Author: Yrvind

A TRIAL RUN.

(THERE IS A VIDEO FROM THE TRAIL RUN UNDER VIDEOS AND PHOTOS)

The boat has now been sailed inshore and evaluated.

Everything did not come up to my expectations, but I feel that I am on the right track.

There are problems with qualities and quantities.

The qualities first.

I will give up the idea of tilting the masts. Instead I will use two unstayd masts.

I will give up the central hatch.

Instead I will use two hatches one at each mast.

Now to quantities.

I will give the boat 10 cm ( 4 inches ) more beam

I will increase her lenght by one meter ( 3 feet )

The difficult thing is to keep the good qualities when changing the design. The present boat is very easy to handle and propel with the yoluh. If I give her to much beam and make her to big I will loose those qualitys.

To give a boat without a ballastkeel positive rightning arm at all angels of heel, height to beam should be in the region of 1 to 1,25. My and Matts boat have those proportions. Therefore by squaring beam times lenght I can get a certain measure of size for comparison.

Here are some examples.

Bris, 6.1×1.72×1.72=18.05

Amfibie-Bris 4.8×1.6×1.6=12.29

Paradox 4.2×1.23×1.23=6.35

Yrvind.com 4.8×1.3×1.3=8.11

Next boat 5.8×1.4×1.4=11.37

The next boat will therefore bee smaller than Bris and Amfibie-Bris but bigger than Paradox and Yrvind.com. My sailing experience with the above boats makes me think that the new boat also will be easy to handle and propel with the yoluh.

As I have only tryed the present boat inshore a few houers and offshore not at all. I am likely to get new ideas with more experience.

About the present boat.

The chinerunners work well.

I like the 25 centimeter draft.

I like that I can dip my hand in the water without bending over to much.

The sprit is supported by the gooseneck toggle. It is a succes.

The wingmast works very well in conjunction with the sprit.

And finally she is a very symphatic boat, very strongly built with good materials.

But, Cape Horn have to wait for the next boat. Now I will sail to Florida and consult Matt about my new project.

This is Christer Bohlin. Expert on lightning explaining the theory and giving me advice. Thank You Christer.

Below his picture follows a text, than more pictures.

The high voltage of lightning is something that I definitely do not want inside my boat but sometimes one have to do the best of the situation.

If lightning strikes it passes through my boat wether  I like it or not. As most superior forces the more resistance it meats the more damage it will do. Therefore I decided to make its passages through my saloon easy and convenient by building a lightning conductor.

It has taken time to get used to the idea that one day millions of volts from the lightning may pass trough the cable within a few inches of my head without morphing me into some kind of Frankenstein.

To get things properly done i have been consulting Christer Bohlin who for many years been conducting research at Uppsala University´s high tension laboratory. He told me that quite to the contrary I could even hold my hand on the cable when the lightning is passing trough it, that it is as safe as sitting on a high tension power cable. Although I trust science I will keep my fingers away when I hear thunder.

I have two separate systems. One is permanent. It connects the stainless steel grab-rail on the deckhouse to the bronze shoe at the bottom of the boat.

There is also a secondary system which can be set up when lightning approaches. It consists of two six meter long cables connected to a bronze rod. The bronze rod can be inserted into the mast head fitting where the top mast otherwise goes. One cable then runs down two meter into the water on each side of the boat. This is important because otherwise there will be a potential difference. That is different voltage on each side of the boat.

Matt Layden was once struck by lightning being at anchor at Block Island R.I. I have not been struck, but I have experienced St. Elmos fire a bright blue or violet glow, appearing like fire it was accompanied by a buzzing sound. Although not dangerous in itself it means that the whole atmosphere is charged with electricity and that there are a high risk that lightning will strike. It is worrisome.

I like to thank Retronic of Västervik for the supply of the tinned cables.

The bronze shoe is used to ground the cables. It is connected to the cables by 3 ten millimeter silicon bronze bolts.

Below the cables connected to the three bronze bolts.

Below I made cable holders of glass fibre composite.

Below the tinned copper cable wrapped around the grab rail.

Below the cable was encapsulated in Tesa Professional vulcanization tape to keep out the epoxy as not to get bad conduction before being encapsulated in NM-epoxy composite for strength.

One of the most frequently heard comments’ concerning my boat is that it is not comfortable. It is a very true statement. But I design and build boats and go to sea in them not for comfort but because I am curios and the activity gives me pleasure and excitement.

