Steel boat as a long-term liveaboard (in a warm(er) climate).

[lpdsn]

Mr Bassett mentioned earlier about how we are divided by a common language - English in this case, and that is very true.
I would like to think that I have an equal understanding of North American English and English English (having lived on both sides of the pond), and I see nothing wrong in saying that you are sailing to windward if you are just sailing on one tack.
If I am sailing close hauled (ie hard on the wind) at (say) 7 knots and 45 degrees wind angle, then for simplicity (ignoring any current or leeway) after a few hours I will have sailed 21 miles.
If my actual destination is dead upwind, I have still made good approx 15 miles towards my destination. So I have sailed upwind (ie to windward), no?

I would expect the Sepos on Sailing Anarchy, or any other US sailing forum, to be just as unhappy with a race committee that laid a windward leg that required no tacking as the speakers of any other dialect of English.

 

[rotrax]

But setting realism aside, BS has some very good points to make that simply get lost because of the abrasive manner of their making, sad..:ambivalence:. .

I agree.

I suspect in a face to face meeting with a beer or two on the table we all might get on.

I would hope so anyway.......................................

 

[Brent Swain]

Attacks on me ,mostly by people with nowhere near the steel boat building , maintaining, living aboard and cruising experience I have ,are also quite abrasive.

 

[Uricanejack]

Now we are arguing about what sailing to windward is.
Depends I suppose?
Obviously one needs to be clearer about what one means if you are not to be misunderstood.
Just saying to windward. Means different things to different sailors.
The
In my opinion. Any point of sail closer to the wind than a beam reach is sailing to windward. Not being a gentleman, I love it when the boat is healed over in her groove and sailing into the wind. If I can make the next point or destination on one tack I really pleased.
If I ever better 6 knots on my 35 I am pretty happy. She should do better after I have her lifted and cleaned.

Even so I usually think beating to windward. When someone says sailing to windward. As an old navigator I used distance run or logged rather than distance made good. Right or wrong I tend to think distance run or logged when someone says how far they have sailed.

When I sailed up from Astoria to Cape Flaterly it took me almost 48 hrs. I sailed a lot further than a crow would have flown. Mind you the crow probably flew quite a bit further than the actual distance to.

 

[rotrax]

I dont think there can possibly be any argument about the exact definition.

There are obviously sailors around who are not aware of the exact definition.

I consider myself to be a fairly new sailor. My wife and I came to sailing late-in our late fifties. We undertook RYA training up to Coastal Skipper and joined a sailing club. We have sailed in excess of 10,000 MN during this time. I have read about sailing since I was a child.

Sailing to windward has always meant-to me anyway-heading towards the direction the wind is coming from.

Anything else is NOT sailing to windward.

IMHO, of course..........................

 

[dom]

For “me” it’s perfectly clear ...lol!

1. ‘Sailing-to-windward’, ‘on-the-wind’, ‘close-hauled’, ‘tacking’, ‘bashing-to-windward’, ‘beating’, etc., are all essentially synonyms.

2. We ‘made xyz distance to windward’ is, however, for me 100% VMG in the direction of the wind.

FWIW, I’ve sailed in San Francisco, LA, Maine, and Chesapeake and never witnessed any confusion whatsoever over that second term.

In fairness to Brent, all he’s doing here is relating what someone else told him. If we all had a $ for each time we heard: “we very often cover 200m+ in a day”, “I regularly make 10kts+ in me 35’ low-SAD, high-DWL MAB”, “now retired but we set off like spring daisies into the teeth of F8+s!”. ...well as Del Boy used to say...

 

[Brent Swain]

I dont think there can possibly be any argument about the exact definition.

There are obviously sailors around who are not aware of the exact definition.


Sailing to windward has always meant-to me anyway-heading towards the direction the wind is coming from.

Anything else is NOT sailing to windward.

IMHO, of course..........................

Anything up wind of your starting point is "Towards the direction the wind is coming from," even a close reach.

 

[rotrax]

Anything up wind of your starting point is "Towards the direction the wind is coming from," even a close reach.

Wrong.

We are not talking about upwind, but quite clearly " to windward "

Windward is the exact direction the wind is coming from.

Wiki and several dictionaries confirm this.

lpdsn's analogy re yacht race courses is perfect. One section of the course is set to windward, and, unless the wind shifts, requires tacking.

 

[SlowlyButSurely]

Wrong.

We are not talking about upwind, but quite clearly " to windward "

Windward is the exact direction the wind is coming from.

Wiki and several dictionaries confirm this.

lpdsn's analogy re yacht race courses is perfect. One section of the course is set to windward, and, unless the wind shifts, requires tacking.

I didn't know the definition of sailing to windward was a contentious issue until I saw all the different interpretations here. For the last 50+ years I have been under the impression that sailing to windward meant sailing on any course with the wind forward of the beam and beating to windward was the process of making a series of tacks towards a destination which is upwind of the starting point and dead to windward refers to a position exactly upwind of the starting point.

If this is not correct could you post a link to the official definitions because I have googled it and can't find anything definitive.

Thanks.

 

[Brent Swain]

My point was about comparing two different boats on the same point of sail, not about grammatical nitpicking, which is irrelevant to the original point, and obscures the point of the original debate .
So go ahead and start a thread on grammatical nitpicking, and please drain off the grammatical nitpickers from the real debates; please!

