The Best Two man dinghy this century?

Originally posted by skslr Deliberately designing a boat that is a pig to right

Apologies sksir, you did not say capsise but 'that is a pig to right'. Again a
strange design criteria! I was suggesting the disadvantage related to the
draining time.

I've always found it is double bottomed boats that invert very quickly - some would say this is a good thing, but on a small puddle where the mast hits the bottom it certainly isn't. The amount of time righting an inverted D/B boat must easily make up for bailing time on a S/B.

Originally posted by JimC Originally posted by NeilP If DB boats have so many disadvantages, why is it that no-one has built a single- bottomed FD in the last 25 years? Another good example... The truth is, of course, that badly designed boats have disadvantages, and its not intrinsically to do with double bottom, single bottom or anything else... In many ways designing a really good one design boat is a more difficult challenge than designing a really good development class boat because there are so many more things that have to be right in order for the boat to succeed, and so much less of an existing framework to build on... I think very often its these other factors - ergonomics, ease of production and so on that are more important in establishing a class than the high profile things like performance. Plus of course the most important of all - enthusiasm and competence in the class organisation... The thing that impresses me most about the Bethwaite family one designs is their strike rate: there have been a fewer Bethwaite one designs than there are Howlett, Morrison, Proctor or whomever, but a far higher percentage has gained enough critical mass internationally to get as far as ISAF recognised status - and kept it...

Have just got a copy of higher performance sailing and
while it seems to give very limited credit to any design
that wasn't by a Bethwaite the boats they have designed
have been designed in a very thorough, logical,
engineering sort of way which is detailed in the book.
Its a good read, a little technical and is essentially a
couple of hundred page Bethwaite advert but I would
recomend it to anyone with a serious interest in boat
design.    

Originally posted by NeilP If DB boats have so many disadvantages, why is it that no-one has built a single-bottomed FD in the last 25 years?

Another good example... The truth is, of course, that badly designed boats have disadvantages, and its not intrinsically to do with double bottom, single bottom or anything else...

In many ways designing a really good one design boat is a more difficult challenge than designing a really good development class boat because there are so many more things that have to be right in order for the boat to succeed, and so much less of an existing framework to build on...

I think very often its these other factors - ergonomics, ease of production and so on that are more important in establishing a class than the high profile things like performance. Plus of course the most important of all - enthusiasm and competence in the class organisation...

The thing that impresses me most about the Bethwaite family one designs is their strike rate: there have been a fewer Bethwaite one designs than there are Howlett, Morrison, Proctor or whomever, but a far higher percentage has gained enough critical mass internationally to get as far as ISAF recognised status - and kept it...

Originally posted by oldarn Originally posted by skslr Originally posted by oldarn Certainly boats that don't keep falling over don't need a double floor!   <FONT face=Helv size=2><FONT face=Helv size=2> <P dir=ltr>If this would be true, why do open keel boat classes change to double-floor cockpits???? <P dir=ltr>Does an AltO "fall over" even less often than a keelboat??? <P dir=ltr>Are double-floors just marketing-nonsense by people not able to build single-floor dinghies, and most of us did not notice it???? <P dir=ltr>Sorry, don't think so. <P dir=ltr>Not engineering a proper double floor into the AltO while completely changing rigg and deck sounds like a missed opportunity to me. <P dir=ltr>But please prove me wrong and tell us about your OWN experience in building and sailing prototypes w/ completely self-draining and partially self draining (like RS400) double floors. <P dir=ltr>And afterwards maybe you could share your experiences on how goose-winging the kite (like RS200) and prototypes with a maybe more "conventional" (= smaller angles like RS400, L4000) pole setup sailed compared to the final version in regard to VMG. Thank you! Surely, keelboats went double bottomed so yachties didn't get their feet wet, or their wellies full of water! There are many great double-bottomed classes. The topper, flexible but great. The laser, long lasting but heavy, and skiff classes. Are there any single bottomed skiffs? Re. the AltO missing an opportunity, much time was spent deliberatig on whether or not it should be d/b, or in the case of a boat with rocker semi-d/b. With the AltO carrying far less water than a 5o5, after capsize, due to the much longer bow-tank, the disadvantages of d/b far outweighed the advantages. However an innovative semi- d/b design exists. whether to new construction or a retrofit it would fit the same way with the addition of approx. 4kg. A further very relavant point is that the AltO has been designed to minimise capsize. In addition, after capsize, in most situations, is should not invert as do many d/b boats. Of course there is a disadvantage when capsizing most s/b boats. In my view there should be, in order to incourage seamanship! You are unlikely to win a race in a s/b boat after capsizing!

None of the Skiff classes are single bottomed, are they???

The "seamanship" question is an interesting one. One of the most basic
tenets of seamanship has always been that you should not go out in an
unseaworthy craft. It could reasonably be said that a boat that is harder to
recover from a capsize is less seaworthy - therefore it is actually poorer
seamanship to sail such a craft.

The idea that a capsize should result in a penalty is an old and
understandable one, but perhaps hard to argue these days. And if
maximising the penalty for a capsize was a good thing, one wonders
whether you simply should have even less buoyancy, so self-recovering is
impossible...... or sail Dragons around Cape Horn in
winter, without safety gear, since that would extract the ultimate penalty
for making mistakes.

Perhaps the ultimate "seamanlike" racing would be in safe boats that also
used the old rule that one was DSQd as soon as one capsized, even if you
could actually recover the boat and finish the race.

Either way, it's hard to say that a boat that recovers slowly from a capsize
is definitely more seamanlike.








Edited by Chris 249