Desirable and Undesirable Characteristics of Offshore Yachts
- Thread starter Jud - s/v Sputnik
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I talked to Pete about that, he said many problems with the boat, but the rig worked very well. Their carbon work was suspect, the hull broke off and the masts were quite heavy.
The Freedoms built with a Goetz mast are also suspect. I had them quote on my masts and it was quite clear they did not know what they were doing with these. Built in two half shells and glued together, and looking at the stresses as you would a marconi rig. Not remotely the same.
The Wylie Wildcat also broke it's mast on the way to Hawaii, a Composite Engineering spar. It was analyzed as an incomplete infusion issue (I understand the entire boat was eventually scrapped due to infusion issues). CE said it was the only mast they have ever had fail. I believe they made all of the Nonsuch and Wyliecat carbon masts, that is the only failure I know of.
Rasputin22
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I sailed on the PROJECT AMAZON and it was the scariest boat I have ever sailed on. The owner was even scarier...
estarzinger
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tell us more. I always thought it was a fascinating design. What was scary - poor directional control, or . . .
Did you ever talk with randy repass, after he was done with his boat? I talked with him during one of his frustrating moments and he was just all focused on the negatives and problems, and I was a bit curious with some perspective what he thought about it, and in particular the rig.
Jud - s/v Sputnik
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Good god - I never knew there was another, previous boat named Tin Can!! (Speaking of desirable and undesirable characteristics of offshore yachts...do you recall the other Tin Can, of 2008? Hard for me to believe that there was previous boat with that terrible name (in order to try to keep up with this discussion, I googled Tin Can, the one you mentioned...and suddenly remembered David Vann’s ill-fated craft - which is not really worth mentioning in this erudite thread, but it does present a sort of an extreme case study, perhaps
)
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Rasputin22
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The rollers for what passed as a gooseneck made me think of all the stories from down in the Caribbean (where I joined the boat) about slave kids getting sucked into the sugar cane mill and having arms and legs ripped off.
Directional control when we ran over the local fisherman who was hired to tow the boat out to the start line for the St Thomas Rolex Regatta. Actually it was a near miss on the mornings of the regatta and the AMAZON skipper and the towboat driver both threw their end of the towline into the water at the same time and lost an expensive halyard. The boat was all but unmanueverable under power and not much better until the sails were raised and at least 10knots of boatspeed was attained. We were still under tow when the mainsail battens finally popped onto the right side for the tack we were on and the boat accelerated to about 17 knots immediately and the tow boat guy refused to let his end go (Loose it up Mon!) from his earlier experience and we sailed right by him. He had been at a slow idle while we were raising sails and when he gunned his outboard it loaded up and stalled and the towline to his stern snapped taught and his heavy plywood Island Deep V boat swapped ends and looked like a fishing lure 'Jitterbug' flooding over the transom as the skipper climbed up on his foredeck. Good thing because the towline snapped and would have chopped him in two if he had still been at the helm. Air in the forepeak of the fishing boat kept it nearly afloat and is seemed to take forever before we could round up and tack back to him to try and lend assistance. We could not control our speed or approach and nearly ran him down a second time and he was screaming at us to just 'Get de hell outta here Mon!!!'
We sailed past him to windward and tried another pass with a big bearaway to come up head to wind and that was even scarier (for all of us) and the last I saw of the fisherman he dove into the water thinking that we were going to finish him and his boat off once and for all. We sort of heaved to when we got the AMAZON slowed down and tried to get him to swim to us but his fellow Redhook fishermen brethren had seen the whole thing and came to his rescue.
I never did get used to seeing those tapered mast wing tips from waving in huge circles up above the boat and can see how deeply reefed the headboard could cause a mast to fail. The whole mast length seemed to need the compression of the battens and roach to keep the mast stable from pumping even in moderate seas.
