Sailing 6/12/06
Paul and Dan came with me first, starting about 2:30 in the afternoon. It looked like the wind would be pretty light, but it ended up being pretty pleasantly intense at times. Paul seemed to enjoy driving. We ventured over to Juniper Island, about 1/3 of the way across the lake. Juniper is privately owned. It has a dock on the burlington side and I assume there is a house somewhere on it. If so, its hidden by trees.
Below, Burlington as seen from the lake:
Below: The top of Windfall as seen from the bottom of Windfall:
Below: The north half of Juniper:
Below: The south half of Juniper:
Below: A closer-up of the boathouse of Juniper Island. We were going to dock there just to say we did it, but there didn't seem to be any dock yet. I guess they haven't put it out for the season yet. Of course, technically, if we had docked we would have been tresspassing (I think?) since the island is privately owned. Then again, the dock would be in the water, which is not privately owned. Hmm.... Well, in any case, I suspect we wouldn't have been put in jail. Just shot at maybe.
Below: After returning to the Burlington Boathouse, I picked up a new crew of deckhands. Here we have Peter, Becky, Christine, and Sam:
Below: Sam had to go, and Megan came onboard. So we ventured back out to Juniper Island also, but I made the bad decision to actually go around the island, which blocked all our wind and made us pretty late getting back. Never again when I take a picture will I say "everyone look pretty, except Peter". I didn't realize he'd take me so seriously. ;-)
Below: One nice side effect of being out so late was watching the sun go down. This was around 8:30 I guess. We got back to the boathouse around 9:30.
posted by AndyOfVermont at 1:44 PM
10 Comments:
HAHAHAHAH
LLOL
Wow- I'm pretty impressed with Peter's ability to look not-pretty, intentionally.
and just for the record:
I felt a gazillion times better than I look in my picture. I notice that I never look as happy as I feel in pictures.
"pleasantly intense" was the perfect description for our ride back!
Thanks again so much Andy!!!
Question:
Do bigger boats go faster?
i.e.
If you have a larger boat, does the larger amount of force generated by the larger sail more than compensate the larger mass of the boat and more frictioned surface area?
Answer: Depends
The maximum speed a boat can achieve with the hull fully at its normal ride height in the water is dependant on a few factors, including length. For a boat the size of mine, that speed is probably around 8 miles per hour. For a larger boat, it would be faster. The friction of the hull against the water increases exponentially as speed increases. So at a certain point you are a speed where increasing speed even a little would take a tremendous amount of horsepower... more than you could possibly get out of sails, or probably even a motor, without wrecking the boat.
So what about speedboats? They overcome this by planing... going fast enough that they actually get on top of their own bow wave so the hull is partly out of the water, and friction is reduced. My boat is actually capable of planing in the right conditions, and so can go faster than larger sailboats that cannot.
So... in high winds, my boat is faster than larger ones. Also, in low winds my boat is faster than larger ones, where you are no where near the maximum hull speed, and the friction is less. In more medium winds, the larger boat will probably be faster than mine. When I've sailed alongside people with smaller sailboats, I've found I'm also much faster than them.
So basically, it seems 16' or so (my size) is probably the fastest under most circumstances.
Unless you have a catamaran... which does not plane but has such skinny hulls that it can outrun powerboats in the right conditions.
Woo Hoo!!!
WOAH!
You can buy a catamaran for $300 and it goes faster than your boat?!?!
Hmmm, I'd better start saving for next summer!
Not only faster, but literally like 3 times faster. A catamaran is a very different sailing experience... very intense, very exciting. You don't get on a catamaran without donning a life jacket unless the wind is very calm.
Three hundred bucks is unlikely. They had a combination of luck, timing, and taking advantage of an unknowledgeable seller. However, I see Hobie 16's in the local classifieds pretty regularly between $800 and $1800, which is simlilar to boats like mine.
I do hope you get a catamaran so I can borrow it! ;-)
Well I just went down to the skate shop today, and was talking to the guy about mopeds. And they're selling one for $750. I'm gonna post more later about my education trip to the store. But I think right now I'd use a moped more often than a catamaran. Well see how things go next summer, though.
Nice pictures Andy. I must say that I was looking into the sun when that infamous picture of me was taken. The sun was burning my eyes out.
Thanks again Andy for taking us out, I didn't fall into the water or throw up, all in all a good time. :-)
Sure thing!
I thought you'd like that pic!
If you were not a guy, I would have asked your permission to post that picture. Oh, but wait... hmm... that could be dangerous territory too. I can just see it now. "You look pretty awful in that pic... should I not post it". Ha! Yeah, smooth Andy! Well, I'm sure there would be a better way to word it than that.
But, anyhoo, you are a guy, so...
Holy cow you look awful in that picture! ;-) But you do look all svelte in the other picture. Not a hint of throwupedness neither.
Andy, I'd contend that a bigger boat (with more sail area) would be faster than yours at low speeds, because it can catch the gusts more cleanly, being higher up than you. You still have to deal with ground clutter, especially close to shore. Of course, your outboard could spank them by putting your boat on the plane at full throttle. You can't compare a somewhat sleek boat like yours to a gunkholer like what the Ficks have.
That's a very good point. I do like to tease Catalina 30 owners about the fact that they own the most boring sailboat ever conceived. (I call it the Dodge Caravan of sailboats). But then again, in doing that I have to admit that that's sort of like calling the Cessna 150 the most boring airplane ever conceived. It still friggin flies! Nothing boring about that! Anyway, quite true, I'm comparing to other boats I regularly see and wave to on Lake Champlain, rather than from the engineering standpoint of comparing small apples to big apples. You could say I'm comparing small apples to big watermelons.
However, the comparison does stand on one very practical level. My Tanzer 16 and Jon's Catalina 30 are both boats that the average Joe is likely to own. Comparing my boat to whatever is the most racingest of 30 footers might be more fair from a technical standpoint, but I'm probably not going to buy one of those.
Of course, my boat is also far from being the racingest of 16 footers.
By the way, Jon reads this blog. Hi Jon!!! ;-)
Catalina 30 owners, of course, are quick to tease me about the fact that they can sleep 8 or more, cook meals, use the restroom in privacy, serve wine and cheese, and basically give their guests a serene, relaxing experience while I'm barking out orders to my passengers "Pull the red rope... no no the other red rope, no, not so much... oh no oh no... oh, sorry about that knock in the head!" splash!!!!
I suspect I say "oops" a lot more during sailing than he does.
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