30:1 length:beam, okay, i can see how that wouldn't be stiff at all. and true, a full circle has more surface area than a half circle for the same volume, so more drag.
a key difference with the weta is that the main hull is longer than the floats, and has plenty of reserve buoyancy for waves. i've seen 1m waves once and though exciting, wasn't a problem. the san fran guys routinely see bigger i bet.
another key difference is that it's possible to shift weight aft to get a massive bow up trim. my entire kingdom for an elegant way to do this on a proa...
ben
--- In harryproa@yahoogroups.com.au, Rob Denney <harryproa@...> wrote:
>
> What Mike said, plus the following: Attaching the beams to the schooner
> masts is a good idea, but it does not reduce the hull scantlings between the
> beams. The max load is one mast capsizing the boat. It makes little or no
> difference to the hull scantlings whether this is one mast between the beams
> or one at each beam.
>
> If we took Elementarry (7.5m/25' long, weight with one crew, 220 kgs/485
> lbs) as an example, the lee hull would be about 200mms x 200 mms/8"x8" to
> have 100% buoyancy. On Vis (15m, 3,000 kgs) it would be about 0.5m x
> 0.5m/20" x 20". These would be very light, but not very stiff, would need
> stayed masts and the wetted surface increase when they submerged would slow
> them down. They would have very little reserve buoyancy in the event of a
> nose dive.