Last weekend I sailed on the 18m harry in Melbourne. Many thanks to
the owner/builder for a great day.
A bit of background:
The owner/builder is no Russ Brown. He knew nothing about infusing,
flat panel building or sailing before he started, but has a wonderful
capacity to have a go and try stuff. To put together a 60'ter,
including building the mast, boom and rudders yourself is an amazing
feat. To build a boat using a new technique (infused flat panels)
and to experiement on a 60'ter takes a huge amount of perserverence.
With all this, he is extremely relaxed, quick to own any errors and
an all round pleasure to sail with. He also makes a great cup of
tea.
The boat is not finished, but the bits that are (the galley area), are
to a high standard. Like my boats, the rest of it is workmanlike
rather than show room. The time, money and weight savings from this
approach are appreciable.
It is a big, undercanvassed cruiser and this was only the third time
it had been sailing with many of the teething troubles yet to be ironed out.
The first impression is how large it is. I am no Beken. The photos
(in 18m Melbourne Folder in the Photos section)don't give any sense of
how large, airy and spacious the boat is. 7
of us on board could walk round the bridgedeck easily and safely.
Plus the ww hull deck. Equally easily, we could have sat around in
the saloon. The galley has lots of space, there are 2 double
queen bunks and a toilet in each end of the ww hull.
The attributes of a harry are: low cost, easy to build and sail and fast.
Low cost: Very. It is built from infused Polycore honeycomb flat
panels with curved hull bottoms. 4 tons weight including the rig and
motor (according to the launch crane), with open plan layout. The
basic boat seems very stiff and strong (no big waves, but no creaks or
groans), although a few fittings are too light, but this is easily
fixable. There is probably another couple of hundred kgs of fitout
(table, fridge, etc) to add. 7 people was a good load, but it made no
trim difference where anyone stood.
Easy to build: Simple shapes, flat panels, with very few deck
fittings. The lee hull is 3m/10' longer and a little narrower than
the Vis and the ww hull 4m longer with fewer curves than the Vis
cruiser (Rare Bird, 10m). This is by far the biggest harryproa
windward hull so far. The only slightly complex area is the motor
arrangement which has an electric lift for the 60 hp motor. The well
can't be closed off underneath so waves hit it and leak onto the
bridgedeck. There are plans for electric motors and/or two smaller
outboards. Under motor the boat steers well and picking up the
mooring was easy with 2 rudders and a steerable motor, aided by the
picker uppers being within easy earshot of the helm.
Easy to sail: Not yet, but it will be, once the systems are sorted out. The
rudders steer well, the connection and the wheels are ok once you know
them, but took me a while to learn (others were quicker) and at night
in an emergency would need a clear head. The system uses independant
wheels mounted on the lee hull either side of the mast and 2 right
angle gearboxes. There is a little play in the boxes and the rudders
are only just balanced so there is occasional slop. Steering
upwind with the front rudder worked a treat. The aft rudder was set
to give a little lee helm. This had the effect of eliminating leeway,
which was very obvious when looking at the wake when the boat was
going upwind. Occasionally there would be negative leeway, with no
obvious loss of speed, which is something I have tried but not
achieved on other harys. My photos don't do this justice, but it
was quite noticable.
Sailing hands off was no problem. The substantial windward
hull and 8m beam did not generate any significant weather helm once the boat
was sailing, but in light air it is a problem.
Shunting was slow (maybe a minute from dump sheet to back on course
when it went well), but once the systems are sorted out it should be a
quick single handed operation, the same as on the other boats with
ballestron rigs.
The rudders are about 2m (11%) from the ends and judging by how well
they steered, could have been a lot further inboard. They are not
liftable, but making them so is on the to do list.
Fast: The long, light hulls are very easily driven. The lee hull bows are over
half a metre/20" wide at deck level and throw up a lot of water above
about 10 knots which slows the boat, albeit quite spectacularly. They
are shaped foam blocks, so easily fixed, maybe even with the boat
afloat. The below the waterline
shape is pretty good, judging by the wake.
The wind, boat speed, track and tacking angles are in the "Melbourne
18m" in the Files section. The gps track uses
10 second averages of the speed. These are significantly lower than the
instantaneous speeds read off the gps screen and lower again than the
"max speed for the day" gps display.
Top speed was 14 knots in 33 kms/hour/18 knots of wind. Best was 24
in 26/13 knots in 14 knots of breeze.
The sails are not right, nor are the systems to trim them. Both are
easily sorted. The unstayed mast is very stiff up to the hounds,
flexes off nicely in the puffs.
One of the people on board was Helena Darvalid, a very experienced
offshore women racer. Hopefully she is a better photographer than I
am and she or I can post her pictures as well. Helena's partner, Paul
Larsen (Sail Rocket, team Phillips and sundry other big multis was
also aboard, seeing proas from a very different perspective to what he
is used to! Another was Peter Eagles, who does the
harryproa engineering. He reckoned the mast would bend about 30% (~5m
at the tip before it broke. This probably makes the boat impossible
to capsize from wind loads. Sailing master and performance expert
Rick Willoughby made sure everything ran smoothly and had a bunch of
ideas to improve things.
The tacking angle was poor, as the track shows. This was due in large
part to lack of main leech tension and hence jib luff tension (a
turning block pin was on the verge of popping out, so we did not
tension things as much as we could have), and jib sheet tension (no
block or jammer). Despite this, upwind speed and hence vmg was
not bad, compared to the mono racers that were around at the
time.
Conclusion: There are a few bugs to iron out,
but once they are, this will be a very comfortable cruiser, easily
capable of sailing at wind speed.
Any questions, let me know.