New Ariel Speed Record !!!

[frank durant]

11.4knots SOG !!!!! strictly under sail !!!! Beat that all you west coasters/racy types. Varified by chart plotter on a very windy , very high wave ,broad reach coming up from out front of Bimini towards West Palm beach. Man these ole gals go on a reach !! It was one of those majic days with a double reefed main/jib combo and both the wind and waves on the border line of scary.Did 27NM in 3hr 10 min with the peak surge being 11.4 !! Just for the record you west coast guys.....the 4 1/2 knot gulf stream push had NOTHING to do with it...honest. :p I'll be off for quite a while more..anchored out the majority of the time and most marinas when we do stop don't have wireless.

[mbd]

Good to hear from you Frank! Break out the water skis!

Man am I jealous. It was 4 degrees here this morning and blowin hard. The last thing I wanted to do was get out and sail. You'll have to let us all know how your mods have worked out: what were you especially pleased with and what were you not so pleased with. Nice to hear from someone out there doing it! Have a great cruise.

[frank durant]

I'm typing (pecking actually) this sitting at the dockmasters outside bench in Port lucaya Grand Bahama Island. Revival is resting at her slip after a 20hr,84knm crossing from Ft Lauderdale.An Amazing night at sea.First time I've had illuminated phospherous...kinda like flouresant green glowing sparkles every time the bow slashed. At about 1-30am,I watched the most beautiful HUGE red moon raise up from the east...I was literally heading right into it.I sat on the forward cabin roof watching this for hours...autohelms are amazing things.Clean-up and relax day today.Judy flys in tomorrow,then off exploring the Abacos again.

[BJOAS]

Jealous doen't begin to describe how I feel right now.

[Lucky Dawg]

11.4knots SOG !!!!! strictly under sail !!!! Beat that all you west coasters/racy types. Varified by chart plotter on a very windy , very high wave ,broad reach

I need mathmatic or physics assistance...

Can someone help me understand the relationship between theoretical hull speed and the actual sailing capacities of these yachts. We did 7.2 the other day and I thought I was getting a bad reading or something - or just one FINE sailor. Frank put my speed to shame! I understand the theoretical hull speed mathmatical calculation, but why are these boats apparently regularly far surpassing that?

[frank durant]

OK OK.....please re-read my post and you'll see "the 4 1/2 knot gulf stream push had NOTHING to do with it...honest".......;) and if ya believe that...well......:p (the speed over ground was accurate,but I was near the appex of the gulf stream sailing N with it) Having said that...these designs DO surpass hull speed often, paticularly on any kind of reach. Remember that waterline increases as the boat heels.

[ebb]

No JEALOUSEY, yeah, jist a lousey sinking feeling of will I ever make it!
Well of course I will! the wind in my thinning scalp, the sand between my toes, the frosty at a beachfront cafe.......

But we do have this thread here that came along with the past intact!! That's cool and breezey.

As to exceeding the numbers for the A/C hull....
Let me just say this: I've seen 100s of hulls on the hard at the yard where I slave dilligently on Little Gull. Numbers be damned: the Ariel hull I'm working on is THE MOST PERFECT KEEL-HULL SHAPE ever conceived. From entry to bustle it is clean and true. The rudder at the end on the keel must make the least amount of fuss thru the water than any other.

The rounded angles of the hull at the forward waterline, the break in the blige amidship, the tuck and rise of the hull leaving the waterline at the stern. Without flaw. The sculpting of the ballast keel without any bulbous. As fine a stem entry sweeping into the bottom of the keel as can be imagined. I cannot see how any better, easier, shaping of this deep underbody that becomes the rudder can be done. It's all curves with a single purpose of slipping 5500 pounds thru the water. No bumps, no flats , no wingy-thingys.

The underbody shape of the Ariel is without flaw. This is the essence of the word finesse. I haven't seen it better anywhere. Not even the folkboat. Not talking engineering, talking bout that warm feeling you get when something LOOKS right.;) You mean
that gorgeous babe will let me touch her!!!

