30' Sailing tri

[Cavalier MK2]

Size does matter, go for the 35 if you can. It will have a bit more payload and speed without much more cost If you decide to cruise on the Pacific instead check out west coast ads as well.

[Little Otter]

I probably will end up going with the 35 as i like that size range the best and I'm going to be doing most of the sailing plus I figure a 35 ' boat can really go anywhere I want it to and be pretty safe, the high latitudes excluded of course.

[PhiSig1071]

http://www.cruisersforum.com/forums/...-a-139334.html

[Redreuben]

Horstmans.

Does anybody have a ballpark figure for Horstmans float displacements ?

Boats of that era generally were around the 90%-120% mark yes ?

Whilst more modern designs are closer to 200%

Any speculation/comparisons welcome.

Cheers,
RR

[Cavalier MK2]

The current crop has a lot more sail area Red. I'm not sure they are any more stable because of that. For sure a lot more Farriers have gone over than Horstmans. I have never heard of one capsizing. The key to these boats is to use the designed rig and skip the square top mains and big A sail prodders.. This keeps the sail effort within the float parameters.

The other thing that has to be factored in is the wing deck. The float isn't going to go in past it, especially while under way, they work as a horizontal ama extension. It's like having a flying scow on top of the tri.

A 38' Horstman was the first tri to round Cape Horn which is a pretty good indication of safety.

[captaingregger]

I have a 46' Horstman. With the bowsprit and davits she's pushing 50'.

The tall sides to windage argument is often a comment I read on the various forums by pretty much nobody with any Horstman experience. In short, I don't notice any difference to my monohull days.

My boat has a keel vs daggerboards. The keel allows me to point as high as a monohull since it runs most of the length of the aka (main hull). However, Ed doesn't like it. Oh well, it ain't his boat.

Even with the keel I only draw 4'. The keel's main purpose is to protect the rudder and running gear from coral rash.

Horstmans have 200% bounancy per ama. That means each ama will support 2x the weight of the entire boat.

What I love about my Horstman is the use of livable space in the wings and amas. Each ama is a separate living area. Other tris don't make use of that space, save for the Cross designs and the newer Neels.

Would I rather own a modern catamaran? Yes. But I don't want that debt load or depreciation hit. So I'm quite happy to have so much boat for such a relatively inexpensive price.

Feel free to send me a PM for questions.

[Redreuben]

Thanks Captain, you Horstman owners are a reclusive lot, good to hear from you !

[Little Otter]

Thanks for for input captaingregger, its nice to hear from someone who has experience with these boats! I would love to hear more about your sailing experience with her, and I would love to hear more about any modifications you made, especially the keel.

[Cavalier MK2]

Personally I'm with Ed on this one. Daggerboards do a better job than a LAR keel. I'd consider a grounding skeg but extra glass works too. With the kick up rudder option and a outboard you can get in really shallow and dry out flatter. On a big boat with a inboard and fixed rudder the keel starts looking attractive.

[Little Otter]

I would love to hear if anyone has put skegs on their tri and if so what the effects were on the sailing qualities, I would love to have minikeels like a cat but thought that it would have messed with the water flow over the hulls, but I'm not an engineer and am probably wrong on that like I was with the windage of the hulls

[Cavalier MK2]

It depends on what you mean by skegs. Skegs a few inches deep to protect against grounding aren't going to have much of a noticeable effect. For leeway prevention they have to be deeper. For very shallow leeway resistance both Hedley Nicol and Norm Cross had low aspect skeg keels on all three hulls. This was stock on Nicols because they sailed over the Aussie reefs and a option on Cross'. The better performing Nicols used ones 12" deep as anything shallower tended to make too much leeway in a breeze with seas.

For something like the 35xr you could do the same thing but it would perform better with nothing more than grounding skegs and the daggers for leeway resistance. I'm sure Ed would suggest leaving off the Mickey Mouse (he says this a lot) skegs and just put on extra layers of glass over the bottoms.

If you hate the idea of daggers it is pretty straightforward to add keel/skegs. You want to keep the center of lateral resistance in the same place as it is with the stock boat with boards down. What you'll have to decide is which approach to use. The center only LAR keel will perform a bit better than the 3 keel skeg version. The 3 keels will run shallower and dry out flatter. The daggerboard boat will go shallowest and sail fastest.

The reason is of course less surface drag plus less induced drag from reduced leeway. Boats are compromises, which ones to make depend on where and how you want to sail.

[Don C L]

You may have seen it but there is a good looking Newick 37 Trice III for sale in North Carolina. Sorry I can't post link right now but it will pop up with google. I bring this up also because there is a builder in the northeast who has built a few of these and I am blanking out on his name. I'll post it when I remeber, but if you are set on building your own you might give him a call for tips. Ah dmcboats.com
Damian McLaughlin

The one that caught my eye especially was the boat he shows named "Margaret" but that Ostar boat is already built... if I only were a millionaire.........

www.sailboatlistings.com/view/60541

[Training Wheels]

[ATTACH]146386

LAR keel

[Little Otter]

Thanks Cavalier, thats kind along the same lines as what I was thinking. windward perfomance is something that is important to me so I may end up using the LAR keel or three mini keel. Thanks Don I'll definitely have to check them out! Training Wheels do you know who manufactured that boat?

[Cavalier MK2]

The daggers will be best to windward, the LAR keel second and the 3 keels third. In terms of top speed the daggers win again but the 3 skeg/keels can come in ahead of the LAR because they add less section to the hulls. The area of a LAR has the effect of adding rocker to the center of the main hull which has a impact on all out top speed. In tech terms it reduces the prismatic coefficient which is the ratio of area along a hull length.

Compromises. These features can be blended to different degrees with the corresponding changes in performance. Daggers for deep running with a shallow LAR or reduced 3 skegs for extra shoal sailing without worrying about dagger impact etc......

Adding keels/skegs comes down to using a section with enough area for the performance you want. 10 sq feet of dagger work better thsn 20sq feet of keel. For foil section a NACA shape is probably best, something like a 0012 or 0010.

In other cruising performance sectors a keel can be used for tankage and to add buoyancy to increase payload so you have to pick your yardstick about how you want things to measure up.