G'day,
Thanks for your interest, and questions. Following is based on my
experience with Elementarry, a 7.5m/25' harry which I sail on the Swan
river in Perth. I have never entered a race, but have sailed against
49ers, Hobies and Tornados often enough to offer the following.
Sailing along on a reach and doing 15 knots in a 15 knot breeze is all
very nice,
True, but remember this is an overweight cruiser, with less than
wonderful sails and a crew who were not trying.
but what about up wind tacking and off the wind sailing.
Shunting upwind is not sufficiently slower than tacking for it to be a
problem. I can sail past (higher and faster) a 49er upwind, shunt
tack, shunt gybe and sail past them again about once a mile in 10
knots of breeze, enough for both crew on the skiff to be trapezing,
with me sitting inboard on Elementarry which has half the working sail
area (11 sqm).
What kind of performance can be expected in a typical regular
multihull "around the buoys" race course?
Pretty good. Without extras, I need a decent breeze to excel
downwind, but I am not a whole lot slower than a Tornado (22 sq m of
main and jib, 22 sqm of spi) in 25+ knots. Until the gybe, when they
leave me for dead. This is about 50% due to the level of expertise
and development on the two boats, and 50% due to the actual technique.
If my boat was as well set up as theirs and I was not so fat and
lazy, it would be a lot closer. Given that most cat fleets only
tack and gybe once or twice per leg, the losses are made up for by the
superior speed of the proa.
For example: How will it perform when starting with 25 other multihull
sail boats all jostling for the best position across a 200 metre start
line?
Very different. You change tack in less than a second, can sail
frontwards or backwards with ease, hold your position on the start
line with little or no leeway and tack/shunt from under a boat sitting
on your windward bow. Good guys will get good starts in proas, the
same as they do in conventional boats.
Then tacking upwind to the windward mark.
I point way higher than our very hot Hobie 16 fleet, foot faster and
shunt as quickly as they tack.
What about downwind?
Surely in a jibing duel to the leeward mark a regular multihull will
have far better VMG (velocity made good) as they can jibe in seconds.
Can a Harryproa jibe? In a few seconds?
I understand shunting – what about jibing? I guess it's the same.
But surely it would take ages compared to a regular boat jibing?
Takes longer, but is much safer. In a good breeze, cats tend to fall
over on the gybe, we don't. A harry can gybe, and if it was for a
shortish distance, more or less dead down wind it would be quicker
than shunting twice.
Maybe these boats have never been touted as being fast around a
typical racing course?
There has yet to be a full on race version launched apart from mine,
but I spend so much time playing with new ideas that i have not yet
got round to optimising it. The bottom is rough, the foil section
average, the mast has been broken and repaired twice and the sail
needs a recut to make it flatter. There is a 15m/50' solo race boat
nearing completion in Eastern Australia, some ultra light, optimised
Elementarrys being built in Belgium, and a 12m/40' race boat about to
start in Chicago, so maybe next northern summer will see some
serious racing happening and we will know the answers.
Please don't take my questions/thoughts written above as criticism.
They're genuine questions that I don't believe have been truly
answered by practical demonstration.
I am still very open minded and would love to see one built, sailed
and shown to be a proven performer.
Iwelcome the questions, sorry I cannot give you more accurate answers.
Where are you? Maybe I can organise a sail.
deepee
OZ
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