I'd guess much less fuss than a fin keel and rudder on a skeg or stand alone. When this kind of underbody turns even slightly, eddys are made, and while by definition you get lift you also get the water being glued to the boat on the other side. How much wetted surface there is in relation to weight is important in the dinghy/finkeel shape underbodies currently in fashion.

But I think the rounded, natural, fish like underbody on 338 is as near to perfection any boat of this type has even been conceived. Carl Alberg, who never let anyone mess with his lines, and I guess, with the many boats of all sizes he drew, certainly experienced a sort of swedish satori which produced the perfectly proportioned waterline and underbody on the Ariel/Commander. How often did he repeat it? Every enlightened line came together to blossom as the true nature of sailboat.

Alberg's own sailboat was C-302. Isn't that so? WHY? Did he know something we don't know?

It's beyond the measly numbers and the comfortable BS of yacht design formulas. Because that garbage can't explain why the Ariel goes faster or looks better than it's supposed to. Can they? Certain socalled inanimate objects sometimes make it over to the magical side. The Ensign? The Alberg 30? The Triton? NOPE, only the Ariel/Commander made it to this other side.

[Lucky Dawg]

Ebb, we were writing at the same time!

this is re Frank's response.
----

Right, I did read that! I'm sure you're glad you weren't going against it.

Nonetheless, 5.76 knots isn't really an accurate estimate of our hull speed. I doubt that my 7.2 is top speed. Likely "theoretical" hull speed doesn't calculate actual sailing but just the mass of a boat at rest at the waterline/sail area/water density/etc - and therefore everyone's hull speed is simply a comparable average that isn't exactly true to the real sailing of each boat.

So the question "what will she do?" stands...

I know I sound hung up on this heel and speed thing :rolleyes: but I am really just curious

[frank durant]

Please...argue with Ebb..get another responce.I really like reading his 'poetry'. He writes to the extreme of his detailed boat restoration. These craft ARE beautiful..they DO sail extremely well...their motion IS great....but Ebb puts the same facts down SOOooo much better :)

[commanderpete]

The theory is that a displacement boat can't get over the bow wave it creates going through the water and get up on plane

[Lucky Dawg]

Please...argue with Ebb..:)


Au contraire! Not arguing by any stretch - throwing my ignorance at the mercy of the well informed.

[commanderpete]

Heeling the boat gives it a longer waterline and spreads the distance between the bow and stern wave, allowing greater speed

So, to answer your question, I have no idea.

I just like to look at pictures

[Lucky Dawg]

C'Pete - now that's a convenient angle! You can wash your hands in the drink without leaving the comfort of your tiller-side seat.

Alas, these are likely just the idle questions of a single hander... Cripes I'm out there and the ol' noggin has to occupy itself with something!

The storm clouds have given up for the afternoon - I'm going sailing :D

[frank durant]

....."Au contraire! Not arguing by any stretch - throwing my ingorance at the mercy of the well informed.".....I was just hoping to get another poetic responce out of him ;)
__________________

[epiphany]

What Ebb said about the lines of A/C's - exactly.

I've looked very closely at many other Albergs (while trying hard not to be biased, even!) - Triton, B27, A30 and 35, Cape Dorys - and I really do think that the lines on the A/C's are just a smidgen more 'perfect' than any other that Carl drew. Very very subtle differences, but they are there.

Of course, any of the above vessels far and away have more beautiful lines than just about any other boat, especially production boats. I will gladly admit to an Alberg bias. :D

[Lucky Dawg]

Let alone the visible lines in the water - with fresh bottom paint, the lines of her hull hanging... expectantly... from the travelift... I couldn't agree more. Standing there live, it kind of took my breath away.

Not sure who belongs to #274 (second pic below), but this is one of my favorites (What a shot!!) from my enormous "commanderpix" desktop-slideshow file - I just like to look at 'em! :rolleyes:

[ebb]

Holy Rolly,
Look how lightly that Dawg sit in the straps!
Look at that shot of her SAILING!
There really is something extraordinary about that hull in the water!
Gorgeous boat, gorgeous shot.



HOWEVER, There is the bow. And LOOK at Dawg - ain't that bow....PERFECT? PERFECT.

However, I'm compleatly objective about sterns.

