ARC as a way to look at how different types of boats sail

[robert sailor]

Yes Monte those squalls were quite something, I've done a lot of sailing over the years and while that part of the ocean is pretty benign those squalls were the largest I have ever sailed in. We were in a few that took 2 hours to sail through and then we got a half to one hour break and we were into the next one. We had winds to 40 knots at times and yes we also got the SW winds on the backside of that system for close to 2 days. We left a day and a half before the ARC. We saw lightning all around us at times but we were never really close to a cell like you were. Going really quick only works for short periods of time unless you have a good crew. None the less sounds like you had a successful crossing, congratulations to you and your crew. Look forward to hooking up with you somewhere along the way. Merry Christmas, Robert PS Great pic's, I call them god clouds!

[Polux]

Originally Posted by monte

...
The three lagoon 400s all arrived within 12 hrs of each other.
I think the poorly sailed boats mentioned above are more likely to be shorter handed, non racing owners and crew that were taking it easy the same as we did. Racing for 2-3 weeks isn't everyone's cuppa.
..

Thanks for posting. Yes averages is what matters to me and certainly it is no coincidence that the three Lagoon 400 arrived within 12 hours of each others and it was not the only case, the same can be said about the Xc45, Jeanneau Ds 54 and generally about many boats of the same type that arrived relatively close. When you have almost all boats of the same type arriving close, like the ones I mentioned above and have all the old designed boats of the same type arriving last on the rally, many days behind, that means something about that type of boats while being sailed by average cruising crews.

Merry Christmas to you and all that have been following this thread, that are many more than the ones that posted here. A special thanks to all that made known to me through private messages that they really appreciated my work here.

[Polux]

Originally Posted by robert sailor

Yes Monte those squalls were quite something, I've done a lot of sailing over the years and while that part of the ocean is pretty benign those squalls were the largest I have ever sailed in. We were in a few that took 2 hours to sail through and then we got a half to one hour break and we were into the next one. We had winds to 40 knots at times and yes we also got the SW winds on the backside of that system for close to 2 days. We left a day and a half before the ARC. We saw lightning all around us at times but we were never really close to a cell like you were. Going really quick only works for short periods of time unless you have a good crew. None the less sounds like you had a successful crossing, congratulations to you and your crew. Look forward to hooking up with you somewhere along the way. Merry Christmas, Robert PS Great pic's, I call them god clouds!

It seems that squalls associated to thunderstorms are on the rise and not only on the Atlantic. This year on late September on the Tyrrenean med they took place practically everyday, sometimes associated with tornados, big localized electrical storms, so big that I tried to avoid them as much as i could, sometimes changing destinations. Frightening stuff when you are on a boat specially because you don't know exactly what to expect. On previous years I never saw anything similar to what I saw this year.

Monte and Robert, may we know how many composed your crew and from thpose how many sailed the boat? I say that because it is assumed that all that sail on a sailboat are crew, but as we know, some are just passengers.

[robert sailor]

Hey Polux,
My wife and I and a young lady looking for a ride to St. Maarten. I tend to sail all day starting around 4-5am and finishing around 9:00pm. The girls allowed me to sleep at night but would wake me if we had any appreciable change in the winds, which happened quite often. R

[monte]

On board Sephina we had Jen and myself and our dog Balrog, who have been sailing the med for the past few years, as well as 2 crew who we met online and in person 2 weeks before the crossing. We all got along very well and although the crew had some experience, it wasn't enough to know what to do in shithitfan situation, such as a broach, parts line, sudden wind increase, autopilot resetting etc. this led me to the decision to slow down a bit at night, drop the PS, sail under jib only etc. I figured 22 days of relaxed sailing and nursing the Sephina was preferable to 18 of pressing our luck. Some of the other boats had a bit of damage, a couple of torn headsails and mains, a broken spin halyard bock etc. which forced them to slow down. Another couple lost their headsail and AP so had to hand steer for most of the crossing doing 1 hr on one off for 18 hrs then heaving to for 6 each night it get some rest. So many of the slower boats have reasons other than poorly sailed for slower passage times than their equivalent fully crewed models.

[jahzoo]

Originally Posted by donradcliffe

Peter,

Thanks for the posting, and it looked like the boat is fun to drive. What was the foresail you had up in the video, and was that with full mainsail also?? How often did you use that combination, and did you reduce sail at night??

Hi Don,

foresail was strom asym. spinnaker (114 sqm). and mainsail was full from Las Palmas to St. Lucia. This was our main combination since we lost our 2 large spinnakers after 3 days.
There was not a lot of wind after day 5 and we used one repaired large spinnaker at day (it broke 10 times !) and needed permanent attention and reduced sails at night (mostly storm spi & main, sometimes jib & main).
We were only 3 sailing crew and the last days only 2 sailing crew because we had one seriously injured person after a spinnaker-sheet accident. So we had to reduce the sails in the night to manage with 1 crew watching the autopilot and avoid sail changes.

