Ocean Star 60.1
2006 March 12
Bluewater cruiserr
When I first saw the drawings I was struck by the look of the hull and the positions of the mast and rudder. "This is a stretch job," I said to Tristan, one of my helpers. Then I read the comments that came with the design, and the very first line on the page says, "Following the success of the Ocean Star 56.1 Ocean Yachts presents a new model." There, I was right. If you take about four feet off the stern of this 60.1 model you will have a boat with rudder, keel and rig about in the usual places. As it is now, it is clear to see in profile and plan views that someone has pulled the stern of this boat out to increase interior volume.
OK, so is that a bad thing? No, not really. It's no fun for a designer, but providing you can still float the boat on it's fore and aft trim lines it really should have no negative effect on the boat's performance. The sheer may take on a weird look and the overall balanced aesthetic proportions of hull and rig may be a bit awkward. I think this clearly shows in the drawings. But, maybe with the extra stern length the boat will be even faster.
The D/L of this hull is 190. Draft is modest at 7 feet, 11 inches. I thought it might be fun this month to compare the percentages of LOA to DWL of these designs. It's 85.4 percent for the Ocean Star, 86.2 percent for the X-55, 88.4 percent for the J/65 and 70 percent for Goshawk. The keel is well forward on this design and that may have something to do with balancing the added weight of the stern extension and the additional accommodation and structural weight aft. I always like to see the keel as far aft as possible. It just makes it much easier to balance the rig pressures. The sheer looks odd to me. If I put a straight edge on it, it appears to be a dead-straight line. Straight-line sheers always look bad in profile drawings but usually work quite well on the actual boat due to the plan view curvature of the hull. Once the boat heels even a couple of degrees you get a normal looking sheer.
The sailplan looks like someone removed the mizzen mast from this boat but in fact it was designed as a sloop or cutter. Generally, for a masthead rig your mast will be somewhere near the 40-percent of the DWL position aft of the cutwater. That's a good starting place for mast placement. The J/65 and the X-55, both with fractional rigs, have their masts just over 40 percent of the way aft. The masthead rig on the Ocean Star is 38 percent of the way aft. Look at the aspect ratio of the mainsail on the Ocean Star. Dividing the foot of the mainsail into the luff I get 2.62 for the J/65, 2.75 for the X-55, 2.5 for Goshawk and 3.61 for the Ocean Star. The trend today is clearly toward larger, more low aspect ratio mainsails. Possibly the E dimension on this mainsail was reduced to deal with helm issues produced by having the keel so far forward.
The layout is unusual in that it appears to have accommodations in both ends for the crew for skippered charter work. The stateroom aft is not accessible from the rest of the layout and features a double berth and adjacent head. I would assume this would be the skipper's stateroom. The fo'c'sle is laid out for the rest of the crew, is accessible from the deck and also has its own head. There are three guest staterooms. The forward stateroom is palatial in its proportions and has a head with a shower, settee, vanity and plenty of locker space. The other two staterooms are mirror images and feature single berths that I assume can be converted to double berths and adjacent heads. The saloon is huge with the galley off to port and nav station off to starboard. There are two nice conversation areas with the big dinette to starboard and the wrap around settee to port. This is a well laid out main cabin. This layout will work extremely well if you are chartering with three couples and want the convenience of a paid crew without having the crew living with you below.
The Ocean Star is not your typical American-built boat. It has many advantages for the purpose for which it was designed.
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