Down below on the boat was even scarier and stinky than just about any vessel I have ever been of. I asked the skipper where the head was and he just opened a lewmar hatch to the after end of the centerboard trunk that was sort of a cloaca/seachest into which the diesel exhaust, galley scraps, and hydraulic fluid were churning. I must have looked puzzled and was told to just sit on the sill of the hatch and add my effluent to the sickening brew!
I could go on...
Directional control when we ran over the local fisherman who was hired to tow the boat out to the start line for the St Thomas Rolex Regatta. Actually it was a near miss on the mornings of the regatta and the AMAZON skipper and the towboat driver both threw their end of the towline into the water at the same time and lost an expensive halyard. The boat was all but unmanueverable under power and not much better until the sails were raised and at least 10knots of boatspeed was attained. We were still under tow when the mainsail battens finally popped onto the right side for the tack we were on and the boat accelerated to about 17 knots immediately and the tow boat guy refused to let his end go (Loose it up Mon!) from his earlier experience and we sailed right by him. He had been at a slow idle while we were raising sails and when he gunned his outboard it loaded up and stalled and the towline to his stern snapped taught and his heavy plywood Island Deep V boat swapped ends and looked like a fishing lure 'Jitterbug' flooding over the transom as the skipper climbed up on his foredeck. Good thing because the towline snapped and would have chopped him in two if he had still been at the helm. Air in the forepeak of the fishing boat kept it nearly afloat and is seemed to take forever before we could round up and tack back to him to try and lend assistance. We could not control our speed or approach and nearly ran him down a second time and he was screaming at us to just 'Get de hell outta here Mon!!!'
We sailed past him to windward and tried another pass with a big bearaway to come up head to wind and that was even scarier (for all of us) and the last I saw of the fisherman he dove into the water thinking that we were going to finish him and his boat off once and for all. We sort of heaved to when we got the AMAZON slowed down and tried to get him to swim to us but his fellow Redhook fishermen brethren had seen the whole thing and came to his rescue.
I never did get used to seeing those tapered mast wing tips from waving in huge circles up above the boat and can see how deeply reefed the headboard could cause a mast to fail. The whole mast length seemed to need the compression of the battens and roach to keep the mast stable from pumping even in moderate seas.
Down below on the boat was even scarier and stinky than just about any vessel I have ever been of. I asked the skipper where the head was and he just opened a lewmar hatch to the after end of the centerboard trunk that was sort of a cloaca/seachest into which the diesel exhaust, galley scraps, and hydraulic fluid were churning. I must have looked puzzled and was told to just sit on the sill of the hatch and add my effluent to the sickening brew!
I could go on...
Rasputin22
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estarzinger
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lol, and Sponberg makes the boat sound so sophisticated and elegant (although he does get into there having been no efforts at weight control in the initial construction).
So if one essentially wanted to design that boat again today, properly, are there obvious first choice people to hire as the designer and engineers?
AH, I had been trying to remember Frog Kiss - had some dinners with Mouligne way back when . . . he had skills and I attributed his results more to that than the boat, although I also wondered if he had a sweet-heart rating.
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estarzinger
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me?
IDK - I'm pretty honest with myself about this. I want to create every chance for something nice and fun to happen, but there is a very real possibility that it may not. It is not like when I was younger and I just simply force it to happen no matter what I had to give up.
I have some more few years looking after my wife's parents which will prevent any long voyages during that time frame. But I have been/am looking for something that tickles me just right to start design and building - If I started right now and did it all properly it might be ready to launch just about by the time I am 'free' again. As I mentioned somewhere here recently, I have 6 'concepts' I have investigated (and I have written a few small checks just to look into things), but none of them so far have yet hit the funny bone hard enough to trigger a 'commitment event'.
Elegua
Generalissimo
Out of curiosity, what are those six concepts?
Panoramix
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It is a trade off, that's sure but as you have to increase the size/strength of the mast to compensate they become bullet proof to forces dues to a "non standard use" such as pitchpoling!