Best
Peter

[Polux]

The performance on the Philocat was even more impressive due to the short crew. I thought they were 4, not 3. Chapeau

Regarding Robert, that is really a short crew but I assume your wife knows how to sail and only needs help when things got rough. I have a problem with that, mine always refused to learn how to sail. She says that she does not like it and she is on her right. On several days passages what I have to do is to make all day and all night having some snaps during the day (she sleeps at night) while she stands watch.

After 3 or 4 days like this I get tired. I have to do it more often (even if my wife dislikes it) to get used to do it without being tired or the best would be to convince one of my kids to do a passage like that with me, but they have their lives and it is no easy.

Thanks to all for the replies.

[robert sailor]

Originally Posted by Polux

The performance on the Philocat was even more impressive due to the short crew. I thought they were 4, not 3. Chapeau

Regarding Robert, that is really a short crew but I assume your wife knows how to sail and only needs help when things got rough. I have a problem with that, mine always refused to learn how to sail. She says that she does not like it and she is on her right. On several days passages what I have to do is to make all day and all night having some snaps during the day (she sleeps at night) while she stands watch.

After 3 or 4 days like this I get tired. I have to do it more often (even if my wife dislikes it) to get used to do it without being tired or the best would be to convince one of my kids to do a passage like that with me, but they have their lives and it is no easy.

Thanks to all for the replies.

Just spoke to my wife and she says she is not a sailor she is a traveler but she knows enough to wake me up when needed and she is good to stand a watch for 6 hours while I sleep, her words not mine. My take: She is a wonderful companion and would go up the mast at night if need be as she has balls. She is a great help to me no matter what we are doing, I would not like going without her but I agree she is not really a sailor. R

[Polux]

Originally Posted by robert sailor

Just spoke to my wife and she says she is not a sailor she is a traveler but she knows enough to wake me up when needed and she is good to stand a watch for 6 hours while I sleep, her words not mine. My take: She is a wonderful companion and would go up the mast at night if need be as she has balls. She is a great help to me no matter what we are doing, I would not like going without her but I agree she is not really a sailor. R

Well, I say the same about mine, great companion and I cannot blame her for not liking to sail or not liking to stand a watch at night but when things are really tough she had showed that she is up to it: This year I got caught on a F10 on the nasty med seas, stood 24 hours at the wheel and with a malfunctioning autopilot I preferred not leave the boat on autopilot to do the navigation, namely to be able to look where should we go to have some shelter. Even if deeply seasick and vomiting she worked on the plotter till she could find an option, a good one. When we arrived there were already there two ships on anchor waiting for the weather to clear.

[jahzoo]

Originally Posted by Polux

The performance on the Philocat was even more impressive due to the short crew. I thought they were 4, not 3. Chapeau

Regarding Robert, that is really a short crew but I assume your wife knows how to sail and only needs help when things got rough. I have a problem with that, mine always refused to learn how to sail. She says that she does not like it and she is on her right. On several days passages what I have to do is to make all day and all night having some snaps during the day (she sleeps at night) while she stands watch.

After 3 or 4 days like this I get tired. I have to do it more often (even if my wife dislikes it) to get used to do it without being tired or the best would be to convince one of my kids to do a passage like that with me, but they have their lives and it is no easy.

Thanks to all for the replies.

Yes we was 4 crew, 3 of us responsible for sailing and one for cooking, medical and morale management.
We definitively had 3 hot meals per day and Franziska did an incredibile job on Stefan's highly infected leg which had double size as normal, changing every 3 hours the dressing, cooling, communicating with doctors, etc.
Frankly I would have freaked without her medical management.

It was not only once that she came in the night to wake up Sven or me when the boat got faster and faster while we was dreaming nicely instead of watching the sails

[Polux]

Ok, good news for the ones that liked this tread: I am back with the ARC, this time the ARCW, the one that is a circumnavigation around the world. There is one almost starting and other at some months of finishing.

Nobody is racing here, but just cruising and even if crews matter a lot, the boats also, specially because after having done 2/3 of a circumnavigation the ones that did not know how to sail them should already have figured that out

So we can see that they left cape town to São Salvador in Brazil. They let go first the slower boats, a Cat Manta 40, an Outborn 44 and a Meta Dalu 47 (Aluminium deriveur) and more then half a day later all others.

The fastest boat on the fleet is Nexus a 59ft semi custom nice performance catamaran followed closely by a X 612 and surprisingly by a Jeanneau Sun Odyssey 49. Behind all at almost the same distance, a X45, a Lagoon 620, an Amel Super Maramu 2000, a Grand Soleil 50, a Swan 51. Slightly behind an Hanse 47.

The slower boats besides the ones that started first are Taswell 58 AS that besides being the slower(by far) is going to the coast with some problem, and not much behind the middle of the fleet, a Jeanneau SO 39 and an Halberg Rassy 53.

On the fleet there are other mass production modern cruisers doing well: a Beneteau 40 and a Lagoon 380.

More when the other one starts and on this one in some days.

