Sailors Corner Yacht, Sail Area and Crew

Why such a draft? The answer is simple: the deeper the ballast the less we need to perform a good stability. In other words to prevent capsizing at unwanted moments and for self-righting the hull when upside down in the water. You will find that light or ultra-light deplacement yachts are fitted with a deep keel with all the ballast in a bulb fitted to the bottom of the keel to stay light and to perform beyond the limitations of the hull-speed (the speed/waterline-length ratio) known from deplacement yachts. Light deplacement yachts do surf and deplacement yachts don't.

My former deplacement yacht of 18.9 tons the 50fty 'Wipi' was doing the hull speed of 8.6 to 8.7 knots at the max and the light weight 'CrossRoads' of 8.7 tons is doing up to 20 knots. Sometimes the 'Wipi' fell from a wave or was pushed by a wave to 9.2 knots, thus it did surf for 5 or 6 seconds, but that was it. The 'CrossRoads' is doing easily cruising between 10 and 13 knots. Every breeze will result in more speed, because she is light.

In other words: if your yacht needs a stability of 10.000 Nw/m you can choose between 2.500 kilo ballast (lead) at a depth of 4 meters or 5.000 kilo at a depth of 2 metres. Is draft your concern than you cannot choose a light deplacement yacht with a long fixed keel. Than it is time to consider a lifting keel. But remember, such a construction will always add extra kilo's to your yacht. That is the reason why Vendee Globe yachts or record breakers will not carry a retractable keel, unless the calculated advantage of less drag caused by a smaller keel surface on certain courses would be proven - which have been up to now not the case.

Cat or monohull

To choose between a cat or a monohull is a matter of taste and (operating) costs. Not a matter of safety. Especially the operating costs (berth, hauling out, hard stand) might be very expensive in western European harbours. It is absolutely true that a catamaran offers more space and more comfort for a cruising family because of its beam/length ratio. Also at the anchorage and during blue water sailing a cat offers much more facilities. And in general a cruising cat is faster than a cruising monohull with easier sail handling especially going down wind with big genakkers. What heavy weather sailing concerns cat-owners would say that the cat would be safe up to 60 knots of wind. Beyond this force they wouldn't know. Be honest, who would? Multihull specialist and delivery captain Alan Thoone (UK), good for more than 200.000 miles on cats agrees to these points just like the Dutch 'cat-man' Henk de Velde. Both stated that the modern generation catamarans could easily take Cape Horn; this privilege is not longer reserved for monohulls only.

Fast or slow

Like stated before the decisive factor will be weight, sail area and hull design (in this order). The first advantage of a fast lightweight yacht is that the yacht is not stuffed like a mobile home like most deplacement cruising yachts. This makes a light weight yacht extremely sailing friendly. You sail in a sailboat, which is I think the purpose of sailing. Also a big advantage is speed. With speed I can manoeuvre around extremely bad weather. With the 'Wipi' I simply walked from one storm into another, not capable to outran bad weather.

With the CrossRads we sailed to and through the Caribbean during hurricane seasons and met not more than 40 knots. And because of the speed we easily cross any ocean during any time of the year. We simply buy the food, the drinks and off we go. The third point I add to the advantage of going lightweight is that increase of wind-speed will increase the hull-speed. Deplacement boats limited to their hull-speed have to reef down because 'extra' wind will not contribute to 'more' speed. For the earlier mentioned SY 'Wipi' I calculated an average of 150 NM/24 hours, for the 'CrossRoads' a minimum of 200. Number four: a lightweight yacht will sail a backstay course in less than 6 knots true wind. I motored with the 'Wipi' through Indonesia, because the breeze only brought 1.4 to 1.7 knots of hullspeed. I couldn't get any substantial speed in the 'Wipi', where the 'CrossRoads' really wishes to go.

