Andrew had
noticed that I slid backwards off the side of the boat in the original
capsize video where I try to right the boat the Australian way!
It has been replaced by a standard capsize
video.
The
sternward slide is well nigh unavoidable.
It was my attempt to relive my youth!
The
stern buoyancy tank doesn't have enough volume to support my
weight with the boat on its side. So the stern sinks if my
weight
is aboard if the boat is capsized. Maybe it wouldn't happen
if
the boat was being sailed by
a child - which I haven't been for some time now!
A child may
have the option to simply step down onto the centreboard from the side
of the boat they were sittin on instead of doing the slide.
But we are not going to change the volume of the tanks to allow heavier
ppl to do it for
two reasons.
1/ Economy - they were the biggest tanks we could get out of the three
sheets of ply.
2/
If there is too much buoyancy in the side of the boat it will float too
high when capsized and blow away from the sailor if he/she loses their
grip. This is a well known problem with a number of
conventional
sailing dinghies that I was keen to avoid. They do it so that
you
right from capsize without any water aboard - but the penalty is that
the boat floats so high that it will blow away from the sailor faster
than they can swim in a lifejacket – you figure! Our boats
come up with a little bit of water, but they still sail well and have
almost full stability without removing it.
________________________________
A
cleat would be wounding as you note! We dont have any
fittings on
the sidedecks of the boat - in general, wherever you put them you end
up sitting on top of the blxxdy things.
It's one of those rules!
The
only fitting we need to attach is the bridle across the stern for the
mainsheet block - we were going to use a couple of stainless steel
saddles at one point but decided just to drill holes through the
gunwale either side of the boat thread the rope through and tie a knot
to stop the rope from pulling out.
Whether a dinghy has a
mainsheet cleat or not is one of the ways we can tell whether a
newcomer to our fleet is a threat or not! If they have a
cleat
they
a/ Don't pay attention to weightsaving
b/ Don't know that cleating a mainsheet is slow.
Also
in smaller boats it never pays to cleat the mainsheet - their balance
and speed depends a very great deal on adjusting the sheet moment by
moment - you can see this very clearly on the sailing videos - the wind
is never static - so the trim can't be static either - except on a run
where you cant get flow round the sail.
But once again it
depends on what you want a boat for. Our PDRs are based round
the
idea of attracting mainstream sailors to the class - so have set them
up to be good club racing boats.
________________________________
Which boat is faster - Walks like a duck or talks like a duck.
We
made the boats as perfectly identical as possible. One of
them is
a couple of pounds heavier and one has a red flecked mainsheet and the
other a green one.
Sailing in the river at Midge's place is typical river sailing - puffs
from all directions, big patches of calm, sudden gusts.
The
boats are so close in performance the faster will be the one that is in
the right place at the right time doing the right thing.
So
we'll never know while we sail here - need a bigger open expanse of
water and several races to know whether one is faster. Then
we
could swap centreboards, or rigs, or rudders and work out what was
causing the difference.
But my feeling is because we know what
makes a boat fast, and because we have done everything possible in that
regard for both, I suspect that on an open expanse of water it would
still be impossible to tell them apart.