{"id":47620,"date":"2019-09-10T11:51:42","date_gmt":"2019-09-10T16:51:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/setsail.com\/?p=47620"},"modified":"2019-09-15T18:10:13","modified_gmt":"2019-09-15T23:10:13","slug":"steering-clear-of-trouble-our-search-for-cruising-perfection","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/setsail.com\/steering-clear-of-trouble-our-search-for-cruising-perfection\/","title":{"rendered":"Steering Clear of Trouble: Our Search for Cruising Perfection"},"content":{"rendered":"
We are standing at the forward end of the great room aboard FPB 78-1 Cochise<\/em>. It is eerily quiet as we watch the steam gauge climb from 13 to 20 knots, linger for a moment, before peaking at 22. A fast-rising SE gale has kicked up a steep sea, now confused with a reflected crossing wave pattern as we rapidly close with the Southern entrance to New Zealand\u2019s Bay of Islands. This 60 metric ton motor yacht is surfing under autopilot control. The seas are perfect for Cochise<\/em> and she rides the better waves for several minutes at a time, at speed length ratios above 1.6. Cochise<\/em> is the most recent iteration of the perfect yacht, at least for us. Aboard\u00a0Cochise<\/em>, and the rest of our yachts, the key design ingredient upon which all else rests is steering control. We are warm, dry, and very comfortable.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n It wasn\u2019t always so.<\/span><\/p>\n Linda, my partner in all things, is laughing about how times have changed. We met on a fateful Labor day weekend in 1965, when Linda, then teaching in Salt Lake City, Utah, made a spur of the moment visit to her sister in Malibu, CA.<\/span><\/p>\n As it turns out Sonnie and her husband Charles were planning on spending the long weekend at Catalina with our family aboard my folks’ Hu Ka Makani<\/em>, a 58\u2019 cruising cat. I had sailed my\u00a0<\/span>20\u2019 Shark catamaran over with Charles.<\/span><\/p>\n Above: Linda, left, with Sonnie that fateful weekend.<\/p>\n Linda went for a sail with me on Beowulf<\/em>, and it was obvious that, even though a \u201cmountain girl\u201d, she was a natural.\u00a0<\/span>It was Sunday morning when Linda and I took a walk from Cat Harbor to the Isthmus, and then hiked up the trail towards Fourth of July cove. Along the way our hands brushed, and then fingers entwined, and the sparks flew. It has been ever thus. We decided to sail back to Marina del Rey together on my little cat, but fate intervened in the form of her older sister and my step mother, and I was left to bring Beowulf<\/em> back with Charles.<\/span><\/p>\n Linda came down from Salt Lake for Thanksgiving and we entered the Cabrillo Beach Yacht Club Turkey Day Regatta. We rounded the weather mark well ahead in the Cat Portsmouth handicap class, but alas my mind was not totally on the race details, and we took the weather mark to starboard rather than port as called for in the sailing directions. The entire fleet followed us around the wrong way except for the very last boat. That left us with a DSQ and two firsts, and a second place trophy, very embarrassing.<\/span><\/p>\n Fast forward to the next summer, Linda has moved to LA, and we are now driving to Charleston, SC for the Shark Catamaran National Championships. The plan had been arrive a week early, check out the local knowledge – the race course is where two rivers come together around the island on which sits Fort Sumter – but business had kept my nose to the grindstone. In those days we built large fiberglass displays for various businesses. Linda, above, is modeling a 12-foot Sinclair dinosaur. This was the only stop we made other than for gas, potty breaks, and one short rest. We barely made the start of the first race.<\/span><\/p>\n This is Linda\u2019s first serious regatta. Her crew work is so good that observers comment on how we seem to gain on every tack, jibe, and mark rounding. Halfway through the regatta we are allowed to haul our boats to clean and work on them. We’re last out as we’d been doing a bit of sail testing. There are a few competitors watching and chit chatting prior to the annual class dinner. One of them asks how we’d met and I reply that Linda had been hitchhiking in Texas and as I needed crew I picked her up. Being the olden days, before sin and corruption was widespread, there is somewhat of a scandal – or maybe it was envy – surrounding our sleeping arrangements. Word flies about that we are sharing a room. This was the truth, as being on a budget we needed to conserve. By the time we reach the dinner, the hitchhiking story has spread.<\/span><\/p>\n No doubt the discombobulation that follows on the race course behind us is due in no small way to the other sailors’ envy.\u00a0We win easily, and I quickly recognize that if I don\u2019t marry this talented crew someone will steal her away.