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From: Scott Meyer (no email)
Date: Wed Jun 08 2005 - 15:16:18 EDT
At 05:07 PM 6/3/2005 -0400, wrote:
>
>In a message dated 03/06/2005 21:41:11 GMT Daylight Time,
> writes:
>
>My Catalina 25 can get blown over to well past 120 degrees (way past mast in
>the water) and still come back up and its a coastal boat. All my hatches
>lock closed and the companionway boards have barrel bolts. Any blue water
>boat must be ready for a knockdown and full roll-over. Take a cat to 80
>degrees and shes gone forever. They are VERY stable upside down. My wife
>says she'll go to sea in one when they stop making escape hatches in the
>bottom.
Ah, but that 120 degrees is the theoretical limit of stability
calculated based on the hull form and some (usually unrealistic)
set of assumptions about what is stowed where. Only the European
manufacturers are held to somewhat less vague standards when
reporting the point of vanishing stability. EU boats also have to
pass a test in which so much weight held so far from the centerline
is shown to produce so many degrees of heel.
As the CG is usually below the floorboards, everything you
add to a boat (tons and tons for the usual cruiser) makes the
actual stability curve worse. Storing extra fuel and water
on deck in jerry jugs is particularly injurious to the stability
curve.
Also, all that stability curve discussion only applies if all
the hatches, vents, etc. are properly secured. Rarely the case
in the tropics. If your vents or hatches are open then your
angle of vanishing stability is about 75 degrees.
>Interesting thought your mono is self tending it heels over and in extremis
>rounds up into the wind - but heaven help you if you get the same gust when
>your down below in your cat you need to have your sail set for worst case
>scenario on your cat or be on the ball every minute you are out sailing
Assuming the usual short-handed cruising scenario,
you just don't sail a multi as hard as a mono. But that's OK
because you're dealing with a smaller fraction of a much
greater speed potential.
>and you
>cant just run off downwind in your cat as your driving yourself into a
>dangerous dead end
Right. Dump the mainsheet, round up and smoke the main halyard.
Wind does not come out of nowhere. There are mountains, channels,
ominous clouds, whitecaps, weather reports, things like that.
Note that being overpressed downwind in a mono is vastly more dangerous
if it isn't properly closed up. Seems like one or two racing
monos a year sink under those conditions.
>slow down the cat as you stuff the bows into the wave ahead and
>the apparent wind increases and your liable to flip and yes i do fancy a
>cat
>IF and BUT
IF you want to go cruising, you have to prioritize your worries.
In the past three years that I have actively been cruising, I
think that I have heard of no monohulls (cruisers) sinking on a
blue water passage (failing to make port). No multis (cruising multis)
have capsized. Probably 6 or 8 boats have been abandoned in
seaworthy condition only to be found floating after the storm.
Hundreds of boats have dragged anchor. Hundreds have run aground
on well-known reefs named hundreds of years ago by the first
sailor to run aground on them. Statistically, whether your boat
sinks or capsizes is simply not a concern.
-Scott
Scott Meyer mailto: http://www.summ.org/
"Endless Summer" F41 #17 808 756 3959
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