Do Bigger Boats Make Bad Weather More Bearable

[tcm]

very true. The bigger the boat the less boaty it feels. Eventually, you end up on giant cruise ships which do their best to isolate you from it feeling at all boaty, except for the nice breeze of course. There's lots more boatfixing on bigger boats tho, if people like doing that?...

 

[Gunfleet]

No but

smaller boats attract beautiful young women. Well, I just thought I'd try.

 

[AndCur]

Re: No but

Really thats news to me!!!

 

[Guest]

Re: No but

No, it's true................beautiful young women are always coming up to me when I am on my boat, they say aaaaah! how cute, then bog off to some super yacht! /forums/images/graemlins/grin.gif

 

[roger]

It\'s not only the cost that goes up

The loads on everything go up too and so does the effort required. Even getting on and off becomes less easy and harbours get too small to enter. We've had a couple of cases where SWMBO's have said quietly the the bigger boat has made the work harder and more crew desirable.

 

[DeeGee]

Bigger is generally better for riding the waves, given pretty similar boats. All been said above.

But design plays a very big part. If the boat is fat in the stern, with too much reserve buoyancy, as so many modern boats are (to accommodate 4 friends in aft cabins?), then she will tend to veer around with the waves if aft of abeam, and have a griping tendency. If the profile viewed from ahead looks like a saucer with a thin deep keel bolted on, then it will slam. So the design can vary from the saucer to the wineglass. The wineglass will never slam. Then again, the saucer is very stiff, with high form stability, and until it gets to angles higher than most of us will experience, it will stand up better and roll less.

A good place to start if you fancy getting a bit deeper, is 'Seaworthiness, the forgotten factor' by Marchaj. He is very technical, but much can be gained by subjective reading.

Of course, the fat-arsed saucer is a nice place to recover in /forums/images/graemlins/tongue.gif

 

[Robin]

You don't actually say bigger than what.

I remember once taking 7hrs singlehanded to motorsail a Halcyon 23 from Lymington to Poole against a F7 right on the nose, with a triple reefed main and storm jib. The trip was horrendous, bang slam crash and stop dead on every other wave. By comparison in our current 41 footer it would take just over 2 hours under sail alone and with 2 reefs in the main and either the staysail or a half rolled genoa and I would be smiling if not grinning inanely on arrival. On intermediate sized boats I had 2 cross Channel gales in a Liz 30 that saw a full cockpit twice but otherwise was OK and one (downwind) F9 for 15 hours in huge seas in a W33, also OK. On our current boat we have crossed Channel in one full downwind gale and one F6-8 beam wind and the discussion was mostly concerned with the odds on beating our record time and if SWMBO would serve up a hot lunch or a cold one.

That said we are much more conservative about weather /forums/images/graemlins/smile.gif to go or not these days despite a bigger boat, just because the boat can stride upwind in a gale doesn't mean we want to! These days it will depend on the trip, how far and upwind, downwind or what. Having a boat that will sail effortlessly and comfortably at +/-7kts with just the headsail alone means we can sail at 60/70% and still maintain a decent yet very comfortable passage speed.

The real question is not IF bigger is better but where the crossover point actually comes. I felt for us it was certainly on moving from a 24 foot triple keeler to a 30 foot fin keeler. The 30 footer was a pedigree cruiser/racer designed for performance upwind in a blow so not typical perhaps of a 30 ft bilge keeler, but deck work was easier (we had hanked on sails) because the motion was steadier. After that the move to a 33 footer gave us better engine power as well and again a bit steadier underfoot. Our current 41 footer has added much more comfort plus a lot of extra speed and although 8ft longer she handles better in tight spaces both ahead and astern. Us BTW is SWMBO and me, just two of us. So maybe where the crossover point comes depends a bit on the design as well as the size but after that bigger IS better - until it is TOO big.

The next cross over point on the size curve is also important, namely when big is too big. The number of visitor berths in popular harbours for bigger boats has not kept up with the increases in average boat size and certainly say from 43 ft upwards can be a problem as is the inevitable increase in draft. At 12.5m/41ft and 2.08m or 6'10" draft we are OK pretty well everywhere except St Peter Port marina where we CAN enter but (draft restriction) can only berth on the hammerheads and suffer reduced access times, in our case we don't care as we choose to stay outside anyway.

 

[thailand69]

Re: No but

[ QUOTE ]
beautiful young women are always coming up to me when I am on my boat, they say aaaaah! how cute, then bog off to some super yacht!

[/ QUOTE ]

But it saves you money in the long run /forums/images/graemlins/grin.gif

The bigger boat may be more expensive, but the 2 legged accessory attracted by it won't be cheap either /forums/images/graemlins/laugh.gif /forums/images/graemlins/laugh.gif. (not in financial terms anyway /forums/images/graemlins/grin.gif)

 

[Pinnacle]

Re: No but

Good comment.

As they say, if it flies, f**cks or floats, rent it! /forums/images/graemlins/blush.gif /forums/images/graemlins/grin.gif /forums/images/graemlins/grin.gif

 

[santeana]

Not sure if the term "bigger" is sufficiently precise. Surely, we should be giving 'displacement' more attention than 'size'. Continuing this line maybe displacement:LWL ratio gives an even better indication.

 

[bumblefish]

Came back from Dieppe last night, 18:00 crossing, normally takes 4 hours, took over 7, partly due to waiting for a berth in Newhaven! Loads of people with mal de mer, including my children. So the answer is not in the case of certain large vessels. I also asked why they had not informed people in Dieppe of the potential delay and rough crossing and I was informed they could not have predicted the bad seas!!!!! I was a bit annoyed as I had informed them of my daughters accident in France and the need to keep her leg straight and immobile, waste of time.