Bow rudder?

[spirit]

Can a light stern-heavy skimming dish, pulled from the bow, like Anne Quemere's kite boat (http://www.pacific-solo.com/?page_id=541&lang=en), be steered effectively with a bow rudder, perhaps with no centerboard?

[Ian McColgin]

I don't think so. At a minimum, the stresses on a bow rudder, like the stresses on a regular rudder in reverse, are most severe. The job of the bow is to get through the waves. It's a but bumpy up there for good rudder action and the stern is in relativly stabile water.

[brucehallman]

...a bow rudder

There is a discussion of an experiment with a bow rudder on a boat, see Phil Bolger's book _Boats With an Open Mind_ ISBN 9780070063761, Chapter 21 (page 111). In short, a bow rudder worked, and the experiment raised more questions with more suggestions of potential improvements.

[Ian McColgin]

One entertaining problem of a bow rudder is less efficient tacks to weather. Think through the geometry and you'll get it.

[John B]

One of the reasons NZ lost the Americas cup in 03 was the time and money spent on a keel less boat which only had a forward and stern rudder right on the w/lines. Maybe I should qualify that and say ballasted foils because I don't know if you can rightly call them keels or rudders for that matter.They both operated for steering though. It worked and worked well enough that a full size version was retrofitted to one of the earlier generation boats at massive cost, so those guys entertained it very seriously . It never happened as they went off into that hula controversy stuff instead.
For everyone else though, the trend is the direct opposite in that the last thing any performance planing boat wants is some centre forward to trip and broach on at speed. Boats like the RTW sleds and a lot of the performance keel boats have canards forward to have some CLR to go to windward with, and then they lift those for reaching and running to put that centre back aft to prevent broaching under kite etc.

[Daniel Noyes]

Can a light stern-heavy skimming dish, pulled from the bow, like Anne Quemere's kite boat (http://www.pacific-solo.com/?page_id=541&lang=en), be steered effectively with a bow rudder, perhaps with no centerboard?

no.

to have the kite pulling from the bow and the rudder at the bow will not work for the reasons above, and importantly you need to have a seperation between the center of effort of the sail or kite and the steering foil in order to exert controll.
with the center of effort at the ruder each time you move the rudder to steer you are having a major affect on the lateral plane etc...

there really isn't time enough, and I dont type fast enough, to go into all the reasons this wont work...