new boat in the oven
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Some interesting numbers:
* A C&C 40 C/B PHRF's at 102
* A J-30 PHRF's at 141, so it is slower, but not by a lot (under 1 min/mile)
* The fastest I've ever been in my life (with a speedo -- I may have been faster in dingys) is sustained 13's on a J-30 on the Gov Cup of 199x (92? 93? I forget). Scary fast, and people died in that race.
While I'm sure a C&C 40 could beat that 13, I wouldn't want to be aboard. With a top speed of 13, maintaining an 8 knot average (net -- remember, going up wind you only get 70% made good, so you need 11.3 through the water) requires some pretty incredible winds.
Oh, when you are considering your speeds for crossing, the Soleil 46 gets a PHRF of a sluggish 78 -- hardly a speed demon! (24 seconds a mile faster than the C&C, 3000 miles, means it finishes the crossing less than a day ahead of hte C&C 40).
One small additional thought -- to sail 50 miles offshore, in sight of land, requires the land to be over 1500 feet high. If you only have 300 foot land (radio towers, hills, etc), you can only see that land for 20 miles off shore.
Harry
* A C&C 40 C/B PHRF's at 102
* A J-30 PHRF's at 141, so it is slower, but not by a lot (under 1 min/mile)
* The fastest I've ever been in my life (with a speedo -- I may have been faster in dingys) is sustained 13's on a J-30 on the Gov Cup of 199x (92? 93? I forget). Scary fast, and people died in that race.
While I'm sure a C&C 40 could beat that 13, I wouldn't want to be aboard. With a top speed of 13, maintaining an 8 knot average (net -- remember, going up wind you only get 70% made good, so you need 11.3 through the water) requires some pretty incredible winds.
Oh, when you are considering your speeds for crossing, the Soleil 46 gets a PHRF of a sluggish 78 -- hardly a speed demon! (24 seconds a mile faster than the C&C, 3000 miles, means it finishes the crossing less than a day ahead of hte C&C 40).
One small additional thought -- to sail 50 miles offshore, in sight of land, requires the land to be over 1500 feet high. If you only have 300 foot land (radio towers, hills, etc), you can only see that land for 20 miles off shore.
Harry
Good post, Harry. Maybe that's why they "missed" San Francisco, since the towers of the Golden Gate Bridge are "only" 740 feet high.
Yet grand soleil do very well in races competing against fast boats. The hull design is much more important than phrf rating, and the botin& carkeek are among the best designers.
In a yacht review of the grand soleil 43, a slower boat, it was doing 5.8 kts sailing into the wind with only 8 kts of true wind. That sounds pretty fast to me.
That is a fundamental misrepresentation of PHRF ratings. With "rule" based ratings, such as IMS, IOR, CCA, etc, you can have boats that perform better than the rating. With PHRF, the rating is arbitrarily assigned to the boat in a manner that allows fair competition. Now, PHRF is a "1-number system" and as such is seriously flawed as wind speeds, direction, and seas change, but it is nonetheless an outstanding 1-number comparison of boat speeds. The hull design is irrelevant to race performance, as a fast boat gets a low rating and a slow boat gets a high rating, and (at least in a ideal world) a well equipped and well sailed Cal-40 can race successfully against a simillarly well equipped and well sailed Melges 30.
The best simple indicator of how fast a boat is, is not how well it places in races (which is an indicator of how well it is sailed), but how low the PHRF number is. That presents real challenges with newer boats, which are normally low in numbers built and also tend to attract higher peformance sailors -- with the net result that the PHRF rating of new boats may OVERstate the speed of the boats! Conversely, older boats sailed by less competitive sailors may have understated performance.
While PHRF rating gives an overall indication of a boat's PERFORMANCE, it gives no indication of QUALITY. A boat may have a very low (FAST) PHRF, yet be bloody uncomfortable to ride on, require 100% attention from the driver, have next to no accomodations below, have really poor scantlings, and be downright dangerous to go to sea on (Google "Wingnuts Chicago" for an example) -- wait, did I say "may?" -- maybe I should of said "Usually DOES!"
Harry
I strongly disagree when you say a boats hull design doesn't effect the performance, there is a reason why the best designers are sought after. Now I know a PHRF rating does matter, but to me the biggest thing is how well it performs in regattas, and grand soleil was always among the top.
Ah, you misunderstood me. A boat's hull design very strongly affects peformance! And a well designed boat can be much more fun to sail than a poorly designed one, as it will accelerate faster, turn faster, track better, ride waves better, and be overall much more fun. That explains Rod Jonstone's success. But how well a boat tends to peform in regattas is a function of two things -- how good are the sailors the boat attracts, and how fair is the rating. One of the hottest boats in the club I race in is a Catalina 28 -- not exactly a rocket ship -- that routinely places in the silver. I think that the rating is probably a little high, giving him an edge to start with, but I also think that he is an exceptional sailor. He routinely beats J/27's in the fleet, which are clearly a much faster, much better designed, much "sportier" boat. How a boat places in regattas is not a reflection at all of how "fast" a boat is -- which is why I maintain that the PHRF rating is a much better indication of that.
Ok now you and I are on are on the same page. But all I was saying was that a well designed boat can out sail its PHRF.
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For what it's worth the highest LAND in Florida is 345 feet.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Florida's_highest_points
Tallest BUILDING in Florida is in Miami. It's 789 feet above ground. I guess that's about 810 above sea level. Radio towers and similar skeleton structures are difficult to see from just a few miles away. (I am a private pilot.) That's why the FAA requires lights on them to warn aviators.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_tallest_buildings_in_Florida
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