Saltram Saga 40 in light winds - how do they go?

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Libertysparks

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Hi there
My wife and I are looking at a Saltram Saga 40 for a circumnavigation. She is clearly designed for ocean cruising - spacious, and looks ready to take on some unpleasant sea conditions when called upon to do so. However, we would appreciate any advice on what wind strength does she need to get moving? Our concern is whether we may end up spending endless hours under motor in regions with lighter winds.

Also, keen to hear If she heavy on the helm?

Thanks
Martin
 
Libertysparks said:
Hi there
My wife and I are looking at a Saltram Saga 40 for a circumnavigation. She is clearly designed for ocean cruising - spacious, and looks ready to take on some unpleasant sea conditions when called upon to do so. However, we would appreciate any advice on what wind strength does she need to get moving? Our concern is whether we may end up spending endless hours under motor in regions with lighter winds.

Also, keen to hear If she heavy on the helm?

Thanks
Martin
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Welcome to the forum

You will perhaps only get a real experienced view from an owner, but I guess there are very few of them around, and although there used to be a 36 owner on here, not aware of any owners of a 40.

Therefore you have to fall back on design principles which will tell you that it is a heavy boat, and will be even heavier after you have added 3+ tons of gear and stores for a circumnavigation plus the hull design gives a very high wetted area (even greater than designed when loaded). This results in a boat that needs a lot of sail power to get it moving, particularly in light airs when hull friction is the dominant limiting factor. Sailboatdata gives a SA/Disp ratio of 11.44 and a Disp/L ratio of 415 which are both solidly in the motorsailer range.

sailboatdata.com/sailboat/saga-40

This is slightly misleading because the the working sail area of main and jib (which is probably what the 695 sq ft refers to) belies the ability of the rig to fly a larger sail area, particularly light air sails.

However, you can't get away from the fact that it is a big heavy boat that is at its best in higher wind speed ranges. That is perhaps what was considered desirable for ocean sailing when it was designed nearly 50 years ago (although only 35 were built so not many people seem to have agreed! - or at least enough to buy one) there are plenty of other designs that will do the job but with better sailing performance over a wider range of conditions.

As to a heavy helm, again design principles give a guide. It has a small inefficient unbalanced rudder hung on the end of a long fat lateral plane. Good for directional stability but poor for steering response, and with the usual tiller will be heavy. A wheel will to an extent mask this natural heaviness. On the other hand, the flexible sail plan does allow you to balance the sails to minimise weather helm. Not a good basis for an effective electric autopilot, but a windvane, particularly something like a Hydrovane seems to work well with this type of hull

Hope this helps
 
Tranona said:
Welcome to the forum

You will perhaps only get a real experienced view from an owner, but I guess there are very few of them around, and although there used to be a 36 owner on here, not aware of any owners of a 40.

Therefore you have to fall back on design principles which will tell you that it is a heavy boat, and will be even heavier after you have added 3+ tons of gear and stores for a circumnavigation plus the hull design gives a very high wetted area (even greater than designed when loaded). This results in a boat that needs a lot of sail power to get it moving, particularly in light airs when hull friction is the dominant limiting factor. Sailboatdata gives a SA/Disp ratio of 11.44 and a Disp/L ratio of 415 which are both solidly in the motorsailer range.

sailboatdata.com/sailboat/saga-40

This is slightly misleading because the the working sail area of main and jib (which is probably what the 695 sq ft refers to) belies the ability of the rig to fly a larger sail area, particularly light air sails.

However, you can't get away from the fact that it is a big heavy boat that is at its best in higher wind speed ranges. That is perhaps what was considered desirable for ocean sailing when it was designed nearly 50 years ago (although only 35 were built so not many people seem to have agreed! - or at least enough to buy one) there are plenty of other designs that will do the job but with better sailing performance over a wider range of conditions.

As to a heavy helm, again design principles give a guide. It has a small inefficient unbalanced rudder hung on the end of a long fat lateral plane. Good for directional stability but poor for steering response, and with the usual tiller will be heavy. A wheel will to an extent mask this natural heaviness. On the other hand, the flexible sail plan does allow you to balance the sails to minimise weather helm. Not a good basis for an effective electric autopilot, but a windvane, particularly something like a Hydrovane seems to work well with this type of hull

Hope this helps
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Sailboat data are frequently wrong about their data.

A quick check with a calculator indicates that the SA of main and fore triangle is probably closer to 900 sqft. This would then equate to a SA/Displ ratio of just over 15 and therefore above the 13 for motorsailers. However, the way SA/Displ. ratios are calculated has changed. SA used to be all the sail a boat could carry to windward, now it is just the for triangle plus main. The argument for this was that the mainsails have been getting bigger (again) and foresails smaller, as ones with large overlap do not furl well. Prior to the ever increasing trend towards furlers headsails with 150% or more were the norm for light weather performance. Putting this into the calculation, we get a SA that is more in the neighbourhood of 1100 sqrft and a SA/Displ ratio of closer to 19, which is pretty decent.