Also an unstayed rig is a pure cantilever (no compression) thus needs to be solid at its base but can be slender toward the top whereas a mast is a strut (lot of compression + some bending) so needs to be solid all the way up and won't resist well to bending forces from the water when the boat is inverted (most big marconi boats loose their mast during a rollover).
Never talked to him post ownership. I've sailed on the sistership (just a daysail) and it seemed OK in a Wylie sort of way. It has a very big main. What specifics did he mention?
That boat is sitting on the hard in the Napa Marina, about 5 miles from me, been there for a number of years. Still looks a little scary.Good god - I never knew there was another, previous boat named Tin Can!! (Speaking of desirable and undesirable characteristics of offshore yachts...do you recall the other Tin Can, of 2008? Hard for me to believe that there was previous boat with that terrible name (in order to try to keep up with this discussion, I googled Tin Can, the one you mentioned...and suddenly remembered David Vann’s ill-fated craft - which is not really worth mentioning in this erudite thread, but it does present a sort of an extreme case study, perhaps
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estarzinger
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In a few words . . . (but there is a ton of thought/concept behind the few words, some of them have a relatively narrow range of size/design possibilities because of mission constraints while others have quite a wide size and other range of possibilities)
gentleman's yacht
highish latitude cruising boat
Open sort
trans ocean fast tri
polar trawler
coastal/intercoastal power boat
I can envision fun and useful actual lifestyles in any of those categories.
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estarzinger
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it was unfortunately a long time ago and I honestly did not focus much on it as we had other things on our plate at the time, and most of it was the sort of 'shitty marine product' failures you and I would just expect, but which he did not. There was some rig discussion but I don't remember much details, just that it was big and more difficult to handle than he had expected. All more about implementation details than design concepts I think, except I always thought he would have been better off in something just smaller.
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The masts pumping indicates they were no where near stiff enough, or perhaps too heavy, or both. In certain conditions a Nonsuch aluminum mast will pump with no sail on, you are told to tighten the sheet and topping lift which flexes it back. The carbon ones do not do that. The masts on Anomaly are on the stiff side per my request (I don't believe much in the "flexibility releases the leech" school of trim) and pumping has never been an issue. The sails on Project Amazon are only a little bigger than my main.
I can understand that. I think the main on that boat is about 1500 sq ft. Mine is 960 and as each year goes by I regret a little more it being that big. Easy to handle if everything is working properly, but not if things go sideways, also just getting it on and off the boat is 1/2 day hard labor. At my advanced age I think 600 sq ft is a good sail size.
Other than the hydraulics leaking, I've really only had one rig failure, one of the battens punched through the 2" spectra webbing. Biggest battens are 22 mm diameter solid pultruded rod, 24' long. Load on them seems to be pretty high.
Elegua
Generalissimo
All interesting except maybe the trawler. A trawler might be the last boat I own. The trans-ocean fast tri sounds the most interesting to me. A good friend showed me that if you get a lobster roll at Day's Lobster in Yarmouth you can peek in to the back of Greene Marine... ground zero for that kind of thing.
Well, and then I think of how much I like windsurfing and scuba and start thinking about a modern cargo schooner.
estarzinger
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The tri would unfortunately be the very hardest sale of the 6 to the SO. She does not have many multihull hours, but what she has leads her to believe she will not like the motion.
I had some good discussions with Irons about a design. I dont think it would be hard to hit it about right for me - sort of already a solved problem which I would just dumb down a tiny bit. Would be a fun challenge.
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Elegua
Generalissimo
Trimarans have felt to me much more like a light mono in motion, though my understanding is very limited as I've only owned dinghy sized ones and sailed on 30 something foot trimarans and never offshore. It seemed to me more comfortable than the Open sort of thing. So something like a de-tuned Mod70 or something closer to Rapido? What was Irens thoughts about a cruising tri?
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