But for me a good quick indicator of any boat and its designer is the transom.
Here you have it or you don't. Put an Ariel and Commander next to a Triton and a Cape Dory.
There really is NO COMPARISON. The Ariel transom has golden proportion to it. The quarters are fuller than the Triton. And the symetric curves of the quarters, for lack of vocabulary, sexy. The Triton's ends lean and sinuey on the quarters. The C.D.'s is plain and stodgy. The point is, though: the Ariel transom, without compare, is a near perfect conception. Perhaps a little more tumblehome....no! really doesn't need anything to make it more pleasing than it exists!

[Lucky Dawg]

And LOOK at Dawg - ain't that bow....PERFECT? PERFECT.

Lucky Dawg can't take credit for the bow pic - that's hull #274 "Das Boot" out of Chicago - don't know who she belongs to, but I want to borrow your photographer.

[Jack]

I need mathmatic or physics assistance...

Can someone help me understand the relationship between theoretical hull speed and the actual sailing capacities of these yachts. We did 7.2 the other day and I thought I was getting a bad reading or something - or just one FINE sailor. Frank put my speed to shame! I understand the theoretical hull speed mathmatical calculation, but why are these boats apparently regularly far surpassing that?

The formula for theoretical hull speed (ths) is:

ths = SQRT(LWL) x 1.34

Therefore as the boat heels over, the LWL increases and therefore ths increses as well.

And just for the record, I am not a math major (far from it), but I found a great pearson website that had that, and other formulas, on it. Here (http://pearsoninfo.net/info/pearsons.htm) it is.

Jack

[frank durant]

Jack...now, heel the boat over and increase the length of the waterline(and speed) in the 4+knot gulf stream and she'll really fly :D

[Jack]

Frank... you are lucky, I have only ever had to race against the stream. :rolleyes:

[ebb]

Thanks Jack for the lead to those Pearson numbers.
The number of times Bill Shaw's name is on that list shows us that Alberg's designs were the transitional datum for boats changing from wood to frp. The Ariel could have been designed for wood but while the topsides might remain the same (except for that amazing eliptical cabin front), the underbody would have had to have much less sculpting than what we have in the Ariel. Alberg designed a beautyful hybrid shape for the in-the-water part of the Ariel that may not have been surpassed by anyone since.

But Alberg's easy driven slack bilge designs were over taken by the Shaw wider beam, harder bilge, fin keel, spade rudder designs. The engineers and the techs stepped in to make lighter less wetted surface structures suited to glass and oweing little to past wood boats except that their impetus obviously came from rowing dinghies.
If you could make the keel and rudder more pliable and bendable you'd maybe get more speed, like whale shark and dolphin tails. I feel that the hard planes of modern sail dinghys actually limit speed by creating eddies. Of course we now have new generation sleds that are not really boats, but water-surface speed machines. Surfboats.

I wouldn't know, but has anyone read of a Bill Shaw sailboat exceeding its W/L rating? Well, surfing a swell, maybe.

I don't know how it goes, but engineered shapes are linear shapes to me, boxes with curves. Now if you took an ideal marine speed shape like a great white and translated that to a hull, you might have something. Might have something that relates to what Alberg came up with. Alberg's form is the SOFTEST hard form imaginable. Know what I mean? I bet that a bendy rudder/tail on an Ariel would make them go even faster. A little bendy, OK?

A good comparison of Alberg and Shaw is the Pearson Ariel and the Pearson 26. Alberg was the transitional designer - he put Pearson in the frp boat business. Shaw designed marketable leisure products for them. Not knocking it, there just is no accounting for taste.
Alberg never forgot that a boat should look like a boat.

There is a story of a transAtlantic race in which an Alberg 35 in a raging storm ended up taking all its sails off. While other boats freaked and struggled and broke things, the crew on the Alberg 35 went below and played cards while the boat lay a-hull.

You've seen this picture. A mighty storm, the whole world's coming loose, it's all gone to hell... but there's a gull bobbing UP and DOWN in the waves, waiting, maybe a bent feather, no problem.

Is the word Sea-kindly?