Comfort diminishes activity; lack of activity leads to lack of stimulation, without stimulation you become bored, fat and tired. You get energetic only by using energy, not by resting.

Eating and entertainment work like drugs or borrowed money, they lessens the boredom ordeal momentarily. In the long run they make the situation worse.

Strive on the other hand is painful at first, but as time passes will bring curiosity pleasure and excitement. The problem with that healthy solution is that it is to abstract for most people. Historically man has never had to worry about to much comfort and is therefore not designed to deal with it. On the contrary lack of food and rest has been the problem.

Modern society has changed that. Industrial and farm factories are now producing more than we need. Few free spirits has survived a new species of man has been breed, the obedient man. He eats not real food but ersatz food. His experiences are ersatz screen experiences.

It is so much easier to watch sport than to compete yourself. It is so much easier to do ersatz sailing and to start the engine when the wind fails than to use an oar or wait for wind. But like all ersatz things there is no thing like the real thing.

A captured animal in a zoo is not a happy animal. He tells us that without talking, still he gets plenty of food and good shelter and his life is without danger. Still he would rather bee free.

Modern man in the big cities are like captured animals. We have all the comfort and food we need, still we are bored. But because we live among millions of equally bored people we do not notice the gloom. Only occasionally do we meet a surviving free spirit and wonder why he is so happy. It is not comfort which makes me happy.

REFLECTIONS ON SCALE

Sailors of big boats have a low opinion of small boats’ ability to survive storms. I intend to take a small boat around Cape Horn, The Clipper Ship way, that is lat 50 south in the Atlantic to lat 50 south in the Pacific non stop. It is a big challenge and the only boat less than 60 feet to have done it single handedly was Al Hansen’s Mary Jane and that was in 1934. But then everything but a big challenge is boring and I think that it is a possibility that it can be done if the approach and mental attitude are right. I think I am the man to do it because during the fifty plus years that I have been reflecting on the laws that govern small boats behaviour at sea I have come to realise that big and small objects follow different laws and that big is not always better even if it is much, much more expensive.

For example, some small spiders have found a neat way of journeying over long stretches of water. It is useful for colonising islands and crossing straits, spreading the species.

Spiders do not have wings and cannot, technically, fly. Several types of spiders, however, can travel long distances through the air by a process called ballooning. The spiders spin long strands of silk that are caught by the wind, carrying the spiders along the air currents hundreds of miles. When they get close to their desired destination they start to eat their strands of silk, recycling it for their next trip.

Obviously this process is not possible to do on a larger scale. Not even in the strongest wind would a sailor be able to get his boat to fly by throwing long lines up in the air. Big is big and small is small and different laws apply to each and nothing will ever change that.

Scale affects even such mundane things as lifelines. On a big yacht lifelines can kill you. If you have a long line and fall overboard when the boat is travelling fast it can drag you underwater and drown you. If you have a short lifeline you can get stuck under the boat when it capsizes and drown.

On my small boat I have a long lifeline. It will not keep me underwater when the boat capsizes. If I fall in the water even when the boat is sailing fast, the sail area is so small that the boat will stop. On a small boat a lifeline is not dangerous.

Big is big and small is small and different laws apply to each and nothing will ever change that.

On October 24, 1901 on her 63rd birthday Annie Taylor, a schoolteacher, rode over Niagara Falls in a barrel four and a half feet high and three feet in diameter of her own design. It was equipped with a leather harness and straps and padded with a mattress and cushions to protect her from the impact. It was constructed of oak and iron. A 100-pound blacksmith’s anvil was used as ballast. To get sufficient air for the voyage the barrel was pressurised with a bicycle tire pump. The air made the barrel into a prestressed structure, increasing its impact strength. She was unhurt except for minor bruises.

This was 1901, much has happened since then in the field of composite construction and Annie who was a modern woman would today have used modern materials and the margin of safety would have been much higher. Today there is absolutely no problem building a small boat strong enough to survive any storm, including the worst of hurricanes, provided it is small enough. Contrary to what the establishment and especially the Recreational Craft Directive is telling you, it’s when boats are big that they are getting fragile and dangerous. Just imagine dragging a super tanker over the edge of the Niagara Falls and letting it crash 175 feet below, the result would be a heap of metal. Everyone knows that. Designers of big boats cannot teach a small boat sailor how to make his boat strong.

Big is big and small is small and different laws apply to each and nothing will ever change that.