Than what I call the Frightening Factor: The 'Wipi' carried 800 liters of fuel with a 84 HP engine and the 'CrossRoads' carries 140 liters with a 29 HP engine. The radius of the 'Wipi' was 800 NM and the 'CrossRoads' 470. On the 'CrossRoads' with its 'dinghy' saildrive you can hardly speak of an engine room, in the 'Wipi' with 40mm shaft and 50 cm three blade propeller I really had one. Not that bad considering the huge differences in weight, interior space and costs! Number 5: A yacht has to sail and mustn't be heavy in the stern and the front. Weight that is not centred around the keel will make a yacht digging into waves. The hull has to glide over the water surface. Once confronted with the X-trems of speed, you never want to return to an old-fashioned deplacement performance. Sometimes people ask whether the yacht is wet or very simply they conclude that the 'CrossRoads' is a racer though the yacht might be wet. No, the yacht is not wet, because of the gliding factor. And when the wind increases the tension on the rigging will not increase because of a lower resistance of the hull into the water.

Wind pressure in the rigging will be converted into speed. That is why on board of deplacements yachts sails are blown out when not reefed properly. The strength on the cloth is that immense that the yanks will. Last factor to mention, backstay sailing 20 knots in a 30 knots wind makes the world comfortable with only an apparent wind of 10 knots over the deck.

Comfort

The 'CrossRoads' is fast, but to be honest not comfortable. Eager to save some weight we stripped toilets and nice cushions. There are also no benches in the cockpit. That is wrong. Now we get tired because hanging around and the toiletries-ceremony on the aft deck can be considered as extremely unsafe. We loose speed because we are too tired to change sails due to loss of energy. With nowadays-lightweight honeycomb material we are going to build a lightweight comfortable interior to beat our inefficiency-factor and to update our performance. In fact we might even talk about the question 'how much will a kilo comfort contribute to the total performance?' If we might update our lousy 75 percent performance to 90, based on a single handed or double handed crew while racing, we would love to pay the price of 200 kilo.

Crew

Two people will do on any yacht and to be honest, one is OK as well. Only racing you improve performance by adding good qualified people. I mean people who know the yacht and the skipper. Not knowing the yacht (each and every yacht is different and needs time to get used to) doesn't contribute in a better sailing performance. A disadvantage of having a lot of crew is that adding more characters into a small place the chance on confrontation increases. The skipper must be a manager to streamline all personalities into a winning pot of gold. A friend of mine stated once 'the more people the better during an ocean voyage, because you don't feel alone on deck during a night-watch and all activities would be shared by more hands'. Well, I don't agree. The yachts I sailed didn't sail faster or manoeuvred more efficient because of the presence of more people. Mostly the persons on board were friends or acquaintances who were interested in a holiday and not in sailing. Though, the moment you sail under an angle of 15 degrees the holiday was over which in fact is for most people not the meaning of having a vacation. And what the amount of work concerns: offshore sailing is more fighting boredom and trying to sleep, to cook or to read a book than fighting with sails and ropes. Last but not least: if you consider to sail with your partner, learn to sail the yacht by yourself. I really do think that this is a 'must' for every yachtsman that wishes to show his partner the freedom beyond the horizon.

Length

The money you can spend will define the length of a yacht. For 2 to 4 persons I would like to choose a 50-ft for offshore and ocean sailing and a 40-ft for coastal waters. A 40-ft yacht is easier to be handled in small and crowded marinas and cheaper in harbour fees. A 30-ft yacht I consider to be too small for comfortable ocean sailing

For more than 4 persons I would choose a 60-ft for offshore and ocean sailing and 50-ft for coastal sailing. The human privacy factor you know.
For those who wish to sail oceans with surfboards or 20-ft yachts, please go ahead. Any yacht will arrive safely when the hull is watertight and the crew a relaxed bunch of people that prefers to stay a few weeks longer at the High Seas.

But always remember: too many people in a small room end up with a war. On the hard as well as on yacht. Never ever set sail if you can't deal with the touch of emotions. Relations shipwrecked, love affairs got destroyed and dream got ruined because of the difference between reality and sailing.