You can follow here;

http://yb.tl/worldarc2014#

I had said on this thread (or it was on the other one about bluewater mass production boats?) that I liked a lot the Jeanneau 49i, about another one doing a circumnavigation, I guess this one shows why I like it, besides being a nice looking boat: Right now is going at over 9k

[Polux]

The world ArC 2015 has started, in fact the fastest have already done the small first leg between Sta Lucia Island and Stª Marta in Colombia. All downwind sailing with 17/20K wind. One those conditions the fastest group (already arrived) was composed by an Oyster 575, followed by an Amel 54, a Xp44 and a First 44.7. On a second group, still at sea, a Oyster 41, a Moody 47, a Lagoon 620.

The slowest boats: a Rival 38 (the smallest boat on the fleet), a Hans Christian 43, a Trintella 45.

You can follow here:
World Cruising Club - Fleet Viewer

[Brob2]

Originally Posted by Polux

the fastest group (already arrived) was composed by ... a First 44.7

Not a surprise she's fast, no doubt lost her keel on the journey and now has very low wetted surface...

[Polux]

Originally Posted by Brob2

Not a surprise she's fast, no doubt lost her keel on the journey and now has very low wetted surface...

Don't now of any First 44.7 (and the are hundreds) that had lost its keel do you?

[Polux]

On other thread I had a look at the 2013 ARC, I think it has relevant information to this thread so I will post it also here:

Originally Posted by yeloya

Hi Polux,
...
My experience is that (apple to apple) same size and type (cruiser to cruiser, racer to racer) and for the same water length, cats are 10 to 25 % faster depending on sea state, AWA and wind force.
The same was confirmed by the GB 62 skipper that I had met. He said "we were never overtaken in any race by a monohull shorter than us, including Volvo 60".
..

I believe you were talking about Zenyatta a Gunboat 62 that makes a lot of racing, as a experienced racing skipper a basic very experienced crew and accept "guests" as extra "crew" ?

They had made the 2013 ARC so let’s have a look at that one: I was not impressed with their performance and impressed with the performance of a Knierim 65, a monohull performance cruiser of about the same size of the Gunboat 62 (more 3ft) that beat it by almost 5days!!!while a much smaller Marten 49 (13ft smaller), another monohull performance cruiser only lost about 10 hours for the Gunboat 62.

Off course these are all very expensive Carbon boats but I would say that the ones that really impressed me was the results of much less expensive non carbon boats, like a X50 that only lost 25 hours to the Gunboat 62 and the first 40ft to arrive (cats and monohulls) a production performance cruiser, a Pogo 12.50 that arrived about two days after the Gunboat 62. Fact is that the 40ft inexpensive performance cruiser (Pogo 12.50) was faster than all the 34 catamarans doing the ARC, with exception of the Gunboat 62, and the Explorer 60 but off course the Pogo did not use the engine while the Explorer 60 motored for 52 hours, without that the 40ft Pogo cruisers would only be beaten by the Gunboat 62. All the cats, with the exception of a single Lagoon 380 were much bigger than the 40ft Pogo, mostly between 45ft and 60ft.

That was not the only relatively small monohull that was very fast, a Dufour 45e, A Grand Soleil 43 and a Wauquiez 45, all a mass production performance cruisers, lost not much for the Pogo 12.50 (a very fast boat), respectively 27 hours, 26 hours and 11 hours. They beat all the cats of similar size and in fact almost all of then. And if we discount the engine hours (none for the monohulls, 45 for the Tournier Freydis 49 and 29hours for the Catana 48) probably they would be right behind the much bigger Lagoon 560, that used the engine for 31 hours.

Regarding multihulls the most impressive result was maybe the one of a Lagoon 560. That is true that while the monohulls and the Gunboat did not touch the engine the Lagoon motored during 31 hours but only lost 2 days 5 hours to the Gunboat 62 and an Explorer 60 that even if motoring a lot (52hours) only took more one day and a half to do the crossing.

If we look now at the Handicap rating of the boats (boats by arriving order) and their performance on the ARC that performance don’t look strange, in fact with few exceptions, like on the ARC+, they are performing according with their attributed rating. The only exceptions are the Ocean explorer 60 (Cat), that seems a bit over rated to me and the Lagoon 560 that seems very well sailed to me and the Catana 58 that should have done better.

Knierim 65 GER 1.518
Gunboat 62 USA 1.354
Marten 49 FRA 1.238
X-50 ITA 1.161
Ocean Explorer 60 1.336
Grand Soleil 56 1.162
Hanse 575 1.164
Pogo 12.50 GBR 1.176
Lagoon 560 POL 1.088
Tournier Freydis 49 1.184
Catana 58 1.238
Wauquiez Cent. 45s 1.109
Grand Soleil 43 1.079
Dufour 45E 1.104
X-482 NED 1.049 11/ 14:48:22
I am not saying (at all) that cats are slower then monohulls, or the opposite, just saying that you have to look at each boat (cat and monohull) and at their comparative downwind ratings to have a fair idea of each boat potential. Saying in generic terms that Cats (or monohulls) are faster the multihulls proves again not to make sense.

https://www.worldcruising.com/conten...l%20211213.pdf
https://www.worldcruising.com/conten...s%20211213.pdf

On the 2013 and 2014 ARC editions they have proved that the guys that are attributing the ratings are doing an excellent job and that, in what regards well sailed boats (the fastest) they have a performance close to the one predicted by the rating.