On light weather performance: Of two boats with the same SA/Disp ratio, one heavy, the other light, the heavier one will actually be faster in light air than the lighter one.
Why? Because up to a relative speed of 0.7, that is 4kts for the Saga, form resistance, with it's correlation to displacement is low. The added drive from the larger rig will easily overcome the additional frictional resistance of both displacement and the long keel. Both boats should, theoretically, reach their (theoretical) hull speed around the same time. It is at this point that the lighter boat will excel as it has a flatter form resistance curve and a higher range of speed.

On ease of steering. To be clear, the Saga would appear to have a rudder area of between 8-9% of lateral plane and that is for her type of underwater profile perfectly adequate and not too small. Her maneuverability will be what one would expect from a long keel vessel. The rudder is deep and narrow rather than long and shallow, this significantly reduces the rudder moment. I have sailed numerous tiller steered craft including an Atkin's design very similar to the Saga and I was very pleasantly surprised at the astonishing lightness of her helm in gusty conditions and very much the opposite to the Waterwitch I used to own.

Suggest you take your proposed vessel for a test sail and form your own opinion
 
I did make the point that the Sailboat data was misleading. These boats are cutter rigged. There are 2 currently for sale and one quotes the sail area as main 412, hank on No1 Yankee 364, No2 Yankee 243, staysail 125. So working sail area to wind approx 900. This gives as you say, a SA/Disp of 15 - still at the bottom end of cruiser range, whereas the Disp/L is right over the top and in the really heavy category. The other has furling headsail and staysail (undisclosed areas) and a cruising chute. The furling jib may indeed be larger than the hank on Yankee raising the working sail area.

Both of these boats seem to have cruised extensively all their life and presumably owners had found their performance satisfactory as the current rigs seem to be the same or similar to the original design. The test to look for in this sort of boat is average daily runs in a range of conditions which is probably something the vendors will have at their fingertips!

On the steering front, neither have an autopilot, but both have wind vane steering.
 
My view of these boats is that they are great for reaching or downwind in a fair breeze, the people who buy them are generally not mad about beating into a F2-3 anyway.
Whether you spend a lot of time diesel powered will be a matter of how your plans match the boat.
Most Ocean sailors seem to plan actual ocean crossings for trade winds, then use an awful lot of diesel touring around islands?
I think even those with boats which go really well upwind in light airs end up using more diesel than most will admit.?
So the difference in motoring you do in a boat like this and a fin keeler may not be as great as you might think.
The more you prefer not to motor, the more you plan reactively to the forecast, whatever the boat.
 
I wanted to buy a Saga 40 on brokerage in the Barbican, Plymouth about 6 yrs ago. Blue hull going a bit chalky, and worn out teak decks, encouraged me to make a realistic offer which was not accepted by the ex-owner's widow.
I don't regret it now though.
Engine access isn't brilliant on them, and tanks under the saloon floor may need massive wood-butchering to access.
They are well made IMO with a strong cutter rig. I would imagine that most have done galactic mileage.
@Laminar Flow, which Atkins design is similar, maybe an Ingrid?
 
I could tell you plenty about the 31 as I have owned mine for 15 years but the most knowledgable person to speak to about the 40 is David Walker. You can contact him through Claire Skentelbery, on the owners club site History
 
In terms of light weather performance SA/Displ ratio is the most important factor. With a larger, overlapping headsail, if the owner cares to bother and of, say 150% the Saga, as I have already pointed out has a ratio of 19, which for a cruising boat is perfectly acceptable. In this respect and at lower relative speeds, displacement on it's own is not relevant. Where weight becomes a limiting factor is at the upper relative speed ranges, when form resistance increases exponentially as the boat approaches nominal hull speed at 1.34.
The highest relative top speed for a boat like the Saga would be 1.5 or 2.73 metric. Lighter boats can exceed that, very light boats may do so considerably. Traditional double ended sterns inherently limit a boats upperend speed potential as well.

In regards to double enders, Archer did not just design lifeboats, but also pilot boats and yachts, among others. His method to determine SA was to square the DWL x 100-125%. This provides an SA/Displ ratio of somewhere in the low 20's (working sail only) or what is now considered a ratio approaching performance range; notably in an era when there were no auxiliaries to push you to weather. I suggest anyone to plonk in the numbers for your own boat and to compare.

