The designers of these hybrid boats have sacrificed many good features of the cruising yacht to meet the rigid requirements demanded of racers. The designers have sacrificed many essential features of true race sailboats for it to be a true competitor. It also places an extra burden on the owner to keep the hull up to racing condition - for what meaning do all the racing features have if the features are not maintained and well-functioning? Race sailors are dealing with speed differentials of .01 to .00001 of a mile per hour. Such minute speed differentials demand the utmost dedication and sacrifice to maintain the highest standards of features and design.

A boat used for world cruising must comfortable to live on, be able to carry much extra weight, must have a relaxed  standard of maintenance, and must be reliable in all weather conditions. A flat-bottomed racing-type hull with an antifouling coat is a liability in almost every condition it finds itself on ocean crossings. Their deeper keels are dangerous in heavy seas, and their flat canoe-type hulls pound onto the seas incessantly, and many have delaminated or have been bashed in or torn apart in the bows sections while making ocean crossings, no matter the medium used for construction.

The owners of boats like these would have been better off if they had purchased a good day-sailboat or a well-designed cruising sailboat with considerable dead rise to their bottoms that allows the boats to glide smoothly back into the water after a wave has raised the bow up. After all, the traditional, and even contemporary, prime-reason for recreational sailboats is to enjoy the wind, weather, company, and one’s skill in handling the boat. It is nice to be a bit faster than a boat on your beam, but it is not essential. If one wants a fast boat one should get a motorboat.

The real let-down in racing is that in each race only one can win, thus it must disappoint everyone else in their investment and expectations. As far as I can discern it, all-out racing is for the immature, rule-craving, ‘masses-man’ as Louis Armstrong put it. Cruising and day-sailing is for the mature, well-adjusted, individual and people sailing with such a skipper will generally enjoy themselves to the hilt.

Those who love race-sailing should do it in dinghies. The investment in lay-out and maintenance in the hobby of racing is then small and the competition there is always fierce.

How serious are owners of non-trailable sailboats with racing features about racing?  Are they aware of what is required to maintain the racing features of their hull, and are they actually doing all they can in meeting these requirements? Do these people know what the penalties are on speed and boat handling if the hulls are not maintained to the specifications required? Does a prospective buyer know the pitfalls of badly maintained racing-type sailboats and what it takes to maintain even a well-preserved racing-type sailboat? Let us look at how most people (driven by a need for frugality) maintain the hulls of their boats.

Non-trailable boats over twenty five feet are generally hauled out once a year and in special events, twice - that is about the limit. If these boats are moored or docked in salt water, they must have a coat of anti-fouling paint that needs to be replaced at least once a year. After a year or so, even with a quality coat of anti-fouling paint, the hull surfaces of these boats will be badly covered with seaweed, moss and barnacles and then they will not move well. The need for a coat of anti-fouling paint is the great draw-back of non trailable ‘racing’ yachts. The principles on which racing hulls rest are utterly violated by applying anti-fouling paint.

Racing hulls have special hydrodynamic design-features that, under perfect conditions, make the hull-keel-rudder combination move through the water in the optimum manner. These features demand that the outside hull surfaces must have a near mirror-finish, and the need for one or more coats of anti-fouling paint for hulls permanently exposed to salt water will defeat almost all the features designed into the racing hull, because these features depend on this near mirror finish smoothness. The roughness of a coat of brush-applied antifouling paint creates eddies, thus drag, and a wake current that is energized by the speed and the roughness of the hull, rudder and keel surfaces. The pressure differentials on each side of the keel is drastically impaired, causing more drift. Racing and maintaining the boat in racing condition is a continuous hassle of hard labor. One is the slave of one’s boat and one can almost be assured that all the efforts will end up in many, many lost races. Had this lover of sailing owned a cruiser, he would have been a lot more on the water sailing and a lot less slaving to keep his hull in prime condition.

