Le Cam must have been up all night munching on his fresh crackers and favourite pate, having run over 459nm since the transfer of Kevin.
Nasty front with 50+knots coming at the leading boats.
Le Cam must have been up all night munching on his fresh crackers and favourite pate, having run over 459nm since the transfer of Kevin.
Nasty front with 50+knots coming at the leading boats.
Many good points, but nothing new. We tried lenticular rigging 40 years ago. His idea of a streamlined feathering fairing for the outrigger poles would add weight and complexity that would outweigh any advantage in aerodynamics. The furled sails in an ideal world would be taken down and stacked.
I knew about the mast being unable to counter foil and water ballast. I'm not sure what to do about that. I wonder how the very fast multi's deal with rig loads.Since the Vendee is an over managed race, perhaps they could put seals on the ballast tanks, only to be broken upon the loss of a foil.
Steve, do you know if anyone has been working on a dinghy with similar foils?
I wonder if there is an opportunity for stronger, lighter, more aero, unified structure combining the foils and the deck spreaders?
Sam Manuard was on the VendeeLive show today and explained that up to an extra 50% of righting moment was produced by the foils; Im not sure why the guy in that video link was suggesting some kind of "dirty secret". His comments about jackstays, stanchions , lazy jacks and boom/mainsail bags, begs the question if he knows what he is really talking about, or is he so engrossed in math that he completely forgets the single human element?
I think he is on to something regarding lifelines. I have certainly never trusted my life to them, regarding them at best as an aid to balance and somewhere handy to tie off the headsail when it is down. If I was designing from a clean sheet of paper for singlehanding I would stick with a harness+jackstays, bin the lifelines and perhaps have some kind of pop-up catch net that could be raised for particularly tricky deck work.
There are multiple opportunities for improvement, but these are class boats built to class rules that are, in part, intended to keep the costs reasonable. The best point the engineering dude in those critical videos makes is that these "foilers" still rely on the stern as a point of stability. They drag their transoms pretty much continuously, which really hurts their speed potential. If the rudders were fitted with foils, they'd be in the next class of high-speed sailboats. Not to say they ought to do this, just that worrying over 1 horsepower lost to bits of stuff bolted down to the deck is nothing compared to the drag created by having a big piece of the hull still in the water.
-Dave
Compromised foiling as worded by the vid link guy is about as close as he comes to describing what is going on. Foil assisted stability is one thing and flying on foils is another.When wave size gets to Southern Ocean proportions any drag to lee like that is most likely going to assist in a pitch-pole.
He seems to be going over the line between throwing around ideas and being a self-important self-appointed guru. As Hwyl says, things like lenticular rigging, and moving the boom down, are old ideas.
When he complains about the aero drag of the outriggers and says "why not use the best solution possible", he ignores the fact that the rulemakers and sailors are not fools; they use the best solution for a one-design part of the boats considering the cost and practical aspects. It's not about "embetterment (!) and evolution" per se or else the boats would be longer; it's about being better within a set of rules.
The comment that AC boats don't have stanchions and therefore the Open 60s should do the same is pretty bizarre and shows a deep and wide failure to understand the difference between sailing at night in a gale and sailing on a day race inshore with rescue boats all around, on a boat that does not change headsails in the same way and does not need maintenance in the same way. I wonder how often he's gone forward at night under storm trysail without stanchions? I did it for part of one race, when the other yacht succeeded in damaging the pulpit and stanchions, and it was definitely not fun. Many of these guys sail tris that don't have stanchions; they are not the fools this guy assumes they are.
The shorthanded designers have already been through the pole versus wing issue in masts and multihull beam fairings, and the arrogant commentator appears to be ignoring the issues involved.
We can learn a lot more about assuming designers have got it right and learning why they do something, than saying "I know more than the designers and sailors although I've never been in their situation" as this guy sometimes does.
There's some very interesting videos going around showing the depth of thought and experience in the real world that goes into the Open 60s. This is a good one;
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U9jIIRKMi64
Last edited by Chris249; 12-07-2020 at 05:46 PM.
By way of a diversion I just checked the progress of Sodebo in their attempt to claim the Jules Verne record.In spite of starting seventeen days after the Vendee Globe,they have now passed half the Vendee fleet.
I've been glued to the trackers and rooting for Le Cam big time. Can't believe how fast those things are going in really rowdy conditions. How much things have changed in one lifetime...
-Dave
Beyou in perfect foiling conditions.....check out that wake.