To further the arguments on light air performance of heavy boats: The German magazine "Die Yacht" published a series of photos a few years ago, showing two intermingled and near becalmed racing fleets, one a group of Colin Archers, the other of modern racers. The subsequent pics showed a gust sweeping through the fleets and at the last pic the Archers had pulled away and outdistanced the others. I frequently read about the "eerie ghosting qualities" of older, speak heavy , designs; it's not eerie, it's physics.

To answer Gary's question: the boat was, I'm pretty sure, a possibly enlarged, version of the Atkin Eric. I sailed on her a couple of times at a local gaffer's race. She had a large gaff cutter rig, and a bowsprit. In a force 5 and on a reach you could move/hold the tiller with just two fingers. She tacked reliably
without going into stays, despite having such an "inefficient" rudder on a long keel. At 11' beam, she was quite tubby, in spite of this, I was rather impressed by her turn of speed and her exceptionally clean wake. She was a full-time liveaboard at that and the owners did not bother to clear her out for the races either. The Eric is pretty much a miniaturized version of a Colin Archer.
Edit: the Ingrid is skinnier and reputed to be the better sailer. Both the Ingrid and the Eric were built in GRP with the Westsail 32 being the glass interpretation of the Eric.
 
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TernVI said:
My view of these boats is that they are great for reaching or downwind in a fair breeze, the people who buy them are generally not mad about beating into a F2-3 anyway.
Whether you spend a lot of time diesel powered will be a matter of how your plans match the boat.
Most Ocean sailors seem to plan actual ocean crossings for trade winds, then use an awful lot of diesel touring around islands?
I think even those with boats which go really well upwind in light airs end up using more diesel than most will admit.?
So the difference in motoring you do in a boat like this and a fin keeler may not be as great as you might think.
The more you prefer not to motor, the more you plan reactively to the forecast, whatever the boat.
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One of the boats has a Volvo D55 which is not the original as it did not come in until early 2000s but has well over 3000 hours on it. even for a well cruised boat that is a lot of hours. Much the same as my charter Bav did in 7 years in the Ionian where one motors a lot!
 
Wow. Thank you for the informative feedback so far. I appreciate the analysis - its been educational. The vessel I am looking at has a furling headsail and stay sail, which suggests a larger sail area than what Saildata performance suggests. I am yet to speak to the owner as he is out of the country, and so dealing with the broker at the moment. Also looking at Hans Christian 33, which offers similar sailing characteristics. Also a really nice Moody 376, which offers more all round performance. I still like the slow and steady characteristics of the fuller keel boats. But also dont want to be under motor forever in lighter winds.
 
Presumably you are looking at the one with Boatshed Hamble. (There is another one for sale in Chichester). The calculated sail area is less important than the actual sails available with flexibility to vary according to conditions. I would suspect that the jib on the boat is bigger than the No1 on the other boat, specifically to give greater sail area in light airs plus the ability to reduce sail area without changing sails. Looks like the staysail is on a furler as well. The addition of a cruising chute gives a great deal of flexibility.

While this sort of boat has a lot of attractions if you want to do a lot of sailing and taking weather as it comes, the downsides become apparent if you want to spend much time at anchor or in harbours - particularly if you plan to do a Med circuit. The small cockpit is limiting when you live much of the time on deck, the difficult access to the water for swimming and boarding, the poor manoeuverability (although the bowsthruster will help) and outboard rudder/windvane make life difficult for mooring stern to (common in the Med). Liveaboards spend typically less than 15% of their time at sea, so "living" as opposed to sailing is perhaps more important. That is perhaps why the next generation of designs aimed at this market went for centre cockpit, medium displacement fin and skeg designs like the Moody and similar boats from mainly UK and Scandinavian builders. These held sway for about 20 years and then tastes changed again - at least for under 45' or so to the more open aft cockpit boats, perhaps reflecting the shift away from the gung ho intrepid wanderer to the sailing tourist or liveaboards who sail from time to time!

Whatever the reason boats like the Saga are in a very tiny minority, with almost none built in the last 30 years - although they do still have a following in the US. This is both good and bad - bad in that the choice is limited, and good in that many have been kept in really good condition like the two currently for sale and are available at low prices that are a fraction of what they cost to build, let alone what they would cost today. Just be careful of some of the type built in Taiwan as there have been some real horrors discovered under the shiny exteriors and lashings of teak, and because they were built for the US market tend to have equipment that is difficult to find spares for and keep serviced.
 
Libertysparks said:
Wow. Thank you for the informative feedback so far. I appreciate the analysis - its been educational. The vessel I am looking at has a furling headsail and stay sail, which suggests a larger sail area than what Saildata performance suggests. I am yet to speak to the owner as he is out of the country, and so dealing with the broker at the moment. Also looking at Hans Christian 33, which offers similar sailing characteristics. Also a really nice Moody 376, which offers more all round performance. I still like the slow and steady characteristics of the fuller keel boats. But also dont want to be under motor forever in lighter winds.
Click to expand...