The racing keel, a heavily weighted, hydro-dynamically shaped water-foil, when perfectly maintained, causes a low pressure area near the front of the upwind sides of the keel and rudder surfaces and a high pressure area on the leeward side. The combination of these two forces counteract the drift all sailboats have while proceeding under sail. The principle of the keel is identical to that of an airplane’s wings and body. When frost or other debris sticks to the very smooth surfaces of the wings, the wings will not produce lift and the frost-covered body/fuselage will produce excessive drag. In the past several planes, loaded with passengers, have fallen from the sky because the wing surfaces could not produce the needed lift.  This is how critical  very smooth surfaces on wings and hydro-dynamically designed keels and hulls, specially designed for racing  are. Really, any sailboat equipped with a fin keel has the same problem. I believe some of the most severe effects of rough fin keel surfaces are circumvented by increasing the size of the fin keel beyond what is required so that the area of lateral resistance is increased, but that also increases drag.

Then also, most ‘racing’ yachts have bows designed with a16^o angle to the centerline. This causes the water to flow in a laminar fashion along the surfaces of the bow, thus reducing drag (drag is generated along surfaces exposed to water flow). 

Designers know beforehand (from experience) that these features are routinely being destroyed by coats of anti-fouling paint applied by their owners.

The greatest influence of drag and the formation of wave-action by a hull are the speed of the flow of water along the hull, the angle of attack of the bows and the smoothness of the outer hull surfaces. The advantage of having these features are reduced by a rough surface such as antifouling paint gives to a hull surface – the brush stroke patterns left in the paint surface destroy the hydrodynamic action of the hull, keel and rudder designs, causing the hull to be slower, to make it drift more to leeward under sail and to cause unwanted drag. The idea of this optimum angle of attack goes by the way-side anyway, when the boat heels over under sail, because the leeward topside of the hull becomes the bottom surface and that surface begins to resemble the bow portion of a barge. That is why wave g eneration on the leeward side of a boat under sail is much larger than on the windward side. An added consequence of these narrow bows is cramped space in the bows below deck.

Another disadvantage of the racing hull is that it becomes more and more difficult to handle as the speed diminishes - as happens in crowed conditions inside a busy harbor, especially when the wind is up - because the keel and rudder were designed to perform best at hull speed and planing speed. A racing type boat that has an antifouling paint applied to the keel surfaces will perform even worse because the keel has lost most hydro-dynamic action at low speed. The hydrodynamic design of a canoe-hull, keel and rudder combination is determined for an optimum speed - 'planing' or near planing speed. Everything works in harmony for that speed and deteriorates as the speed becomes less than that. Also, the hydrodynamics of the keel and rudder in a well-maintained racing boat helps, in a manner, to slow down the hull, especially in conjunction with a high-aspect-ratio set of sails. The reason for this is that boats with high aspect ratio sails heel over more under the full load of sails and wind. The more the hull heels, the more the action of the keel forces the angle of heel to increase. This is due to the pressure differences on the keel. The low pressure on the windward side forces the keel to the surface and the high pressure on the leeward side has this same effect. The result of the combined forces working on the keel tries to lift the keel to the surface of the water, which is wasted energy that is paid for in speed. This tendency is often counter-acted by the owner having a dozen or so people hiking out on the windward side to force the boat in a more upright position so that the keel again helps in preventing drift and in making it point better into the wind. The extra weight of a dozen people, of course, has its adverse effect on speed as well. In summary, racing boats over thirty feet are for the rich (I can’t see why a rich person would have a boat under 40 feet to begin with). They can afford to have their boats on dry land when not racing and have them prepared and polished before each race and never use them for cruising which, to me, is pointless, because the luxury, pleasure and contentment of sailing are experienced in a cruising sailboat of over forty feet in hull-length.

Many naval-architects, who ought to know better, acquiesce to, or corroborate with their clients demands for cruising sailboats, thirty feet or over, that can be raced. This idea is an oxymoron and moronic. One ends up with a boat that needs extraordinary amounts of maintenance, that cannot ever come near to winning (and is thus not a racer), a boat that is cramped under cruising conditions, that is difficult to handle, and that is uncomfortable while under sail. It has all the draw-backs of poor planning and has nothing or very little to recommend itself.

