 |
| Ericson |
Farrier |
Seacart |
Melges |
|
| LOA |
28'6" |
32' |
30' |
31'10" |
| LWL |
24'2" |
31' |
||
| Beam |
10'6" |
23'4" | 21'10" |
9'10" |
| Displacement |
7500 |
3450 |
2353 |
3900 |
| Main | 200 |
408 |
||
| Jib |
224 |
230 |
||
| Total SA |
424 |
638 |
667 |
699 |
| SA/D |
17.71 |
44.71 |
60.33 |
45.14 |
The difference in Sail Area to
Displacement ratio explains why we putter around at 5-6 knots in the
Ericson, and hit 12 knots the second time we sailed the Farrier, in a
light breeze.
The Seacart looks like a Farrier with a pod in the center instead of a
hull: no accomodation but crazy fast. While Farrier's boats are
never meant to be sailed with the
main hull out of the water, the Seacart obviously is. For me, the
Farrier is a perfect compromise between performance and comfort: slower
than the Seacart, but at least you can sleep and cook a meal in
it. Faster in just about all conditions, and more comfortable,
than the Melges. I'm a big fan of Melges and other sportboats,
but you don't see a whole lot of them on the San Francisco bay, because
their sail area to displacement ratios put them in the range of
"extreme ULDB" for a monohull, while comparable numbers are still
"cruiser/racer" for multihulls.
Top speed on Lake Erie was just under 18 knots, in 20+ knots of wind, close reaching. Here's a link to some videos by Haz Mat.
We hit over 18 knots, in a 26+ knot gust on San Francisco Bay. This is what my friend's 10-year-old kid was doing at the time. That pretty much says it all about the stability of a trimaran.
Max sustained speed so far (over the approx. 10 second GPS sample period) is 15.6 knots. Single reefed main and jib. Couldn't really say what sail trim was like because I was just trying to hold on and make sure nothing broke. Plus it was like sailing into a firehose. I am not a racer so hitting these speeds has been purely a matter of chance as opposed to carefully trimming the sails and tuning the rig. I'm perfectly happy puttering along at 12-14 knots most of the time, paying moderate attention to trim.
Because Ian Farrier's building techniques are relatively advanced, there aren't a lot of books that will actually tell you how to build a boat this way, but there are still some that will give you lots of helpful advice. Some of my favorites, and the ones I think most relevant to modern composite boat construction are:
Top speed on Lake Erie was just under 18 knots, in 20+ knots of wind, close reaching. Here's a link to some videos by Haz Mat.
We hit over 18 knots, in a 26+ knot gust on San Francisco Bay. This is what my friend's 10-year-old kid was doing at the time. That pretty much says it all about the stability of a trimaran.
Max sustained speed so far (over the approx. 10 second GPS sample period) is 15.6 knots. Single reefed main and jib. Couldn't really say what sail trim was like because I was just trying to hold on and make sure nothing broke. Plus it was like sailing into a firehose. I am not a racer so hitting these speeds has been purely a matter of chance as opposed to carefully trimming the sails and tuning the rig. I'm perfectly happy puttering along at 12-14 knots most of the time, paying moderate attention to trim.
Because Ian Farrier's building techniques are relatively advanced, there aren't a lot of books that will actually tell you how to build a boat this way, but there are still some that will give you lots of helpful advice. Some of my favorites, and the ones I think most relevant to modern composite boat construction are:
- Fiberglass Boatbuilding for Amateurs (Ken Hankinson)
- The Gougeon Brothers on Boat Construction (Meade Gougeon)
- Boatbuilding with Baltek Duracore (David Brown, useful even
if you're not using Duracore)
- Understanding Aircraft Composite Construction (Zeke Smith)
- Skene's Elements of Yacht Design (ed. Francis S. Kinney)
- Boatbuilding (H. Chappelle)
- Any and all of Thomas F. Jones' books