[Jack]

Ebb, I agree with you... in fact I think a few modern designers agree with you as well. I just went to the Newport boat show and a couple of the "new" designs look very Alberg-ish. Soft gradual curves, few to no hard edges. The biggest difference is their use of a fin keel and spade rudder.

I asked a few of the dealers about the benefits of their "new" design. I followed up their long winded answers by asking them if they felt their boat were very similar to classic Alberg designs. All I got were confused looks and a few stammers.

[Stephan]

Das Boot is still alive and well - I'm glad to hear you like that picture of her last year. When we get waves in Chicago, she pitches excitedly, spraying crew plentiful at times. It's part of the fun.

You lucky people in the Bay area - your season never ends. We have to start worrying about winter storage here...

[frank durant]

Ebb...that "storm" in the story you mentioned..."There is a story of a transAtlantic race in which an Alberg 35 in a raging storm ended up taking all its sails off. While other boats freaked and struggled and broke things, the crew on the Alberg 35 went below and played cards while the boat lay a-hull."....was the same storm that killed several sailors and sank several boats...in the infamous 'fastnet' race !! They simply waited it out and sailed on...unaware of what happened to others.

[frank durant]

Ebb...ya gotta love/respect the guy! Alberg was a stubborn man of great pride and morals. This taken off an Alberg site speaking on design......... ."Carl's own assessment agrees:

"Contrasted to the modern IOR boats where you have six gorillas sitting on the weather rail with their feet hanging outside trying to keep the boat upright, my boats are strictly family-cruising boats. In all my designs I go for comfortable accomodations and a boat you can sail upright without scaring the life out of your family or friends. I gave them a good long keel, plenty of displacement and beam, and a fair amount of sail area so they can move."
In 1979, while those modern boats were capsizing and sinking, an Alberg 35 on it's way to England comfortably lay a-hull.

"It was really blowing and though they shortened sails and did everything else they could in order to keep going, they eventually took everything off, went below, battened down the hatches and just ate, drank and played cards. When it had blown over they hoisted sail and continued to England, where they were told they had just sailed through the same gale that had taken 16 lives in the Fastnet race. They had ridden out the storm by just sitting in the cabin while everyone else was capsizing."

"There are still some designers around who whare my ideas about glass boat design. Everyone else is trying to conform to the new rules. My boats are more designed to follow the waves and stay relatively dry and stable."
Carl passed away on August 31, 1986 at his home in Marblehead Massachusetts. His 56 designs resulted in over 10,000 boats.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

[Stephan]

Is this Alberg designs Carl is talking about? I mean, I dearly love them, including my Commander, but I would not consider them 'beamy'. We don't sport a 'full keel' either, since the whole forefoot is cut away and the rudder post comes forward a long way, too. And last not least, our boats are designed to heel quickly in even moderate weather - scaring my friends more than most other boats and making the mixing of drinks below a balancing act!
Before you guys think I'm a traitor, please let me repeat how much I like the design for elegance and seaworthiness. Those advantages bring disadvantages, though, which makes me, for example, consider even a large Alberg 35 or Alberg 37 not perfect for long-time cruising...

[bill@ariel231]

Yup, that's Alberg's quote regarding his fiberglass boat designs (moderate beam & full keel with cutaway forefoot). Remember this was in the context of the 1979 Fastnet disaster where early to mid generation IOR boats with poor righting moments and were not up to the weather encountered on the race..23 of the 306 yachts taking part were sunk or disabled due to high winds and "mountainous seas". Something like 15 fatalities occured. This event lead to a rethinking of the stability requirements and safety gear required or offshore racing. I've sailed and broached in later generation IOR boats that learned from this race and some of the larger capedorys that share our hullform. Both types can be fairly stable and capable of recovering on their own if the designer had stability in mind from the beginning. That said, there is weather out there that will crush any sailboat.

There are just a couple boats I'd trade up to: CapeDory 33, Hinckley Pilot lead the full keel list. First Generation Swan 37 and if money were no object, the new NYYC Club Swan 42 lead the fin keel list.