It's pretty clear that you like these older designs (as do I, I absolutely love Hans Christians) so I'd get one and learn to live with it's foibles. Yes they're older and heavier and slower but they've got some character and you've got to love your boat. And they're all a compromise. Good luck with your search and your plans...(y)
 
Tranona said:
Presumably you are looking at the one with Boatshed Hamble. (There is another one for sale in Chichester). The calculated sail area is less important than the actual sails available with flexibility to vary according to conditions. I would suspect that the jib on the boat is bigger than the No1 on the other boat, specifically to give greater sail area in light airs plus the ability to reduce sail area without changing sails. Looks like the staysail is on a furler as well. The addition of a cruising chute gives a great deal of flexibility.

While this sort of boat has a lot of attractions if you want to do a lot of sailing and taking weather as it comes, the downsides become apparent if you want to spend much time at anchor or in harbours - particularly if you plan to do a Med circuit. The small cockpit is limiting when you live much of the time on deck, the difficult access to the water for swimming and boarding, the poor manoeuverability (although the bowsthruster will help) and outboard rudder/windvane make life difficult for mooring stern to (common in the Med). Liveaboards spend typically less than 15% of their time at sea, so "living" as opposed to sailing is perhaps more important. That is perhaps why the next generation of designs aimed at this market went for centre cockpit, medium displacement fin and skeg designs like the Moody and similar boats from mainly UK and Scandinavian builders. These held sway for about 20 years and then tastes changed again - at least for under 45' or so to the more open aft cockpit boats, perhaps reflecting the shift away from the gung ho intrepid wanderer to the sailing tourist or liveaboards who sail from time to time!

Whatever the reason boats like the Saga are in a very tiny minority, with almost none built in the last 30 years - although they do still have a following in the US. This is both good and bad - bad in that the choice is limited, and good in that many have been kept in really good condition like the two currently for sale and are available at low prices that are a fraction of what they cost to build, let alone what they would cost today. Just be careful of some of the type built in Taiwan as there have been some real horrors discovered under the shiny exteriors and lashings of teak, and because they were built for the US market tend to have equipment that is difficult to find spares for and keep serviced.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the feedback. The boat I am looking at is in Malaysia:
Saltram 40 for sale | Malaysia | Seaspray Yacht Sales Langkawi

It appears to be in good shape. New sails, and new rigging in 2015 (not used until 2017).
 
297C2sF.jpg

I think there's one of these in the yard here at Bruce's.

Looks like just the sort of thing that would have been on my wish list but now, with the benefit of experience, an absolute horror show to manoeuvre in a marina. Rather you than me.
 
V1701 said:
It's pretty clear that you like these older designs (as do I, I absolutely love Hans Christians) so I'd get one and learn to live with it's foibles. Yes they're older and heavier and slower but they've got some character and you've got to love your boat. And they're all a compromise. Good luck with your search and your plans...(y)
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Totally. Apart from the 'slower' bit :)
 
Gary Fox said:
Totally. Apart from the 'slower' bit :)
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If you mean that they wont plane, then yes. But friends of mine sailed their Hans Christian with a full long-term cruising load and with a crew of four across the Atlantic in just 17 days, that equates to an average speed of about 6.5 kts or a consistent relative speed of 1.12 on a DWL of 33'. A point often overlooked is that more modern designs are likely to take a much bigger performance hit from loading.

Given a comparable and appropriate SA/Displ. ratio, the difference in performance between heavy displacement and lighter boats, and when loaded for cruising when all similar sized boats are restricted to operating at displacement speeds, is virtually immaterial.

In our own, long keel, L/Displ ratio of 360, tub we have averaged 6kts over 210 miles, point to point, in spite of adverse tides in the Channel. We have also managed 6.8 kts over 70 miles in the open sea. That equates to 1.12 and 1.3 average relative speeds, wich is pretty damned good for a single summer's worth of sailing, so far and with the new rig.
 
I sailed on a friend's 39' Colin Archer (type) ferrocement gaff ketch from Southampton to Lisbon 30 years ago.
She was / is a very comfortable yacht - she had previously taken her owners (a family of 5) around the world in the late 70's / early 80's (they took about 5 years, doing it leisurely).
And heavy - 39' on deck, and 19 tonnes displacement.
She really needed a Force 5, and then she was getting into her element - I remember we were heading down channel, sailing close hauled, tramping along nicely, in a F 4 or 5 - and we were able to happily sit around the saloon table for dinner, with not much heel, and everything stayed in place - it was very civilised.
 
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