Racer

Laying in bed one night, I was reduced to counting knots made good to weather to induce sleep. An old image came back to me. Bill Garden's Junebug design was the boat. It was a 19-foot sharp cat ketch. Junebug could redefine slow. A long beat to weather in knots would have been an honest challenge of both your patience and your seamanship. The port, inboard profile drawings showed man snoozing on a berth with a bottle cradled in his folded arms. It makes me ponder the reasons we are drawn to sailing.

The key to the speed of this boat is the canting or pendulum-style keel.

If the objective attracts you, your credo has to be based upon VMG (velocity made good). Add a factor for how much effort it took to get those knots. Then, take the cost of the boat and divide it by the boat's cost for knots per buck. This is a very fast 38-footer.

The key to the speed of this boat is the canting or pendulumstyle keel. The ballast bulb is attached to a long arm that uses a hydraulic ram and arm to cant it up to 60 degrees to weather to increase the stability of the boat. This is tantamount to putting twelve 200-pound men on the rail of the 38. The fin above the bulb just holds the bulb on. The bulb is a squashed ellipse in section but appears to be symmetrical around the longitudinal axis in profile.

Lift is provided by the extremely high aspect ratio of the forward and aft rudders. This technology goes back to Gary Mull's 12-meter work in 1986. (Gary worked with Dr. Alberto Calderon on a tandem rudder

The hull is a modified Hobie 33, with 5 feet, 8 inches added to the stern.

system for a 12-meter.) The rudders taper from an 18-percent foil at the root to a 12-percent foil at the tip. The stocks are stainless steel. Each rudder is 6 feet, 10 inches deep and less than 9 inches wide at max chord. Unique kelp cutters travel down the upper 24 inches of each rudder. Kelp caught below 24 inches will have to be removed with a stick. That's a lot of fun. Kelp on the ballast fin also will require a stick. We may be looking at the KelpCatcher 38.

The designers of record for this interesting boat are Bill Bums and Matt Brown. The hull is a modified Hobie 33, with 5 feet, 8 inches added to the stem. The D/L of this design is 63.59. Beam is a convenient 8 feet for trailering. The bulb and rudders stay in place for trailering.

The SA/D is 32.4 without roach area. If I add the roach area of the main, the SA/D increases to 37.53. In this case the roach accounts for 23 percent of the mainsail area. We need to take roach area into consideration more as mainsail shapes approach elliptical plan form.

Approaches to improving performance are making racing boats increasingly exotic and radical. Water ballast is almost passe and now used in small trailerable cruisers. Bowsprits and asymmetrical chutes aren't even new anymore. We all accept ultralightweight as the foundation for any boatspeed quest. Now t with the DynaFlyer 38, we need to start getting used to three moving appendages.