[Stephan]

Yeah Bill,

I read John Rousmaniere's book "Fastnet Force 10" about this- a great read.
You quote "moderate beam" which sounds more like it than Frank's quote "plenty ** beam". I guess the boats in 1979 were so extreme that Carl's designs were comparatively beamy, and even a half WL length keel is certainly different from a short, deep fin.
I'm regularly racing on an Alberg 30, and we DO need the rail meat to stop from heeling excessively. I understand that eventually she stiffens and has tremendous safety by guaranteeing to right herself if capsized easier than beamier, lighter boats. However, to go on long trips with a constant heel of 20-25 degrees gets old fast, at least for me! It's great fun to dip the rail, granted, but it interferes with food and drink prep!
I myself was dead set on buying a larger Alberg 35 or 37 eventually for long distance cruising, but after reading a lot of posts on Sailnet I developed some doubts. There's even complaining about the motion comfort of those boats being rather poor on those forums. Jeff H is one of the most articulate of the critics there.

[bill@ariel231]

I understand the Alberg 30 is more tender than other Alberg models. from what i've read, the boat was designed for lead ballast but the builder chose iron for cost. I had a lot of time on a Cape Dory 33 and loved to to death. the only thing i wished it had was a better traveller system. The other boat I've spent time racing is an old Frers 40. Both boats tend to drive with the rail down in 25+ knots of wind. The Cape Dory was the quieter of the two driving into a sea. The Frers and most other canoe body boats i've driven tend to pound going to windward in a sea. Looks like we get to choose between sea kindliness (with a predictable and constant heel) vs. pounding and big shock loads. either way the mixed drinks will get spilled.

[Stephan]

Cape Dory 33? Good advice - I just checked a few of them on Yachtworld. They do look nice, you are right! Unmistakable Alberg designs. Not exactly cheap, but maybe worth it if they are strong and livable.

The traveller in the companionway sucks, indeed. Maybe it can be moved back into the center of the cockpit?

Anybody else here who has experience sailing on those, especially cruising?

[bill@ariel231]

The early CD 33's had the traveler on the bridge deck (I liked that location, it was the traveler hardware that was sub-standard). later models moved the traveler to the coach roof. My gripe with the coach roof placement is the traveler then needs a winch and the curved shape made sheeting to windward really tough, but there i go again, forgetting it is a cruising boat.:D

[Bill]

I believe it's been said that "gentlemen don't sail to weather . . ":p

[Scott Galloway]

If you look at the performance indicators for Peason built boats, the Ariel has a whopping 43% ballast to displacement ratio. This compares favorably to the Triton with 45% but somewhat higher than the 37% for the 30foot Shaw designed full keel Pearson Coaster. I don't have the ballast to weight for the Alberg 30.

Similarly the Displacement to Length ratios are:

Ariel: 409
Triton: 415
Coaster: 334
The Alberg 30 clocks in at: 395
The Coaster has a longer LWL than the Alberg 30. (23.53 ft. compared to 21.67 ft.)The Coaster has a greater displacement than the Alberg 30 (9776 lb. to 9,000 lb)

Also interesting - the Capsize Screening Formulas results are:

Ariel: 178
Triton: 165
Coaster: 176
The Alberg 30 clocks in at: 168

It is very interesting to compare the performance indicators for the above designs to Pearson's later boats.

And what's wrong with sailing around at 30+ degrees of heel with all the sails up in 20 knots of wind? The Ariel handles it well, goes to weather at greater that hull speed in such conditions, and doesn't seem to mind having the rail down, and will sail that way for hours with self steering gears, which leaves the single handed skipper free to make lunch. Now I am probably not going to cook a pot of beans at that angle of heel, but then again, we don't have much of a galley in the first place, do we?

I am still looking for an old seaswing stove that will run on Sterno. Anybody have one for sale?

[ebb]

Scott,
Nice proportions to the Coaster. You can see the forefoot is being radically carved away - toward the future. Could say the Ariel, which has the front cut away also, has it done in a much softer way. It is in the "S" curve that beauty lives! Looking at the more shallow draft Wanderer the cutaway seems not as radical, more like the A/C.