For the masses of sailboat racing enthusiasts, the small racing sailboats and dinghies are the best choice. These boats are fast, can plane, and can be kept close at hand near the house, polished and maintained at a moment’s notice and their rigging is easily tuned for each racing event and under any weather condition. Racing dinghies come in sizes anywhere between 12 feet to 25 feet in length.

That leaves the boats in size of, say, 27 feet and 35 feet in a void that nobody in his right mind would want for any other reason than a day-sailor which, of course, is wonderful but this can also be done in a full-fledged cruiser. Cruising boats can also hold more people more comfortably for day-sailing and party-events.

The hardy and tough cruising soul of less endowed means can survive in boats between 33 feet and forty feet. They cruise in hordes all over the world, but suffer the cramped quarters of their floating abodes and very often wished, fervently, they had a wider-beamed boat over forty feet in length.

Having come to the conclusion that cruising sailboats ought to be over forty feet to be comfortable, I looked over the sailboats designs of the twentieth century and have become fascinated again by these designs and decided to recreate the style and grace of these yachts.

I  drew the lines of this hull slightly over forty two feet in length, increased the beam of the earlier designs a bit and placed it farther towards the stern. I kept the graceful forms while also keeping to the established design principles of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries that have been developed through patient research and that make sense to incorporate in any sailboat. I, then, added over a half-dozen other features, no one else thought of or did not incorporate in sailboat designs to culminate in the best hull design for its class and length – The Lorac Class Hull. The Lorac hull was designed on a CAD (computer) program and can thus easily be scaled to any proportions up to 50, or so, feet. I have done so by scaling a second hull to 50.5 feet in length and have reduced the beam somewhat, proportionally, because the greater length affords the hull better stability. The hull comes with a standard full keel or with a radically new keel that makes the boat a cinch to sail and makes it point much steeper into the wind, anywhere - in any condition or weather. It has an easily-handled liquid balance system that generally, and especially under cruising conditions, will keep the boat in a much more upright position. It has a system to reduce wetted surface and thus help the boat maintain hull speed in light winds. It has a semi-flush deck that allows people slightly over six feet in height to walk through-out the hull; that also gives an enormous deck space that is even made larger by adding a grated metal deck over the bowsprit in the ketch version, and with an option to have a flying stern seat for three, that brings the over-all usable deck space for the 42 feet hull to about 47 feet and for the 50.5 feet hull to 57 feet. The entire keel area is protected by the lead ballast from accidental collisions with under-water objects.

I strongly feel that anyone who has a family with a brood of children between 8 and 25 years in age, who has the means to purchase one of this class of sail yachts, whether he or she be a sailor or not, ought to do so, rigged as a ketch preferably. The entire experience of sailing, with its duties towards each other and the boat, explorations by dinghy in strange harbors or at anchor, fishing, swimming, navigation and allied activities such as the maintenance of the boat itself, is instructive, induces children and adults alike to become closer to each other and more responsible; it trains children in rational thought and actions, make them alert and gives them an all-round sense of independent, alert, coordination of mind and body and a sense of duty that will be theirs for the duration of life. It is a marvelous way to keep the family unit together after the children have left the home, it is a great hobby and a means of travel for the entire family and is an all-round satisfying experience for all, especially because the children can invite their friends along.

 There simply cannot be any competition in preference between motorboats and cruising sailing yachts. The movement of cruising sail boats with dead rise in the hull is smooth as silk compared to the shocking bumpity-bump ride of a fast motorboat – even on inland waters. Women are extremely sensitive toward the shocking, bumpy, rides of fast motorboats. Considering the cost, and the need to preserve fossil fuels nationally, there can be no comparison either. The only boat that makes sense in larger sizes is the cruising sailing yacht and if it is not graceful and comfortable – if it is not a Lorac it simply has not met its duties and its classification as yacht.

No kind of bliss comes even close to owning a well-designed cruising sailboat.

Page revision date: 08 28 2010