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[Jerry]

A bit off what you are talking about but my best boat ride was on a felluca (not sure of spelling) along the Nile. The design hasn't changed for years so I was told, it just glides along the river; they let me steer for a short while - magic. I would have preferred to do the whole cruise on the sailing boat rather than the diesel powered river boat. Have not done much sailing but spent quite a lot of time at sea crossing the English channel - working on a ferry.

[Kikapu]

I'm really encouraged that we have few people interested in sailing. I already have few stories in my head, and will write them when time permits.

Jerry, welcome to this thread. All "sea stories" are welcomed, so you can tell us few stories with the Channel Ferries. I'm sure you have had some bad weather where most passengers threw up all over the place.

Oops sorry, I just noticed it's lunch time.

[CopperLine]

Nikitas,
What are the main advantages & disadvantages of 'stayed' boat ? Is it just that larger masts need to be stayed and non-staying limits their size/shape ?

[Jerry]

Kikapu, it wasn't only the passengers who got sick. When it got really rough I would find a place in the middle of the ferry low down to settle my stomach. The worst place was forward when the bows would plunge down into a trough between the waves. Fortunately the ferry I was on was about 22,000 tons so it needed a force 7 or more to make me ill. I wish I had kept a diary, so many things happened. I remember one day we were crossing the channel and the ship started to turn, just a change of course I thought but we did a complete circle and then carried on our old course. Crossing the English Channel is like trying to cross a motorway in slow motion, you have to pick a space between two ships going up the Channel and steer through the gap but if they change direction or speed you have to compensate, in this case the helmsman steered full circle and slotted in behind another ship. It didn't bother the crew but some of the passengers thought he was playing silly buggers. Sometimes we would take coach loads of football supporters across, it was funny how many of the bar crew suddenly all supported the same team as the lads drinking the lager at seven in the morning.

[Nikitas]

Copperline,

Stays are those wires that stretch from the top of the mast to the sides of the boat (the gunwales). Stays mak moving about on the boat a royal pain. Notice how intelligent people like the Chinese managed to build sailing ships without them. ALso many modern boats use shorter, stouter masts to avoid stays. For us amateurs who want to enjoy sailing it is best to keep the details to a minimum. So unstayed masts and sails you can control with one rope (sheet) are best. The simple setup allows you to enjoy the sail and a glass of wine or whatever.

Larger masts are for those who like to use a large sail area and push a boat to its limits. Nice to do at times but hardly relaxing. One of the pioneers of tranatlantic solo racing, Hasler, had a boat called jester, under 30 feet and he specified an unstayed mast and a chinese style junk rig. The man sailed across the atlantic well into his 70s and alone several times. Proof that simple things can do good work.

I was looking at an article on such a simple boat the other day and there was this phrase that stuck with me: "I wanted a boat, not a project" and the boat in question had an unstayed mast and sailed around the Baja peninsula of Mexico in total safety.

[Kikapu]

@ Nikitas,

While I was sailing the "high seas", we did come across some Cat Ketch rigged sailboats. They were fairly new designs at the time, about 2o years ago. Not having any stays what so ever meant of course, that the mast had to be very strong, therefore Carbon Fibre with epoxy were used to achieve the strength needed as not to break. The other thing that was needed, was to have two masts, so to reduce the sail area in each of the sails, so that the pressures applied to the masts would be at best, minimum.

Since there were no stays, one could not have a fore stay to be able to put up a jib up front, so one of the masts had to be placed way up the front of the boat, so that it can act as a jib as well as a main sail. The boats I saw had the "wishbone booms", which were quite good looking set up.

@ Copperline,

Nikitas told you already, that if you know how the wing of an aircraft works to produce lift, then you won't have too much trouble understanding how the sails work, to make the boat move through the water. The only difference is, that the wing shape of an aircraft stays constant since the forward moving aircraft produces it's own wind (apparent wind), and this remains the same, which ever direction the aircraft is going. With the sail boat however, you need to make constant changes to the shape of the sails, in order to get the best results from the "True wind" in the direction that you want to go. Here is the major difference from an aircraft and a sail boat. A plane can fly directly into the wind head on, but a sail boat cannot sail directly into the wind. It just doesn't work. For most single hulls, one can sail about 30-35° to one side or the other from the wind head on. For most Catamarans, it is between 50-60°. Trimarans are somewhere between the two.

@ Jerry,

I use to take the ferry across to France in the 70's and sometimes the Hovercraft, but there were always people sick on the Ferries, and not because there was to much wave action, but because the slow side to side rolling of the Ferry. Of course, the best remedy would have been to step outside and look at the horizon to fix the problem, but at night crossing, they had no chance, but throw up.

The rules for crossing any shipping lanes, and definitely for the channel is, that one goes across at a right angle, 90°. This is the safest way for those who cut across the shipping lanes, and also for those who are in the shipping lanes, so it appears that someone at the helm of your Ferry boat was either not paying attention to the traffic going Left to Right and Right to Left and had to do a quick 360 turn to avoid a collision, or else some other boat changed course into your boats path.

Worse place for anyone to have a seat or a berth is in the bow section because of the up and down motion, as well as the pounding noise into the waves. The stern is a little better, but then you may have the noise and vibration from the engine room. The best place is of course, the centre section of the boat, which has the least motion.

[Nikitas]

Kikapu,

I will look through my cuttings for photos of some small simple boats and will post them here. The more I think of building my second boat the more I lean towards the simplest, fastest possible way to build. The most likely candidate now is a skin-on-frame boat. It can be built in a week and can be light enough to load on a car by one person, and it can hang from a hook in the ceiling (if you have a high enough room of course!). My first boat, the kayak, was "torture plywood" but it was only 14 feet long and could take one person.

When and if I build it I will sail it around the yacht club in the spring and watch all those dudes rubbing down, sanding, scraping, puttying their big yachts. I love hard work when others are doing it!

[Jerry]

Kikapu, large modern ferries don't roll much because of the stabilising fins. The one I worked on had ones that automatically retracted below a certain speed but the could be over-ridden. We had an Iraqi mate called Sam, nick-named "Sammy Scud",who forgot that the fins were on over-ride when we were berthing one rough day and smashed one on the harbour wall, it cost the company thousands. Sammy took me on the bridge one day when we were in Dover and showed how the radar worked. It had several range options, you could see just the harbour and surrounding area or all the way across the channel to France and the lines of ships - just like cars on a motorway. Most of the crew lived on board for a week below the car deck, not very nice during loading or for those sleeping near the thrusters every time we docked. There were benefits however, the food was quite good and you could eat as much as you like, but no drinking

[Nikitas]

A skin on frame boat, this one is for rowing but you get the idea.

[CopperLine]

Nikitas,
If you build a skin-and-frame boat for sailing presumably you still need a substantial keel (if so, how is this incorporated in s&f ?) and how is the mast secured ?

(If the answer is too long then don't answer if you don't want )