What I call lines are hard to locate for these boats. Even an amatuer like me can compare boats with them. The differences are small, yet some boats have it and some don't. It would take a practiced eye to see the differences using only lines drawings. Certainly these gentleman designed very similar boats.

I have wished at times that the Ariel was a 30 footer (we'd have a true galley AND a place for the head!) A 30' Ariel would probably have a slightly wider beam than the Alberg 30, or the Coaster/Wanderer. When I win the lottery I'll commission a full scale-up to 30/32' of the Ariel hull and deck. Same lines. And I'd put back the curvey sheer Alberg had in those lines!!! And she'd be rigged as a cutter.

The Ariel, once called a "Midget Ocean Racer" doesn't have a category for company, so it always seems to find itself with longer and heavier boats. It doesn't fit in the 'pocket cruiser' group. How about Ariel as a POUCH CRUISER?

The 'capsize screening' formula seems similar between the boats you mention.
The numbers are three digit, so they relate somewhat, as the spread is small. If the capsize screen numbers were from 1 to 10, say, I would be more impressed with them.

By the way, in examining the lines for Alberg's design #33, (Pg 144 in the Ariel/Commander Manual) Alberg, or perhaps a later draftsman, has notated under the bow:
LOA 25'7"
LWL 18'6"
BEAM 8'0"
DRAFT 3'8"
D/L = 354 (Did we catch the Great Draughtsman with a little too much Aquavit?)
__________________________________________________ ______________________________________________
Capsize Screening Formula
According to Ted Brewer the CSF is "determined by dividing the maximum beam by the cube root of the displacement in cubic feet."
"The boat is acceptable if the result is 2.0 or less, but of course, the lower the better. For example, a 12 meter yacht of 60,000 libs displacement and 12 foot beam will have a CSF number of 1.23, so would be considered very safe from capsize. A contempory light displacement yacht, such as a Beneteau 311 (7716lbs, 10'7" beam) has a CSF number of 2.14. Based on the formula, while a fine coastal cruiser, such a yacht may not be the best choice for ocean passages." Ted Brewer
__________________________________________________ ______________________________________________
Let's put this into the formula.
Let's agree that the displacement of the Ariel is 5200#.
1 cubic foot of saltwater = 64#.
5200# divided by 64# = 81.26 cubic feet.
The cube root of 81.26 = 4.33137.(Thanks: google!)
8 (the maximum beam of the Ariel in feet) divided by 4.33137 =

1.85.

Don't forget to bring a deck of playing cards!:rolleyes:
(by the way if we were grossly overloaded at 6000# our CSF would be even better at 1.76. When does 'vanishing stability' come into play?)

[Scott Galloway]

Dear Ebb,

These performance indicators are tricky beasts, and the results that you get depend on the numbers that you plug into the formulas. For instance, the Pearson site:

http://pearsoninfo.net/innfo/pearsons-html.html

where I obtained the numbers in my post above says a number of interesting things. Some of them are:

1. For the D/L Score, the displacement for the Ariel is listed at 5800 lb. depending on where you look for Ariel displacement information you will find anything from 5100 on up. Anything over a D/L score of 300 is generally considered to be a heavy displacement boat, so at your 354 or at my 409 we are sailing heavy displacement boats.

2. For the displacement to length ratio, my source ( Same URL above) uses this formula: D/L = Displacement Length = (Displacment/2240/0.01*LWL)3 where the final three is superscript indicating "cubed". The reason for the 2240 is that the displacement is calculated in long tons by dividing the nominal displacement in pounds by 2240 to convert to long tons. (The * in the above formula is a multiplication sign.)

2. Regarding the capsize screening formula, my source (Same URL above) again is using 5800 as the displacement of the Ariel.

3. The Ariel and the Triton score very high for both of these indicators in relation to other Pearsons. This also goes for the ballast to displacement ratio This could be in part because the displacement figures are higher than they should be, or this could be totally because these very early boats were designed by Carl ALberg to be very, very heavy with short waterlines. In any case, it might help us see why some folks do successfully make ocean passages in Ariels and Tritons and occasionally make circumnavigations in Tritons. Then again a Catalina 27 made it all the way around, or so I read.
And finally you want an Ariel at 30 feet. I have always thought of my boat as an Alberg 30 reduced in length to 25.6 ft, but the performance indicators indicate that as similar as they seem to be, we have a much different boat in actuality.