<\/span><\/p>\n We need to stop here for a moment and give props to a man who directly had a major impact on our life at several critical junctures. Swede Johnson was Saint Cicero’s number one sailmaker at Baxter and Cicero. It was Swede who had made the sails for our second Shark. Since the Shark was overweight, which we did not realize at the time, Swede’s sails were the major reason for our boat speed and victories.<\/p>\n The boats on which we raced in those days were wet, usually cold, and did I mention wet? On a beautiful calm morning we would trudge down the dock wearing full foul weather gear, boots, and trapeze harnesses. Linda did not know any other way existed. We avoided the contamination of comfortable boats.<\/span><\/p>\n Here\u2019s a shot of one of our C-class cats, this one Beowulf III<\/em>. She was a much more “comfortable” boat and quicker too. Notice how the lee bow is fully immersed in spite of our weight being all the way aft. This locked in the bow and made steering response to changes in apparent wind force and angle problematic. But everyone had this issue and we accepted it.<\/span><\/p>\n Wing masts were now de rigueur in the C class, and not wanting to deal with the handling negatives we opted for something different for Beowulf IV<\/em>. She had an 8\u201d diameter light aluminum tube for a mast, with a pair of awning tracks riveted tangentially, to each of which was affixed a mainsail. If this sounds familiar, the 36th America’s Cup is using a twin luff mainsail. Beowulf IV<\/em> had canted lifting 65 series laminar dagger boards and was very light, just a single skin of six-ounce boat cloth over 1\/4″ end grain balsa core for hulls, with chemically milled aluminum cross beams. When everything was in the groove she showed flashes of real pace. We were invited to the Yachting Magazine<\/em> one of a kind regatta on Lake Michigan, and Linda being seven months pregnant, we decided that I would take another C-Class sailor, Dave Bradley, as crew.<\/span><\/p>\n Competitors had begun to arrive the week before the regatta. It was fun eyeing the other class champions and all-star sailors. Between testing, chatting, and checking race course conditions there was a lot going on. First race was Monday following the skippers meeting.<\/p>\n Sunday evening, just before dark, in rolled a massive A scow. The crew quickly stepped the rotating mast, towed out to a mooring, then retired to the bar. If this was meant to intimidate the opposition, it worked with us.<\/p>\n In the first race a wind shift favored the leeward end of the line. We were perfectly placed, reaching down the line for the start except for the 38\u2019 A scow on our hip. This was the machine that was then considered the fastest sailboat on the planet, and we expected them to roll over us after the start.\u00a0<\/span>With the leeward end favored we were going to need to tack to port ASAP to cross the fleet and lock in our initial gain when the wind shifted back. If the scow was close enough on our hip to hold us, we would be sucking gas from a large chunk of the fleet.<\/p>\n The slapping sound of that scow close by still rings in my ears when I think back.<\/p>\n We hardened up after the gun working the double sail main carefully as high as we could, trying to pinch off the scow. Dave was adjusting mainsail twist in the oscillating breeze. I was driving, watching the waves, concentrating on the shift we knew was coming. <\/span><\/p>\n After a couple of minutes Dave said,\u00a0 “I don’t hear them.”<\/span><\/p>\n “Have they tacked?”<\/span><\/p>\n “No. They are four boats back and dropping into our wind shadow.”<\/span><\/p>\n We were first to the weather mark with the 32\u2019 D class Wild Wind<\/em> close behind. Wild Wind<\/em> did a number on us downwind with her spinnaker and we ended up second. The scow came 4th, with the new Olympic class cat Tornado ahead of them.<\/span><\/p>\n The next day a norther was blowing. On the way to the start we broke a daggerboard and decided to try and pick up a spare before the race started. We were running almost square into the Belmont Shores harbor entrance, main fully stalled, when a shift hit us, we accelerated, and the bow depressed. With the steering locked in by the bow and rig powered up in the steep seas reflecting back from the shore, a pitchpole was inevitable. Dave and I were okay as was the boat, but in the ensuing rescue attempt Beowulf IV’<\/em>s rig went to the bottom along with much of the rest. My main concern was Linda’s reaction. I was afraid she would go into labor.<\/span><\/p>\n With a family started, we decided to try something smaller and more easily managed by the two of us. We chartered a an old Tornado cat and went to play in the first World championships held in Melbourne, Florida. Linda and Elyse managed base camp and Steve Harvey crewed. We were nowhere near as good as when Linda was aboard, and managed only a third overall in the tune-up regatta and tenth in the Worlds (I dislike light air).<\/span><\/p>\n Neither of us were inclined towards giving up our joint approach to racing, but now with Elyse on the scene we started thinking about the perfect boat for our new station in life.