please help diagnose lee helm ocean voyager 26

[skenn_ie]

CofE needs to be slightly aft of Centre of Lateral Resistance to give the required Weather Helm. CLR can be moved forward by moving weight forward. CofE can be moved aft by moving sail/mast aft or to some extent, by changing the profile of the sails. Imo, rudder is largely irrelevant as it is a moveable appendage. Letting go of the tiller should allow the boat to turn into the wind.

[KGarwick]

Keel profile of this boat will cause balance to behave differently. There's virtually no keel under the bow, with full keel under the stern. Sinking the bow will add very little additional lateral resistance there, but it will cause the stern to lift. Lifting the full keel stern will significantly reduce lateral resistance aft and induce windward stern slip. This would probably result in weather helm. In short, a light stem with this boat is unlikely to be the cause of his lee helm problems.

With the exception of hard chines and excessive heel (which are not factors mentioned by the author), virtually all helm balance problems are due to improper sail CE.

Furl the Yankee, drop the foresail, and move the traveler aft. There ought to be absolutely no lee helm in that configuration (in fact, it should keep spilling to windward). If it's still a problem, you have far bigger issues and should hire a boatwright. Get it fixed before you break your rudder posts in the middle of a squall.

[Bowdrie]

This site; https://www.boatdesign.net/forums/
has forums that are quite heavily into the aerodynamic/hydrodynamic aspects of yacht design, and their are many members who are Naval Architects and Marine Engineers, to whom discussions such as this are their "stock in trade", so to speak.
In most more-or-less "normal" designs the CE of the working sailplan needs to be forward of the CLP by ~8>15% of the length of the WL, that percentage is referred to as "Lead".
As for hull shape, double-enders are usually better at maintaining the relationship between CLP/CE as heeling changes due to the WLs being more symmetrical at various angles; The waterplane area is not so distorted as the boat heels.
Looking at the pics of profiles of hull and sailplan, nothing really "jumps out" that would suggest a lee helm problem,, as a previous poster said; the rig scaled-down is quite similar to a W32, and they are known for having too much weather helm as the wind picks up.

[KGarwick]

Hey, how about a few photos of the boat under full sail? There's simply not enough data to determine why the nose of the boat keeps falling to leeward. The comment about how the location of the solar panels prevent the installation of a mizzen is intriguing. I argue firmly against installing a mizzen in this case, but I wonder if the previous owners moved the traveler forward of the transom to make room for the panels.

I suspect that if the op placed everything back into the designer's intended location, the lee helm would disappear. Either that or he has the only Voyager 26 built with this deficiency (highly unlikely).

[KGarwick]

To continue my input on lee helm of Voyager 26. I just took mine out for a week of sailing and was unable to induce lee helm in any sail configuration, or under any wind conditions from light breeze to good sailing wind (up to about 20 knots). Mine is a 1986 Voyager 26 mk 2 with the original cutter rig. I generally found mild weather helm that is easy to hold onto track with fingertip pressure only.

[Nekton73]

I'm sorry I don't have anything to add to solve your problem, but it's been interesting following the discussion.


Here's a link to the wordpress file for the book on self-steering mentioned earlier, in case it is helpful. The author has generously allowed it to be published for public access.


https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=...Gs1JZ1polecoU_