Below are two examples of scale effects that are affecting small boats in stormy seas. The deckhouse and freeboard of my present boat are low, much lower than on my previous ones. Therefore I hope that I can live in the turbulent boundary layer that exists between air and water which gets thicker the stronger the wind is. I hope that in that layer the hull of my small boat will be hidden from the contrary winds and its resistance, but that the wing mast and the storm sails will be up in cleaner air creating a driving force. If it works then my boat will be able to point much higher than orthodox theory suggests. Will it work? I hope so.

Small and big boats also behave differently in waves. The restoring force in ocean surface waves is gravitation. The higher the gravitation is and the longer a wave is the faster the boat travels; a cruising boat can only move as fast as a wave that is as long as its waterline.  To understand gravity’s part in that phenomenon one should look at the subject from an advanced standpoint.

On earth, when gravity is constant, the speed of ordinary cruising boats is 1.34 times the square root of their water line lengths. If you have a waterline of 9 feet your max speed is 4 knots, if it’s 36 feet the speed is 8 knots. The longer boat is only twice as fast although it is four times as long, diminishing returns.

(Some people consider speed as a safety feature. I do not agree. On the contrary speed is many times an excuse for not having a seaworthy boat. The same goes for emergency transmitters. When you can call for help you pay less attention to the seaworthiness of your boat.)

Should you ever happen to sail on the moon where the gravity is less you will notice that your boat is slower, on Jupiter it will be faster.

Here on earth, in heavy weather, the small boat and the ocean surface move up and down. They are subjected to acceleration and it’s impossible to detect if you are subjected to acceleration or gravity or a combination of both. That is according to Einstein.

When the surface water in which the small boat travels is upwards moving the gravitational force is stronger than when it is downwards moving. Therefore the speed of the small boat can be much higher in the trough than on the crest.

On the crest the boat is much lighter, but so is her surrounding water, because the lesser gravitational force affects water and boat the same. Therefore she does not float up, her waterline stays the same. Still being lighter she has lost stability and heels over. Some people mistakenly think that the healing over is due to more wind on the crest. That is not so. The distance between her centres of gravity and flotation is the same but her weight is less; therefore her righting moment is less. (To be more exact there may be a little more wind on the crest, but loss of stability is the main culprit. Typically half the boat’s stability is lost on the crest due to the centrifugal force. In extreme cases all stability is lost.)

At the crest, the centrifugal force diminishes the gravity. The boat’s accompanying wave therefore has less restoring force and hence, it slows down. But a cruising boat cannot sail faster than that wave. The resistance increases. The slowing down releases kinetic energy, which momentarily becomes her dominant driving force much more so than her sail power.

As the boat is sailing to windward up and down the waves, wind energy and kinetic energy are alternatively propelling the boat, much in the same way as kinetic and potential energy are alternatively driving a pendulum as it swings back and forth.

Watching a wave approach one easily gets the impression that a mountain of water is moving towards one. This is not so. Surface water is moving in a circular pattern much in the same way as wind sometimes can create waves in high grass. If nature had not figured out this neat way coasts would be flooded in storms as immense volumes of water would have been transported to the beaches with each wave.

The circulation on the crest is with the wind and in the trough against the wind.

Sailing with the wind and with the boat on the crest the circulation acts as a helping hand. This is fortunate because the boat, due to the weak gravitational field, cannot move very fast through the water. With the wind in the trough the boat is met with a contrary circulation but now there is a stronger gravitational field and the boat is again helped and can now move faster through the water.

When sailing against the wind in the trough one does not experience much of a problem because the circulation is with the boat. It is on the crest that the difficulties accumulate. There the circulation is against you. The gravity is weak and therefore the boat looses stability and heels over. The heeled boat has less driving force and more resistance. On top of that it cannot travel through the water as fast as before because the weaker gravity makes the waves go slower. Everything seems to be against you.

But do not give up because surprisingly there is no need to worry. Again nature has found a neat solution. The surface water is, as mentioned above, moving in a circular pattern. All circular movements, by law of nature, create centrifugal forces. This one is no exception. The resultant of the centrifugal force and gravity points to the centre of the earth at the crest and trough; they combine their forces in the trough and subtract them on the crest. Midway between crest and trough the centrifugal force is horizontal; being centrifugal it cover angels. Now the amazing fact is that the resultant of the centrifugal and gravitational forces is always, and I repeat, always, perpendicular to the sea surface. Gravitationally speaking uphill and downhill is an illusion. Gravitationally speaking the sea surface is flat. It takes no energy to move up a wave face nor do you gain any going down one. That is on condition that you are moving in a circular pattern with the surface water. A drifting boat, flotsam and jetsam is living proof of this. They move up and down wave surfaces without spending any energy.