<\/span><\/p>\n Enter Beowulf V<\/em>, our first family cruiser. If you know any C-Class cat sailors you know they have garages full of boat parts. Masts, sails, dagger boards, rudders, even cross beams. We fell into that category, which allowed us to play “Frankenstein” with our new ideas.<\/span><\/p>\n A friend in nearby Venice, California, Skip Hawley, was building the new Tornado cats using the tortured ply method. We looked at the system, and decided to do something a little longer.\u00a0Skip added 12 feet to his deck jig, we called Gordon Plywood in Los Angeles and ordered 12 sheets of unbalanced 3\/16\u201d aircraft grade spruce ply, and soon thereafter Beowulf V<\/em> was winning local regattas and setting records. The main in this photo turned out to be by far our fastest. It was a left over C class sail, just 300 square feet (D class cats could carry 500 square feet).<\/span><\/p>\n Check out the wind strength above. The wind sock on the committee boat is hanging. There are no whitecaps. It is blowing eight knots. We are at a true wind angle of about 135 degrees. The apparent wind is so far forward the reacher is being flown to leeward! Notice how the mainsail is sealed to the trampoline, creating an endplate, resulting in a significant boost in performance. These hulls weighed 152 and 154 pounds each. All up Beowulf V<\/em> tipped the scale at 702 pounds. <\/span><\/p>\n Here we are holding the Victor Tchetchet perpetual \u201cWorld Multihull Championship\u201d trophy. There are five Beowulf<\/em> plaques attached thereon.<\/span><\/p>\n This 32\u2019 D-class \u201c<\/span>mongrel\u201d, totally created from castoffs except for the hulls, turned out to be a rocket. During a Pacific Multihull speed trial in 1971 Beowulf V<\/em> was timed over 500 meters, averaging 30.95 mph. She later pushed this to 35.6 mph, good enough for the Guinness book of records and the New York Times<\/em> yachting column to think she was the fastest of all.<\/p>\n In smooth water and stable wind pressure Beowulf V<\/em> could bootstrap herself with apparent wind until she ran out of steering control. As the wind pressure increased the lee bow would depress, and Beowulf V<\/em> would lock in. At this point you better be pointing in the correct direction. The helmsman had to anticipate the puffs and pull the bow downwind or up prior to an increase in wind force.<\/span><\/p>\n If you were late, the only avenue for reducing heeling force was easing sheets. When you are sailing at 1.5 times true wind speed the slightest error – and this included easing sheets – would quickly cut speed in half or more.<\/span><\/p>\n One more Beowulf V<\/em> story. We were headed to Ensenada, above, during the annual D-Class cat cruise to Mexico. (That this happened over Cinco de Mayo weekend and coincided with the Ensenada race, then the largest yacht race on the planet, was purely a scheduling coincidence. The catamaran powers-that-be had said we were not safe and we would not be allowed to play.) This particular year, a front came through. It caught us as we were in light airs working the back wind of the beach break, about 40 miles north of the finish. It was pitch black, we had no sea room, the coast to leeward was iron bound, capsize had a terminal connotation, and we were close to finding out what the the term scared shitless meant, for real.<\/p>\n We stayed upright by feathering into the breeze. We could not even see waves, let alone the horizon. We knew when the weather hull was flying because the long tiller would drag in the water to leeward and the driver would know to push, bringing the bow into the wind.<\/p>\n The front passed, we finished the course, and went to sleep. I had sailed down with our friend and sailmaker Ric Taylor. By the time we’d eaten breakfast Ric and I had decided it hadn’t been such a big deal. As the fleet began to straggle in though, we saw numerous damaged sails, spreaders with kelp trailing, and in the Bajia Hotel bar some very haggard faces. Fred Miller’s story from the Orange County Register<\/em> is scanned above.<\/p>\n A current photo of\u00a0Beowulf V<\/em> above, now\u00a0in its 50th year, and still winning races in the San Francisco Bay area under the careful hand of Alan O’Driscoll.<\/span><\/p>\n With Elyse now joined by Sarah, we got to thinking about a family cruiser with more creature comfort. None of our previous boats had been “designed”, rather they had evolved. But what if we could control the hull shape in such a way as to reduce or eliminate the bow depressing as we picked up speed? Then we could steer more easily, which could make a whole new world possible.<\/span><\/p>\n Norm Riise, a sailing competitor and often crew, whose day job was designing solar simulators and hypersonic wind tunnels at Cal Tech\u2019s Jet Propulsion Laboratories, had a potential answer. This self-taught engineer, a one-time torpedo bomber pilot in the Pacific during WWII, was working on the very first yacht performance prediction program. Norm ran his code from punch cards on the JPL main frame computer at night, when time was available. We\u2019d helped Norm tune his VPP by giving an opinion on various computed scenarios. Norm felt he was far enough along that we should give it a try.