Canoe stern vs ????

[Toccata]

Thankyou seighlor
2 year restoration. Designed and built by Pompei in Melbourne Australia in 1968.
Im currently refitting the Stuart 47 (on the other side of the jetty) as my long term live aboard. Conventional transom incl a big lazaret area. "Horses for courses"

[mvweebles]

My wife likes to say "Real boats have round butts." She also believes the roundedness is more whale-like and at peace with the sea.

I miss the extra storage of a transom laz, but overall, love the good looks. She seems to track very efficiently but that's probably a parent's boast.

Weebles
1970 Willard 36 Hull #40
Wm Garden design

[Bowdrie]

Had I more years left in me, (and won the lottery,) I would have had this built.
Perhaps the best refinement of a long line of pilot cutters by Colin Archer.
Without quibbling over inches, she's 40'LOD x 34' LWL x 14' beam x 6' draft. Displacement? ~17 tons +/- depending upon fit-out and loading.
Cold molded and glassed over, ~ 2-1/2" thick hull.
When standing on the cabin sole the WL is ~at your knees, when you lift the sole boards it's ~30" down to the keel.
Huge amount of room for a ton of spare parts/gear/tools, and all under the waterline.
In plan view, superimposing the deck profile over the waterplane profile shows the immense amount of reserve buoyancy.
She'll ride the big rollers like a Cadillac, and work to weather in a North Sea gale.
You can climb up the ratlines and work aloft in safety, and if she ever got rolled the mast isn't going anywhere.
Enough clear deck space to hold a dance, carry all the toys, and be able to stretch out or actually walk around on.

[Kettlewell]

Our former boat, the K. Aage Nielsen designed Snow Star, had a gorgeous stern, and she sailed very well, though we never had her offshore in any kind of serious weather. She really slipped through the water for a big, heavy, and relatively beamy boat. But, OTOH I've sailed some transom-sterned boats that were great offshore sailors. The stern shape is not as important as the overall design. Here's what I wrote back in a previous thread on this topic: https://www.cruisersforum.com/forums...ers-72148.html

I used to own the K. Aage Nielsen designed 37-foot Snow Star, built of wood by the Walsted yard in Denmark. She was the type of design that inspired Bob Perry's Valiant, but I think Nielsen's boats were a bit prettier. In any case, despite being very heavy with a full keel she was an amazing sailor. My favorite sailing memory was leaving Penobscot Bay into the teeth of a southwest summer wind headed for the Cape Cod Canal--essentially right on the nose, which made navigation very easy as we just had to strap her down hard and tack every hour or so. I don't think we ever had less than 20 knots on the nose and sometimes more, so it could have been a real slog but on Snow Star it was perfectly comfortable making around 7 knots through the water, self steering most of the time, with a smooth ride, quiet down below. One overnighter and we arrived at the canal feeling like we'd been out for a day sail it was all so easy and smooth. Another Aage Nielsen designed double-ender named Holger Danske took overall honors in the Bermuda Race back in the 1980s, which enraged all the owners of the stripped out lightweight racing boats. There are great double-ended designs out there, and there are bad ones.

[JPA Cate]

Yes, the Holger Danske is down here in Tasmania, and she overtook us one time. I felt quite surprised! A round butted ketch! She's really a lovely boat. The sterns look very much the same. When I saw Snow Star's I said to myself, that looks like Holger Danske. We have a Wooden Boat Festival coming up in Hobart next February, and she may well be entered again.

Ann

[rslifkin]

A narrow stern has efficiency advantages at low speed and in following seas may behave a bit better, particularly if you have a fine bow with a deep forefoot that will want to dig in and attempt to bow steer as the stern lifts. Plus they look good if the overall design is good.

A wider stern has advantages as well. Depending on how it's shaped at the waterline it may or may not have much efficiency penalty at lower speeds. And it can have advantages as speed approaches or exceeds hull speed if the hull shape is designed to do that. In addition, if the bow shape is one that doesn't want to dig in badly when the stern is lifted, then the wider stern may be more livable in following seas. It'll surf better, so you'll make faster progress. And the combo of higher speed and a more buoyant stern greatly reduces the chance that you'll take a wave over the stern (and correspondingly makes use of davits more viable if desired).

[Bowdrie]

Originally Posted by rslifkin

A narrow stern has efficiency advantages at low speed and in following seas may behave a bit better,

A wider stern has advantages as well. Depending on how it's shaped at the waterline it may or may not have much efficiency penalty at lower speeds. And it can have advantages as speed approaches or exceeds hull speed

True enough. An example might be the early IOR boats, (and even the CCA boats before them,) where narrow stern sections reduce drag at lower SL ratios, (optimized for up-wind work, that's how you win races on a triangular course).
As downwind races, (point-to-point,) became more of the norm, designers started flattening out the stern sections to suppress the stern wave and giving the boats a higher prismatic coefficient.

[Statistical]

Originally Posted by Briis

Canoe stern does look much more salty, but that's not the point of it.