A super tanker is not affected by waves shorter than itself and therefore people designing such things have no reason to reflect over what happens to smaller boats on a smaller scale. Consequently there are many things those people cannot teach small boat sailors. Not because they are stupid but because they are not familiar with and not interested in the subject.

Big is big and small is small and different laws apply to each and nothing will ever change that.

The picture shows the first parts of the electrical system. One charger CHAMP III 12v/7A from PRIMEPOWER It is very compact and waterproof, ideal for a little boat.

There is also six 17 amp hours Exide Sonnenschein gel batteries. Gel batteries have a better cycle life, they can be cycled deeper and more times than Agm batteries. Agm batteries can are better for starting engines but on board there is no engine.

More about gel batteries

Forward of the forward bulkhead I have now installed a pump, manual of course. I do not expect a leak there, but when for example I am beating into the south east trades at the equator it can for a Swede be uncomfortable hot with hatches closed. Now I can keep the forward hatch open and now and then at ease pump out any spray water.

At the bottom of the fore hatch is a 16 mm stainless pipe in form of a triangle. To it I can tie down anchors and other stuff to keep them in their place. This is important.

To prevent water enter the back way I use a valve. Most marine hardware comes in King Size therefore I remade the handle to a smaller one. Also before the valve only closed one way, the wrong way to the left, now I can close it to the right.

Below the original handle and the new one.

The above picture looks afoul, but the results are nice. Its a styrofoam mold covered with packing tape. Then I glassfibre it and get when done I get a nice detail.

Here is a mock up for the fore hatch to see how big an anchor I can stove.

The screw holds down the back window which can be opened in nice warm weather. The nut is bronze which will be glassed in with epoxy.

More later.

The picture below shows the essential yuloh geometry. There are three points of importance. The centre of effort or pressure on the oarblade. The fulcrum and the point were the rope is attached. If you draw a straight line betwwen the centre of effort and the point were the rope is attached the fulcrum shall be a inch or two above that line to keep the thing in balance. Exactly how much is depends on personal preference.

The curvature of the traditional yuloh fixes these three points. On my boat it is not possible to have a curved yuloh as I will store part of my yuloh belov the fore deck in a carbon fibre tube. My yuloh is therefore straight.

To get the essential geometry I have added a removable piece at right angle to the shaft. At the end of that is the attachment point. By varying the length I can adjust the balance. That solves the problem of stowing the oar. It is also very convenient because I can use a straight pipe as oar shaft.

An other thing. Some people like to have the rope doing the twisting of the oar blade at each stroke. I do not agree, neither do the Japanese scullers. They have a technique that differs from the. They have a small handle at right angle to the oar shaft a bit like wrench to twist the blade to the desired angle. In that way you have control and can use the oar blade as an variable pitch propeller. Going against strong winds you use little twist and get much power but the boat mows slow. In calm weather you use much twist and the boat goes faster.

The yuloh traditionally uses a ball and socket at the fulcrum. It is simple to make but a universal joint like mine shown below has several advantages. As a yuloh replaces an engine and I use it a lot I do think it is worth to spend time and money on a better fitting. First the oar cannot jump out of the socket. Second it enables one to scull in reverse and row the stern around. This is very convenient when one maneuvers in tight places. And I do like to get into tricky places to discover interesting things.

CLICK ON THE PICTURES TO MAKE THEM BIGGER
To make the rig adaptable to every wind condition she carries plenty of spars: one topp mast, two light wind booms, two hard wind booms one sprit and one big yuloh to be used when there is no wind. If I had them on deck there would be no place for things like solar panels. I carry them below deck in carbon tubes. The picture below shows the holes where the spars will enter.
This arrangement has the advantages of lowering the center of gravity and reducinging wind resistance. The spars and the mast are easily accessible from the main hatch. I dont have to go on deck to adapt the rig.

The picture below shows the spars in the main cabin, the bed room. The two vertical struts support the deck beam.

The forward ends of the tubes drain overboard. Here I am building up a support of aluminum netting for the glass fiber which will connec the tubes to the drains.