<\/span><\/p>\n Norm\u2019s software allowed us to do a detailed parametric analysis of what would become Beowulf VI<\/em>. We would vary hull prismatic, percentage of displacement, dagger board design, while investigating length, mass, percentage of total mass carried on each hull, and of course various rig permutations.<\/span><\/p>\n This was an early concept that we did not use, but the only example we can find…from 45 years ago.<\/p>\n Here is a cutting table for making a foil template.<\/p>\n And one of the construction drawings. The hulls were a simple box, with rounded foam sections glued to the bottom.<\/p>\n XXX One of the ongoing structural problems of this era was the connection of the beams which held the two hulls together to the hulls themselves. With typical cat hulls, those with unbalanced lines that split the displacement between the hulls, once you began to fly a hull, or were driving hard downwind, the bows would depress. The only thing you could do was move the crew weight aft. In order to transmit the righting moment of the crew to the leeward hull the cross beams had to resist twist. Therefor the cross beams had to be rigidly installed. The bending loads combined with the twist created complex stresses which were not easily dissipated. But with full displacement hulls that maintained a constant center of buoyancy as more load came onto them, the tendency to drive the bow under was eliminated. So the cross beams no longer had to transmit aft moments from crew weight to try and hold the bow up.<\/p>\n All of which lead to the method shown above of connecting the beams. The beams are round, and the connection system did not try and hold the hulls firmly in a torsionl mode. Rather, the hulls were free to rotate around the round beams. A very savvy engineer, Gerry Magarian, came up with the concept of using a pin which ran in a slot that kept the beams in place on the hulls, so they could not slide in or out on the beams, but allowed the beams to rotate.<\/p>\n The system worked well, and allowing the hulls to flex had motion benefits. Removing the twisting torque allowed us to reduce the strength and weight of the beams.<\/p>\n XXX The beams were carefully engineered with areas of chemically milled tapering pf wall thickness. One evening after a hard day at the office\u00a0 was getting ready to drill and tap the holes which would attache the tangs for the dolphin striker stay.Lack of attention lead to a hole being drilled in the wrong spot. Round holes are stress risers, and this one would have reduced the local strength by 500%.The beam was saved by carefully creating this elongated oval around the errant hole. The oval reduced then stress concentration almost entirely.<\/p>\n We quickly learned that there were enormous wetted surface benefits to sailing on a single hull optimized to carry the <\/span>fu<\/span>ll mass <\/span>of the boat. Beyond this the design basically boiled down to build the longest, lightest hull practical, reducing displacement length ratio to where wave drag was negligible at all speed length ratios, after which the goal was minimizing wetted surface.<\/span><\/p>\n Beowulf VI<\/em> ended up with 37\u2019 long hulls that were 19\u201d wide, and had just 21\u201d of freeboard forward. Because she had full displacement hulls that were exceptionally narrow, she was designed to penetrate waves rather than riding over when pressed going to windward or close reaching. <\/span><\/p>\n The hull box structure was made up of a deck, a mid-height horizontal shear web, and a flat bottom that represented the waterline. All three were exactly the same shape. Onto this bottom were glued a series of 4\u201d thick semicircular structural foam sections. Mickey Mu\u00f1oz, one of the world\u2019s preeminent surfboard shapers, spent a weekend smoothing things down, after which we applied two layers of 6-ounce boat cloth. Each hull, with hardware attached, weighed 375 pounds. The entire boat, with full required gear for offshore racing but before crew, was 1,770 pounds hanging from a single point scale. With a crew of four, the displacement length ratio was 18.<\/span><\/p>\n Without a great deal of effort on the part of the helmsman she could maintain an easy 1.6 times wind speed–up to 1.95 in perfect conditions–until 26 knots of boat speed, after which the sea state forced us to back off. The key to all of this was steering ability, and the secret to steering was a hull that did not depress its bow. This photo, taken by Mary Edwards during the 1974 Ensenada Race, has Beowulf VI<\/em> moving at 20+ knots in 16-18 knots of breeze. The ORCA fleet is already hull down on the horizon behind us. Aboard are Norm Riise who you can see in the yellow slicker, John Rousmaniere, then West Coast editor for Yachting Magazine<\/em>, and Ric Taylor.