As said above, double ender's rear becomes your front when the situation turns into utter s*it sailing with bare poles in Force 10 with 30-foot crashing waves pooping you over like a temporary submarine, with or without drogue. Your nice shiny fancy fiddly wide and large plastic flat rear plate becomes your death sentence once the 15-ton wave crashes on you.

This is the common false dichotomy as if those are the only two options. Nearly 100% of seagoing vessels do not have a canoe stern.

[Bowdrie]

I've probably said it a billion times: The higher the performance capability of a boat, the higher the ability/expertise of the crew is needed to utilize it.
Boats that have a greater degree of symmetry between bow and stern sections, (like double enders, or even the early S&S Swans,) don't exhibit as much fore-and-aft shifting of the positions of CE/CLR/CLP as they heel.
As such they "take care of themselves" thru a wider range of conditions without constant input from the, (perhaps tired/worn out,) crew.
The "arrowhead" hull shapes are much less forgiving, they already start out with large amounts of asymmetry, and it gets worse as motion and heeling increase, positions of CE/CLR/CLP shift radically, they don't take care of themselves well, they require a lot more "active management", if you will, you gotta keep them "flat".

[TJ D]

Meh, I don't really know about the notion that wide transom boats are somehow inferior in weather. I guess the determining thing is whether or not the more modern design can surf effectively. Even in a N. Atlantic force 8 with a big sea, our Rocket Science handled things beautifully on autopilot, hitting 15 to 20 knots regularly. Never a splash into the cockpit.



I spent many hours wondrously enjoying watching big breakers form astern, and if they were big enough to break, we simply scooted ahead of the whitewater.



Granted, this was a one-off carbon speedster with a 54' waterline and a d/l of 72, but I was delighted with the hull shape.



For reference, I owned a CT41, Cabo Rico 38, and a 43' Roberts design steel cutter prior, and the 55 was a vastly superior 'sea boat' to any of the previous 3.



Go light, go fast, and have fun.


Nice to see some familiar names here, it's been a few years.

Cheers.

[Bowdrie]

Originally Posted by TJ D

I guess the determining thing is whether or not the more modern design can surf effectively.

Granted, this was a one-off carbon speedster with a 54' waterline and a d/l of 72, but I was delighted with the hull shape.

There are always "outliers" that are used to try to show a "norm", it's fallacious and misleading to compare a niche boat that represents perhaps a tiny fraction of 1% of the "cruising" boats out there.
I'm not sure how many middle aged or older "mom & pop" sailors on this forum are out there cruising by themselves in a "one off carbon speedster" with 54' of WL.
I've been out sailing on a 90' ketch, but there's no way I would use it as a comparison to the couple out there in their 40-footer.

Your key words about modern hull design were "surf effectively".
How long can a couple do that? How long can they do that if anything went wrong?
Outliers are what they are, the fringe, they never represent "center mass" of anything.

[Thomas1985]

We went with the pirates of the Caribbean stern

[JPA Cate]

Hello, massnspace,

Since Jim and I have known each other, there have been two boats with "raised transoms", and one sugar scoop with flat sections aft that will surf. No experience with canoe sterns, nor wineglass sterns. In the first two, one a 30 footer, the other 36, access to the steering quadrant was difficult. The sugar scoop is a one-off, so according to Bowdrie you might not want to consider it -- although to me, once you open yourself to one-off's built by shipwrights who have cruised for their own use, there are a small number of pretty wonderful boats out there.

Our boats have unabashedly had fin keels, cutaway forefoot ones; and skeg hung rudders.

I think you might be more likely to be satisfied if you are considering buying a new boat, if you figure out what kind of performance you like best, and maximize your choice around that, plus how the boat appeals to you in general. Perhaps there is a production boat that lights your candle enough.

Ann

[TJ D]

Well, we're just ordinary mom and pop sailors ourselves... It took some getting used to, but we managed very nicely over a lot of miles-West coast to Europe and back over 6 years.

The point for me mainly is that I've found the notion that the traditional hull shapes are somehow more seakindly to be lacking, having spent a ton of time offshore on both sides of the equation.



Glad to see you're still kicking around, Ann. Hi to Jim.

[JPA Cate]

Yes, still around, TJ.

*********

Your key words about modern hull design were "surf effectively".
How long can a couple do that? How long can they do that if anything went wrong?
Outliers are what they are, the fringe, they never represent "center mass" of anything.

Hi, Bowdrie, the problem is that even to go cruising puts one way out as an outlier, in terms of society. Perhaps Jim and I are such outliers, also. But we have enjoyed hours of surfing on a boat that was designed to do it, as well as having the rounded sections forward and narrow entry that allow her to go to windward well. You're right, she's not self-tending if one is in a hurry, one has to help. But, damn, it's fun!
Of course if something went wrong, we'd have to cope, as one does, but our boat does it as if she's on rails, very straight and easy to control, not like the tumblehomey pinched ends of an old IOR boat (like our 36 footer.)

If good light air performance is something you treasure, and you don't like motoring downwind, then the classic, beautiful, heavy displacement double ender isn't the cruising boat for you, even though they are quieter at anchor and eye candy.

Ann