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lydia said..Chris 249 said..
Klinger is the smallest ever entrant, at about 27' and 2000kg. MASH was significantly lighter than Zeus but almost identical LOA, beam and LWL.
Four Winds (1), Smilie (Triton 28), and Spiesie's bubble-deck Triton 28 were amongst the shortest yachts to race. Tow Truck (Mumm 30) would have been second lightest, I think, after Klinger, then probably the Hick 30s and the Andreiu, Hick and Humphreys halves Zumdish, Einstien (??) and Half Hour - but two of them retired in the first few miles. Tow Truck, the IMS Hicks and Spiesies 28 were the only ones that performered anywhere near their potential, which seems to indicate that the really radical boats tend to be too hard on crew.
Nowadays there is a very simple reason small light boats cannot do well now.
Even looked at building a new 36 footer about 12 years ago and still could not beat these numbers.
The boats are measured empty so say 3200kg for a new 36 footer
There is about 63 kgs of mandatory safety gear/equipment per crew member.
So about 650kg of mandatory equipment.
3200/650 equals about 20% and sailing weight of 3850kgs
A hundred footer weights 30000kg and has say 20 crew
So 4% of weight
As it takes about 25kg to sink a Sydney 38 1mm according to the flotation data you see the problem
Yep, and no one adjusts the time correction factor to allow for this.
The other thing that is interesting is that since the 1800s, time correction factors have allowed for the fact that big boats go slower, proportionate to their hull speed, than smaller boats in most conditions. From one point of view it's reasonable to allow for this fact - but from another point of view, why should anyone get a "credit" because they CHOOSE to build a bigger boat that is inherently inefficient?
It was quite noticeable when IMS came in that the smaller boats got a reduced time allowance than they did under IOR, using the old 5th root - .96 calculation. Under IOR, half tonners won Hobart and Fastnet and did very well in other races. Since IMS and IRC came in, 30s have struggled to get up there. I remember years ago Robert Hick, who had lots of success with small IOR boats and designed Australia's most successful IMS 30 footers, saying that there was just no way a 30 could be competitive any more.
They've killed small boats and now they wonder why fewer people are sailing. Jeezers, why would the typical competitive youngster want to get into offshore sailing when they know that most of them will never be able to afford to do anything but crew for other people?
However, it was interesting that back in IOR days when the time allowance curve was different and the boats were measured in different trim, very few of the stripped-out low-headroom 30s did well in the Hobart. It seems that four or five days of being exhausted was just too much.