<\/span><\/p>\n Beowulf VI<\/em> had sufficient buoyancy in each hull to carry the boat’s full mass. Driving hard on one hull was\u00a0<\/span>not a problem because the bow did not depress, as you can see in the photo above. These slim, full buoyancy hulls were like knives and would slice right through the chop going to weather. The lee hull could be driven through steeper waves with little sensation of deceleration.<\/p>\n Her little cabin, six and a half feet square, had two bunks, a porta potty, stove, and ice box. All the comforts of home. She would fly a hull in seven knots of breeze – we never cleated anything – and was a great cruising boat according to our ideas on the subject at that point. We would sail to Catalina for a hamburger with our two daughters,\u00a0<\/span>then aged two and five. Yes, we were a little crazy, in retrospect.<\/p>\n Elyse, at five, is demonstrating the cozy confines of the forward half of the “great room” aboard Beowulf VI<\/em>. Note the needlepoint pillow. Fancy interior decor.<\/p>\n During this period, our first paid design gig came about somewhat accidentally. Hobie Alter was a long time friend when he showed up at a 1967 Pacific Multihull Association championship regatta with his Hobie 14. This slow talking surfer dude was one the sharpest minds we have ever known, although for the most part he kept that under wraps. As a surfboard maven Hobie was at the top. But his technical expertise in regard to cat design was lacking, or so we and all the other “experts” on that subject agreed. <\/span><\/p>\n But it turns out the H14 had some design features that nobody had thought of before. It was optimized for beach launching as opposed to crane hoists or launching ramps. Hobie’s and our paths crossed from time to time but we had more interaction with Mickey Mu\u00f1oz and Phil Edwards who were surfer\/sailors par excellence. Both were better known for their big wave riding and were, or I should say are, legendary in the surfing world. Phil worked full-time with Hobie in the R&D department at the Hobie cat company, Mickey more occasionally. We often raced against each other in our respective catamarans.<\/span><\/p>\n In 1969 Hobie was at the Yachting OOAK regatta where we lost\u00a0Beowulf IV<\/em>. Hobie and his little 14-footer and the mighty 32-foot Wild Wind<\/em> were the only finishers in that windy norther. A double-page photo of Hobie literally airborne appeared in Life<\/em> magazine with the caption \u201cHobie – The Cat That Flies\u201d and they were off to the big time.<\/span><\/p>\n Art Hendricksen was Hobie\u2019s partner. Smooth talking, a Stanford graduate, Art thought he was business savvy compared to Hobie and didn\u2019t mind letting you know it. As the business grew they hired a day-to-day president. By 1974 Hobie and Art were not speaking. Hobie was focused on projects that were not on Art\u2019s wish list.<\/span><\/p>\n I got a call one day and was asked if I could do a new boat for them. I responded in the affirmative, but only if Hobie approved and was involved.<\/span><\/p>\n Hobie 18 drawing, above.<\/p>\n We agreed on a fee and I drove down to Dana Point to meet with Hobie, Phil and Bud Platt. We sailed the 16s a bit, in and out of the surf, and up the beach. We chatted, scribbled some sketches, and then drove to the factory to see the boats being built.<\/span><\/p>\n A week later I had the design finished, sent it off and within a month they had three sets of hulls floating on which to test rig configurations. Thus was borne the first paid design of our career. That the Hobie 18 was a commercial success was due mainly to the real world practical know-how and configuration testing of Hobie, and his R&D crew.<\/span><\/p>\n Back on Beowulf VI<\/em>, after being allowed to officially enter the Newport to Ensenada race, as an entrant but not a contestant, and breaking the long standing Aikane<\/em> elapsed time record in the process, Linda and I had a leisurely cruise back up the coast. (Beowulf VI,<\/em> above, is rafted with Micky and Peggy Mu\u00f1oz\u2019s Malia<\/em> at Todos Santos Island off Ensenada). We enjoyed the cruising so much that we started thinking about doing more of it. ORCA’s twisted handling of our entry, the result of trying to keep the prestigious first to finish trophies for the establishment catamarans, had lead to embarrassment when the press – John Rousmaniere among them – had tried to untangle our status. ORCA instructed us we must apologize to the board of directors for this problem, which we politely declined to do. We were thereafter banned from racing in the offshore venues which they controlled. I was depressed, Linda was, well, pissed. Beowulf VI<\/em> had been built to break records and now we had nowhere to officially play. We weren’t sure what to do next.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/span><\/p>\n
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