Very engaging Youtube interview with Dick Beaumont on what makes a Bluewater boat

Frogmogman

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I really hope you have a beard, a big bushy grey one. I picture you with a captain birdseye beard tutting at lightly built boats and naive sailors.

You'd be right that my Ocean crossing experience is limited, but my living aboard for months at a time cruising experience certainly isn't. It's only in the last 10 years or so that the amount of racing I do outweighed the cruising.
Dom is quite correct that I certainly don't consider a Pogo 30 as an Ocean cruiser, although I am aware of plenty that have in fact crossed oceans. Here's one that crossed the Atlantic at an average speed of 6.5 knots, and would you look at that footage of them planing at 15 knots. And then sitting at between 8 and 9.3 knots (on a boat with a hull speed a shade under 7 knots) on what looks like a pretty smooth sea.... (5 min mark, and no I don't like the music either) And recording a 24 hour run at an average of 7.9 knots. But no, you said it can't happen, so it's obviously fake.

The 1250 is more what I had in mind when thinking about long distance cruising in this sort of boat. You know, the one that I showed you a video before that showed an Atlantic crossing at an average VMG (not bsp) of about 7 knots, despite calm periods. The 50 does look amazing though.

These people enjoyed their Atlantic crossing in a 1250. I don't think too many Kraken boats will do 12 knots downwind in 13 knots of breeze.... Note the loaded displacement of 7500kg.
World Cruising Club
Or these guys (second article)
Five very different Atlantic crossing experiences - Yachting World
Now I fully, fully understand that there are plenty of people who will read the description of how they sailed the boat and think"nope, not for me". And that is fine. It's more than fine, it's great! Sailing is such an incredibly broad church. But equally there are people (like me) who read descriptions of twin headsails and good daily runs of 120 miles in a 40 footer and think, "God, how dull".
And of course once you get to the other side, another beauty of these boats is quite how much deck space and interior space they have for their length. Which, if I recall my cruising days correctly, is largely considered to be a bonus when it comes to the comfort of living on board.

I honestly have no idea whatsoever why the very existence of boats like this seems to exercise you so much. Or why my comments do. The only reason I even came into this thread was to point out that if you design boats like this, then you cannot expect them to shrug off collisions like others will, and that this is part of the compromise - but that the Kraken man's list is only one definition of what makes a good long distance cruising boat, and a good number of people are looking at the options and choosing fast boats, not big heavy things.
Happily, people who like heavy, sturdy, solid boats have companies like Kraken to build them boats, and people who like light, simple, fast boats have companies like Pogo and JPK etc to build them. Win win.
Couldn’t agree more with you, Flaming. Each to his own, and all that.

TBHI couldn’t bring myself to watch the op’s video all the way through. I got the picture after 5 minutes. I can’t be doing with the hyperbolic title of the clip « the truth about…. » , nor with Mr Beaumont’s certainty that his view on what makes a good blue water cruiser is the only valid one.
 

flaming

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One of the drawbacks for me with lightweight boats for ocean cruising is their inability to carry gear. Take a family intending to do an Atlantic circuit. Guys, wife and two teenage kids. Kids need entertaining. They want toys. You need a decent dinghy in the Caribbean. The waters warm. Its a water babies paradise. The kids likes windsurfing or kite surfing. The wife likes diving. You have your dream holiday of a lifetime, but wait, the Pogo 1250 can't take the weight of all this gear. Forget the folding bikes and sewing machine, the Dad wants a fast trip across the Atlantic and everybody else wants toys. What do you do? You take no toys. Just the weight of provisions is enough and four people. You broad reach across the Atlantic because it's the faster point of sail. The winds from the East so you gybe your way across doing lots and lots of extra miles.
You arrive in the Caribbean and Dad is a bit disappointed how long the passage took. You left all the toys at home and you have a small rubber dinghy and egg whist to get around in.
This is reality for an Irish family we met in Grenada.
I am not having a dig at Pogo style boats. If I wasn't sailing long distances we would likely have something similar. For us the two bikes, two full sets of dive gear, two sewing machines, five kites, two boards, two paddleboard, a hard dinghy, sailing rig and 15hp engine are reality. We are currently in the Algarve using all these toys. When we get to the Caribbean we will be using them as well. The sailing is only part of living on a boat.
For sure the load carrying ability isn't the same. So if you want to carry a lot of things with you, then I agree, a POGO is not going to be the best bet.
But, as I keep saying to LF, not everyone cruises in the same way...

In the Yachting World link above, note that they had their 2 kids with them. And they used to be superyacht skipper and mate, so would be used to all the toys and then some! But despite that they chose a Pogo, and seemingly kept it light enough to have a very fast passage, I love the bit about "going to 8 knots for a rest". I dunno what toys etc they had with them, but it would be hard to argue that people with that CV didn't know what they were doing when the chose the boat.
 

Stemar

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I can see where he's coming from and, yes, it is a description of his yachts, but that's hardly surprising since he couldn't find the boat he wanted, so he built one and made a business about it. If I were going blue water, and had that budget to do it with, I'd have a chat with him - and a few other builders, but the probability of it happening is vanishingly small, so my opinion counts for very little. Besides, If I wanted Milady to come with me, I'd have to have a cat!
 