Ahh, the joys of sailing:
Joined this afternoon during the Vendée Live, Yannick Bestaven described his life on board as like "animal" living conditions inside Maître CoQ IV. "I retracted the foils because the shocks are so violent. I just sail in all directions. I do everything to not be ahead of the routing, so as not to throw myself into the mouth of the wolf ”.
-Dave
If it is anything like Thomson used, its a like a jammer on an elastic used to self tail/tension a line. Im thinking the square box on the stanchion aft contains a reel with a tensioner. I saw Pip raising a sail with both hands on a video, and was wondering who was doing the hauling, perhaps this is one of those systems?
Say what you will about the rules and the boats, this is a real race. Some of the skippers must be able to sight the tops of others' sails at times.
vendee12-10.jpg
-Dave
Nice bit of writing from Pip Hare, here:
https://www.vendeeglobe.org/en/news/...t-take-control
IMAGINES VEL NON FUERINT
Hmmmm...Dalin seems to have dropped to half speed. He break something? And (at 11/12/20 0400) Le Cam and Dutreaux are only 10 nautical miles apart. Good racing!
I hate it when I land in "Long Term Parking"!
Ahhh...read his post. Sounds like it's a bit of recovery time.
Last edited by Hugh MacD; 12-11-2020 at 11:20 AM.
And Le Cam has worked his way back up into fourth place. In general, the foilers are doing a lot of jibing, looking for the optimal angle to achieve speed over VMG. (Or is it just looking for more tolerable boat motion?) The non-foiling boats tend more to take the shorter route, working to optimize the VMG. And the result is that it averages out, except in Le Cam's case, where his clean, straight wake has brought him back to the position he had before stopping for the rescue.
-Dave
Jeremie Beyou in Charal has begun to carve through the tail enders,although I don't imagine he will have the time to get to a point where he troubles the leaders.Armel Tripon in L'Occitane has now found a lonely piece of ocean as he has passed one bunch and has a gap of several hundred miles to the next grouping and at the head of the fleet they must almost be in sight of each other.I think we would find this epic race a lot less absorbing were it not for the reliability of the equipment that keeps us informed about where they all are.
True enough, but the course distance does come close to the circumference of the planet, about 24,900 miles. Should the course be shifted to include canal passages?
-Dave
An alternative would be a strict requirement to stay on the equator. This would require the development of a sophisticated new class of lifting air foils. Here's an (admittedly crude) render to show my thoughts.
I see potential here.
How to control a high speed foiling boat.....
It's all fun and games until Darth Vader comes.
Good point. And doesn't the accepted definition of "round the world" for sailing require the equator to be crossed, in order to ensure that sailors are sailing about as many miles as they would be cruising around the equator, and that they are not "just" doing laps of Antarctica?
(No expert here) my understanding is that wind/solar generated power’s just not efficient/reliable enough alone given the amount of Watt-hours these beasts need. Most, if not all the boats use multiple schemes including hydro generators to keep their batteries up to the task.
Apivia has foil casing/hull damage and now lost the lead and is 100nm behind Linked out.
Sam Davies has left Cape Town to continue her voyage, though no longer officially in the race.
Shame to see a boat drop out due to "computer" failure, but i guess that is a problem when all systems are interlinked for maximum performance.
LeCam back into 4th place.
Dedicated diesel generators. Hugo Boss took the least amount of fuel onboard due to the extensive built in panels, but all boats need to have a certain range under their own engine, on top of power generation requirements. Boats must arrive with at least 20l of fuel onboard.
My friend Bruce Schwab, made it round (with a non canting keel) on 7 gallons of fuel. His engine had a double alternator, so all the power could be dedicated to the alternator, or he could use the power to drive the boat and run a regular alternator.
Thats not a lot of fuel for sure. Was this some time back? Electronic loads seem to get more and more. I think a double alternator on a main engine is a good idea, a large discharged battery bank would put enough load on the engine to not damage it. I believe most sailboat auxiliaries are too big these days. I expect the pilot is the biggest load. The footage coming back this race is quite spectacular.......i dont see one of these boats working at these speeds with a Hasler or Aries gear.
One boat on a recent Vendee Globe race sailed by Sébastien Destremau had a starter motor problem on the engine and was not able to move his water ballast, etc. He rigged a line to the flywheel and then to the jib sheet and used the sail to crank the engine. Without being able to start the engine, he would have had to drop out.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wGocCZ4rLqw
Last edited by Brian Palmer; 12-15-2020 at 12:57 PM.