Squeezing in berths and heads

A READER called Eric asks: “Why do boat builders insist on putting TWO toilets/heads in a boat as small as 32 feet? C'mon, how many 400-square-foot apartments/houses on land have two bathrooms?”

Well, Eric, if I had to take a flying guess I’d say it was the boatbuilder’s sales department that demanded two heads. Apparently it’s a major selling point, especially among the fairer sex. It’s the same reason that builders insist on putting six berths in a four-berth boat, and four berths in a two-berth boat. The sales manager wants to be able to boast that his 25-footer is a family boat that can accommodate Mom, Pop, and four kids on weekend jaunts, unlike the competition whose 26-footer only has berths for two adults and two kids.

It sounds better in the ads, and looks good in the color brochure, but no boat designer in his right mind would come up with this idea on his own. He knows better than anyone how awkward and inconvenient too many berths are in a small boat, and what a wicked waste of space. He also knows how little time people spend in the head and how hard it is to compensate for the extra space a second head steals from the interior.

But he has to earn an honest nickel, and the boatbuilder is the boss, so he grinds his teeth and squeezes in a couple of berths here and a couple of heads there, knowing full well that he’s creating a travesty of boat design.

There are a few traditional designs that follow more normal rules of practical and esthetic design and, ironically, they usually cost a lot more than the plastic Best Westerns that fill our marinas.

So, Eric, I’m afraid there’s only one thing left to do, and that’s to take yourself to an old-fashioned naval architect and commission him or her to design you a boat with as few bunks and heads as you consider appropriate. You will instantly become that architect’s dream customer, and you might even feel your feet being kissed, but whether you’ll be able to find a builder willing to create this aberrant kind of boat, one so far removed from the modern norm, is quite another matter.

Today’s Thought

Change doth unknit the tranquil strength of men.

— Matthew Arnold, A Question 

Tailpiece

“Did you visit that spiritualist last night?”

“Yeah.”

“Was she a good one?”

“No, just a medium.”

Dreams in small increments

CHUCK PAINE, one of America’s best-known smallboat architects spoke to me in my sleep the other night. He said he wished he’d squared off the bottom of the keel of his sweet little Frances 26/Morris 26 design.  If the corners had been sharp instead of rounded, she would have gone to windward even better, he said.  I don’t know why he told me this, but I have to believe him. I have seen the little winglets on Boeing planes that achieve the same purpose.

It has taken me a long time to appreciate how small details like this make a big difference on yachts. Inches of freeboard here, square feet of sail area there.

Another famous North American boat designer, Ted Brewer, once told me he’d wished he’d given one of his designs an inch more sheer at the bow. An inch? On a 40-footer? “It would have made a big difference visually,” he assured me.

You probably know as well as I do how a mainsail can start lifting right next to the mast when it’s backwinded by the jib. There are days when it seems to do this on purpose. But it takes only the smallest adjustments to put things right: you can ease the jib sheet an inch, or sheet in the mainsail an inch, or tighten the clew outhaul an inch. That’s all it takes to make the difference. Anything more heavy-handed marks you as a neophyte.

I used to scoff at the notion that an extra inch of beam could make a difference to a boat’s performance.  After all, it was regarded as a minor miracle if, in the olden days of wooden construction, a boat was finished within two or three inches of her designed overall length.

But an inch of beam does in fact make a difference because the interior volume gained through that inch stretches the whole length of the boat.  It’s more in the middle and less at the ends, admittedly, but neverthless it’s not just an inch across the belly section.

I used to sail on a old wooden boat in San Diego that had an extra wooden skin added to the outside of the hull. It was only about 3/4 inch thick, but over the 35-foot length of the boat, it must have weighed a ton and I imagined  the boat must have sunk a good couple of inches in the water. But an old salt came on board and asked the skipper: “How much extra freeboard did you gain?”

I forget now exactly how far she rose out of the water when that extra skin was added, but it did give me furiously to think about how much the extra volume of water displaced all around the hull must have weighed, and, in consequence, made her float higher.

I have more respect now, when people tell me about small changes that have made big differences.  I don’t scoff any more.  If Chuck Paine says square edges are faster than round edges I’m happy to accept it. I wish he’d give me advance warning of when he’s going to appear in my dreams, though. I’m sure I could think of some good questions to ask him.

Today’s Thought

Dreaming permits each and every one of us to be quietly and safely insane every night of our lives.
— Dr. William C. Dement, Newsweek, 30 Nov 59

Tailpiece

“I had a date with Jack last night.”
“How’d it go?”
“He had the nerve to try to kiss me.”
“Wow, I bet you were furious.”
“Yeah, every darned time.”

(Drop by every Monday, Wednesday, Friday for a new Mainly about Boats column.)

Beware the overhang

LONG OVERHANGS look very elegant on a sailboat. Many racing designs used them at one time or another, boats such as the Thirty Square Meter class, which is limited almost entirely by sail area. Designers searching for the fastest hull for given sail area came up with slim, narrow boats with minimum underwater surface, and long, long, overhangs to increase speed when the boat heeled. But these were never ocean racing boats.

Long, low overhangs are dangerous in open water. They pound badly in a head sea and are easily boarded by large breaking waves. It can be very treacherous to work on a long narrow foredeck awash in heavy weather.

In large quartering seas, such a boat is almost uncontrollable. Each passing swell lifts the long aft overhang and tries to screw the boat around to the broadside-on position. The lever-arm provided by the long overhang means that it takes comparatively little power to spin the boat around. If that happens at speed, the boat will broach and probably capsize, with a good chance of losing the mast. For that reason, most seaboats have only a moderate bow overhang and very little stern overhang.

Thirty Square Meters and others of that type are wonderful performers in calm water but don’t be tempted to take them too far out to sea.         

Today's Thought

Danger comes the sooner when despised.

— Publilius Syrus, Sententiae

Tailpiece

"How's that book on anti-gravity?"
"It's great. I can hardly put it down."

(Drop by every Monday, Wednesday, Friday for a new Mainly about Boats column.)