Laminar Flow

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I really hope you have a beard, a big bushy grey one. I picture you with a captain birdseye beard tutting at lightly built boats and naive sailors.

You'd be right that my Ocean crossing experience is limited, but my living aboard for months at a time cruising experience certainly isn't. It's only in the last 10 years or so that the amount of racing I do outweighed the cruising.
Dom is quite correct that I certainly don't consider a Pogo 30 as an Ocean cruiser, although I am aware of plenty that have in fact crossed oceans. Here's one that crossed the Atlantic at an average speed of 6.5 knots, and would you look at that footage of them planing at 15 knots. And then sitting at between 8 and 9.3 knots (on a boat with a hull speed a shade under 7 knots) on what looks like a pretty smooth sea.... (5 min mark, and no I don't like the music either) And recording a 24 hour run at an average of 7.9 knots. But no, you said it can't happen, so it's obviously fake.

The 1250 is more what I had in mind when thinking about long distance cruising in this sort of boat. You know, the one that I showed you a video before that showed an Atlantic crossing at an average VMG (not bsp) of about 7 knots, despite calm periods. The 50 does look amazing though.

These people enjoyed their Atlantic crossing in a 1250. I don't think too many Kraken boats will do 12 knots downwind in 13 knots of breeze.... Note the loaded displacement of 7500kg.
World Cruising Club
Or these guys (second article)
Five very different Atlantic crossing experiences - Yachting World
Now I fully, fully understand that there are plenty of people who will read the description of how they sailed the boat and think"nope, not for me". And that is fine. It's more than fine, it's great! Sailing is such an incredibly broad church. But equally there are people (like me) who read descriptions of twin headsails and good daily runs of 120 miles in a 40 footer and think, "God, how dull".
And of course once you get to the other side, another beauty of these boats is quite how much deck space and interior space they have for their length. Which, if I recall my cruising days correctly, is largely considered to be a bonus when it comes to the comfort of living on board.

I honestly have no idea whatsoever why the very existence of boats like this seems to exercise you so much. Or why my comments do. The only reason I even came into this thread was to point out that if you design boats like this, then you cannot expect them to shrug off collisions like others will, and that this is part of the compromise - but that the Kraken man's list is only one definition of what makes a good long distance cruising boat, and a good number of people are looking at the options and choosing fast boats, not big heavy things.
Happily, people who like heavy, sturdy, solid boats have companies like Kraken to build them boats, and people who like light, simple, fast boats have companies like Pogo and JPK etc to build them. Win win.
Thank you.
You clearly do not know me, but I am pleased to evoke such a strong character image.

Once again, we are given recommendations based on the successful viewing of Youtube videos. Those who report actual, direct experiences, possibly to the contrary, be damned. And, I'm sorry, an East-West crossing of the Atlantic in season is really nothing particularly difficult. Same goes for all the other milk run routes.

I can only repeat: I have absolutely nothing against any type of boat whatsoever, long, short or lifting keels, it really doesn't matter. They all have their place and they all have their advantages and disadvantages. It is the unrealistic hype I struggle with. Light boats are weight sensitive, especially planing types, as are cats. Heavy displacement is less so, that is why you get to have refrigeration, a real galley, a generator perhaps, and all the toys. The bigger the boat, the more stuff you can have, even if it's light.

When you put the transatlantic performance of the above mentioned Pogo 12.50 into relationship to it's waterline length it comes out at a relative speed of 1.17. While that is decent, it is hardly spectacular and I know several "dumpy" boats, some even with "long" keels, that did better in this context, including friends on a Hans Christian double ender who made the crossing at an average speed of 1.25. Not so long ago, 41' waterline could well have been something in the range of up to 50'. In reality, most boat types are not that far apart in terms of relative speeds, especially when cruising.

An ocean crossing is not a cruise, not in it's own, but it may very well be a part of one, nor is a delivery trip, for that matter. Cruising is the part that starts on the other side when, as Geem explains, the toys are unpacked and one gets to play.

On my last Pacific crossing we were shocked and deeply saddened by the amount of flotsam we encountered. I have never seen anything like it. Floating islands of junk with oil drums, nets, old refrigerators and pretty much anything you can imagine and on a daily basis - we never knew how much we passed at night. Occasionally we would hear something bounce off the hull, but I'd rather not imagine hitting something solid with a thin skin, never mind at 15-20kts. The skin of a hull is structurally one of the heaviest parts and you just can't have good point of impact resistance with a thin skin, even if the supporting structure is up to the task. This is not unique to light planing sail boats, high speed power craft have the same issues. You may want to think about that, when you lie awake in your bunk at night, listening to the water rushing past your head at planing speed.
 

bondye

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Apologies, I wasn't clear. My point is that there was no mention at all of this most important aspect of boat safety. All the Kracken has is crash forward bulkheads and a rear one, as many many modern yachts do. It's better than nothing but only creates survivable space in limited circumstances. Which is why many offshore racing and cruising yachts specify these bulkheads.

So the designer has accepted all the limitations of skegs and encapsulated keels, without even addressing the safety uplift of the survivable space afforded by watertight bulkheads.

That video -- to me -- depicted a firm more driven by obsession than reality. Hence, with an investor had on, I'd be very nervous indeed about that.

But of course, each to their own and time will tell!
simply notwithstanding, Kraken's got 3 watertight bulkheads.

Source: I work there.
 
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