 

[DownWest]

But that wasn't what you said. You were picked up on an unlikely claim about about one of your boat's performance upwind. Now, if you had said, right away, "Sorry, I meant to say closed hauled" Then the 'grammatical nitpicking' would not have happened.

As for the original point, it was about living on a steel boat in warmer clims. Not about the relative merits of two different boats, one of which was designed by you.

 

[steve350]

The bermudan or marconi rig is notoriously good at sailing to windward. Old square rigged vessels could not sail to windward, they could merely run or reach.

 

[Brent Swain]

Yes, and one of the first responses was someone attacking all steel cruising boats ,which, with no counter arguements , would have been left unchallenged. Such disinformation can lead to tragedy ,and often has ,as in the case of the Sleavin family ,etc,etc.
One of the most important roles of these discussions is to present both sides of an argument, and challenge falsehoods, so that accurate conclusions can be derived from them.

 

[rotrax]

I thought that was what I was doing in the windward disscusion.....................................

 

[SlowlyButSurely]

Could we please bring the discussion back to Silas Crosby? It seems to me that it's an excellent liveaboard cruising boat. Ticks all my boxes except perhaps I might prefer a long keel but I'm open to persuasion.

 

[GHA]

The most important thing to know when buying a metal boat is what's happening under the foam insulation.

Brent since you're here...

Sprayed foam under the deck...
I've just started removing all the headlining and sprayed foam inside under the deck. This boat had teak decks once upon a time so in addition to removing every bolted on deck fitting and welding them on there are a million stainless machine screws to take out and weld up the holes Whoever took off the teak just chopped the screw heads off. Nightmare, probably a year in this boatyard with all the other bits of the todo list.. .

Anyway will, be great once its done , but never again.

So for insulation I really don't want to spray foam but have something removable so next time I want to change something on the deck I just take down the headlining and get the welder out - so have you any experience with attaching panels of foam or whatever to the underside of the deck? Any hints ? Getting a nice snug contact between the foam and steel I can see being important.

Ta

Just made a small doll now covered in pins of the guy who thought putting a teak deck was a good idea!!:disgust:

 

[GrahamM376]

Just made a small doll now covered in pins of the guy who thought putting a teak deck was a good idea!!:disgust:

Maybe you should make another, for whoever keeps tripping the yard elec supply

 

[GHA]

Maybe you should make another, for whoever keeps tripping the yard elec supply

Be fine once it stops raining

 

[Tranona]

One of the most important roles of these discussions is to present both sides of an argument, and challenge falsehoods, so that accurate conclusions can be derived from them.

Unfortunately since you joined this thread you have concentrated on dismissing any arguments that do not accord with your partisan view of the world. Couple that with you propensity to make claims that are unsupported by any evidence means your contributions are often close to useless and do not further the debate.

Incidentally before you joined the discussion was very balanced with the pros and cons of different materials being being given fair exposure with often the benefit of real verifiable experience.

It may well be that your designs do deal with some of the acknowledged drawbacks of steel, but your ideas do not seem to have found any favour outside the narrow confines of your locality. Perhaps people investing large amounts of time and money in serious ocean cruising boats prefer to put their faith in professionally designed and probably professionally constructed boats.

 

[Brent Swain]

Could we please bring the discussion back to Silas Crosby? It seems to me that it's an excellent liveaboard cruising boat. Ticks all my boxes except perhaps I might prefer a long keel but I'm open to persuasion.[/QUOTE

Search Silas Crosby.
The skipper Dr Steve Millar had sailed his Spencer 35 from BC to New Zealand and back , then said "If this boat were a foot wider and steel, it would be perfect."
Then he read an article in latitude 38 about one of my boats in Frisco Bay, and decided she was exactly what he wanted for his lifetime dream of cruising Chile and the Cape Horn area.
More to come .This library computer keeps randomly deleting stuff.

Back to my laptop, slow but works ,and doesn't delete whole lines at random.
So Steve bought a set of plans and a pile of steel, and in a short time we did the steel work. Then he moved it into his back yard and finished the rest . After several years of cruising the BC coast and one trip to Mexico ,Hawaii, and back to BC, giving him the confidence in the design to head for the Straits of Magellan and round the Horn, then to the Aleutians, then back to BC. He hit some rocks hard, while dodging icebergs , and ,as he said "shrugged and carried on, no worries." Reading the book on the Kiwi twin keeler Totaroa , convinced him that twin keels were what he needed. In the Straits of Magellan he would stay in drying areas, right up against windward cliffs, and sleep like a baby. In the morning, someone who spent the night further out , in deep water would row over and complain that he couldn't sleep at all, with the boat rocking and rolling to the gusts. Steve made good time on all passages , 18 days from Cabo to Hawaii, and 21 from Hawaii to BC. Twin keels means having a cleaner bottom more of the time , as cleaning is so much easier to do frequently.

The problem with a full length keel on a steel boat is an extra 400 lbs of steel at the back of the boat, where you need the weight least. That far aft means you can even less, use it for tankage, adding a huge amount of weight in the stern. It leaves you an impossible to access area, under the engine, making maintenance impossible back there.
I prefer a 12 ft long ( on top) keel for a single keel ,and a big skeg, which doubles as a engine cooler , eliminating salt water intake , strainer, pump,and heat exchanger , the sources of many engine problems.