![\"Hull](\"https:\/\/setsail.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/10\/Hull-form-drag-2-301.jpg\" "\\"Hull")
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We were tied up at the Jarrett Bay boat yard complex yesterday, doing a bit of preliminary planning with Corey McMahon who will be handling our seven year itch list, when a couple of interesting photo ops passed by. There is a pod of dolphins hanging out off the docks and occasionally riding bow waves (it is hard to concentrate on boat project dialog when the pod is playing in the background).<\/p>\n
What was interesting is the boats whose bow waves they chose to ride. There appears to be direct correlation between hull efficiency, or lack there of, and the dolphin’s favorites.<\/p>\n
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We know from our own experience that the bigger the pressure wave, the longer the dolphins will stay. On earlier, less efficient boats, we’d have them with us for long periods. With Beowulf<\/em> and Wind Horse<\/em> they come for a quick hello, and leave us after a few seconds.<\/p>\n In the lead photo the yacht was only moving at about six knots, yet the pod stayed with her for as long as we could watch with a 400mm lens, perhaps two minutes.<\/p>\n We were talking about hull forms and wave trains a few days ago. Here is a great example of why a hull designed to plane is not particularly efficient at slow speed (OK,, they are horrible slow). Three of these sport fishers passed in succession, slowed down so as to theoretically not create havoc with their wakes. Slow in this case meaning maybe eight to ten knots. We are told that a little further south folks on shore take exception to these wakes, and particularly in duck hunting season, salon windows tend to attract buckshot.<\/p>\n A “semi-displacement” hull form, theoretically designed to operate fast and slow, does neither well.<\/p>\n![\"Hull](\"https:\/\/setsail.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/10\/Hull-form-drag-2-300.jpg\" "\\"Hull")
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