Ignoring the 28.3 ft Triton, which is close to 30 feet, the 30 foot Pearson built boat that most closely resembles an Ariel would have to be the Shaw designed Coaster. The boats designed by Shaw for Pearson after the Coaster took Pearson in a whole new direction. To me, the Coaster still has a lot of Carl Alberg in it (with some extra beam and LWL an a barn door rudder.

And yet, at them same time, the Coaster is very similar in appearance above the waterline to the Shaw designed 27 foot Pearson Renegade. With a beam of 9.3 ft, the Coaster is a full foot beamier than the 8.3 ft wide Triton and with an LWL of 23.3 ft, the Coaster has an almost 3 foot longer LWL than the Triton. The Triton's LWL is 20.5ft. The 27 ft Renegade is wider (at 8.6 ft) than the longer Triton and has a longer LWL also (at 21.0 ft).

I do read in many sources that the Coaster an the Alberg 30 must be reefed at 15 knots, but then again, I suppose sane people reef their Ariels about that time also. I consider my boat to be very stable. I have sailed small IOR era boats in conditions where they were overpowered, hard to control and probably best described as squirrelly. I just don't feel that way in an Ariel.

As to what all of these comparisons really mean, I think you have to go out and sail a given boat in varying conditions to understand what you really have.

It is interesting to me that after the early Coaster and it's close friends, Bill Shaw went on to design the many fin keel boats in the later Pearson line-up, whereas Carl Alberg went on to design the Whitby Alberg 30, the early Bristol full keel boats, and the whole family of Cape Dory's after that. It was these boats, the Alberg 30, the Bristols, and the Cape Dories that really carried on the Alberg design concept that we all find so wonderful in the Triton and the Ariel/Commanders. And as for the Coaster, I don't know what to call it: Perhaps the missing link. I'd love to sail on one.

Here is a Coaster shot for you. I have collected prettier photos, but this one is a good profile shot:

[ebb]

I'm for speed when it's fun.
Much has been written about the 1979 Fasnet race that Frank clarified for us above.
I wonder if anybody has made a list of those 300 boats, indexed them as to body type and so forth in terms of how and what survived that storm? Obviously the committee of the Cruising Club of America looked deep into the boats racing that fateful day to come up with the CSF. But it would be cool to see a chart with the boat body types. And their CSF ratios.

Survival isn't fun at all. 60 knots with breaking waves is freak-out time. The Alberg 35 (CSF 1.68 - pearsoninfo.net) that lay a-hull playing cards - what was her name? An Ariel imho would have to have a shred of a storm trisail in place and be dragging a series drogue. Instead of playing cards, a Tarot deck be more appropriate. That storm had waves that easily would have tumbled an Ariel if she were a-hull. Maybe that's debatable.

What's the wave tumbling formula? The WTF? A wave whose height is half the length of the boat can roll it over! That is a 12.85 foot high wave! Puny.

[mbd]

What's the wave tumbling formula? The WTF?
Heh! :D

You can't ignore the captains' and crews' judgment in this case too. I can't help but think that because it was a race, some threw caution to the wind and pressed on when they should have played cards instead.

[ebb]

Yey Mike!
The Alberg 35' 'Prudence of Chutney' in the '79 Fastnet was skippered and crewed with well developed highspeed ESF's.
Ego Stability Factors.:rolleyes:


Inexperience with big storms was probably the reality for many.
And plain luck, good and bad, had a big part in it.
__________________________________________________ __________________________________________________ ____

[pbryant]

Nice! I got the same results flying twin jibs dead down wind with 20 knot winds and following 10 foot seas from Pillar Point to Monterey, surfing on crests for minutes at a time. I wish I'd captured that on video. It's a thing of beauty when a crest approaches from astern, reaches the bow, and then just stops as the boat catches up and follows.

I routinely do 6 knots with peaks over 7 on a close reach. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NdYXAuzh6ZQ

I can't imagine sailing without the thrill of ocean swells.