BR17

[Alistair McVean]

Re B17 market, our freshwater lake sailing club has a size limit of 15' with no road trailer allowed on site. Moreover the club has a list of classes which are allowed on site, so the BR17 would fail on both counts. I suspect such strict rules become more relaxed for dinghy clubs with access to the sea. I suspect clubs with very keen racing fleets may also restrict the classes which they allow to use their facilities.

[Brian Pearson]

Alistair, I never imaged there was a dinghy club in the UK which banned the Wayfarer dinghy!

Brian

[Tony]

Re B17 market, our freshwater lake sailing club has a size limit of 15' with no road trailer allowed on site. Moreover the club has a list of classes which are allowed on site, so the BR17 would fail on both counts. I suspect such strict rules become more relaxed for dinghy clubs with access to the sea. I suspect clubs with very keen racing fleets may also restrict the classes which they allow to use their facilities.

Hi, Alistair.
Unfortunately sailing clubs reflect life. YOU may hope a sailing club is a group of people working together to enable each to enjoy their leisure in their own way – racing, cruising or just messing about in boats, but you can guarantee that some joker may see it as a  vehicle to enable the exercise of power over others denied  them at home or in their place of work. Hence all the dress codes, size limits, parking restrictions and other petty-fogging bureaucracies that Committee-Man will inflict on us if we allow it. The only answer is to become Committee-Man yourself and make sure that the place is run along sensible lines, doing away with all the nonsense and......er.....hang about...must be a flaw in my logic somewhere.
Must I become the thing I hate most? 
Cant I just, um, sort of, you know, step in from time to time when they look like they are about to do something stupid – like invade the sailing club down the road, for example?   
Seems Ive heard this all before somewhere.

Alistair – If you dont like their rules, fight em! – or vote with your feet.

[Alistair McVean]

I think the point I was trying to make is that it might not be safe to assume that that every sailing club is a potential site for boats such as the BR17, not that I was unhappy with our much loved sailing club which is democratically run with all members voting on which boats we will host. We have lease restrictions on size as well.

I would think that the market for the BR17 would be similar to that which the Crabber 17 aims at.

[Julian Swindell]

I don't think the BayRaider concepts (ketch rig, water ballast, developing design with options) is what dinghy sailors are looking for. They want an established, restricted class which they can race with minimum of handicap calculations. Alistair I think is right, that the BR17/20 is a day sailer in the Crabber/Drascombe market, but with a new level of performance and versatility. I don't expect to see any in racing fleets around the country, but I do expect to see many cruising around the coast on sunny summer weekends.

[Alistair McVean]

Julian sums the differences up admirably. When I race at my sailing club I do so in my Laser with many capsizes throughout the year. When I sail in the Outer Hebrides where you have to get yourself out of any trouble, have other people in the boat and are probably fishing for mackerel, I do so in my brother's Crabber 17. The attractive qualities of the BR20 (and BR17) lie in it's thoughtful design, safety and relative simplicity coupled with performance.

[Brian Pearson]

It's interesting that the concept of sailing from a dinghy park implies racing only. It was the same for me when I lived in the Pennines.

However it's very different on the coast. I can cycle down to my dinghy, launch in minutes and have the whole western Solent to potter in. Yes I race on Sundays, about 12 Scows might be out, but there are 157 Scows in our dinghy park, all potterering, fishing, teaching the kids, relaxing on Hurst beach.

Just to clarify, since you are ganging up on me! I never suggested class racing but no reason why not on the coast.

As lovely as the Cornish Crabber 17 is, they are very rare and expensive and kept on moorings around here.

I give in - happy Christmas

Brian

[Edwin Davies 2]

In our  Hykeham (Lincoln) sailing club they even welcome model yacht sailers! I am one. I think the limit on boats is 20 feet. The boat park has several boats that could not be mistaken for racing boats. Hopefully they will soon see a BR(BeachRaider)17. They are even talking about getting into sailing for the handicapped. Well done the committee. I am really looking forward to next year.

I do remember that one year it was thought that some people could infiltrate the club to exploit the mineral righs under the lake. Common sense prevailed.

[Edwin Davies 2]

I went to the boat show on Tuesday, had several chats with Matt. It was nice to meet him at last. "O you are Edwin!" he said. I am looking forward to being involved in the details of my BR17, Apart from not having the side decks of the BR20 the other specification looks similar.
Mast on a tabernackle etc. Matt thinks the water ballast will need to be pumped out not sucked out, we will have to see. Both options can be built in. At least I have had plenty of time to plan all the other bits and pieces, life jackets, sounder etc. Delivery is looking like early summer now! I did have a good look at the Original Devon Lugger while at the show. It is the boat that I have always had in mind for when my boat came in. Things have moved on now though, water ballast sounds good to me.

[Julian Swindell]

I think Matt was having his ear bent off by many people at the show, and still is presumably.
The Drascombe/Devon lugger was the great boat of its day, but I really do think the Swallow Boat design has moved things way beyond it. As Claus Riepe said on another thread, if you want a good Lugger, there is no need to buy a new one, they don't offer anything extra over a good second hand one. Drascombe themselves have realised this in the design of the Drifter 22, which has the rudder in the right place, on the back and not under the bottom. The Drifter, and Swallow Boats, also makes much better use of the internal spaces than any of the Luggers or Long boat derivatives (I shall probably get shot by Drascombe lovers for saying this.) I always felt that the Dabber was the best Drascombe design and I loved mine for 13 years until I wanted a cabin boat. The Drascombe Coaster offers amazingly little accommodation for a boat of its size, and then you have to yank the rudder out in shallow water. I tried one out at a Drascombe Rally and thought it was horrible. The little 16ft Winkle Brig I did buy then was like a palace by comparison, even though it was 5ft shorter. When I saw the BayRaider at Beale I thought it ideal, and what the Lugger could have developed to, if only it had a cabin...

[Craic]

... As Claus Riepe said on another thread, if you want a good Lugger, there is no need to buy a new one, they don't offer anything extra over a good second hand one. ...

On the contrary, the new ones are worse and possibly even more dangerous than the old ones. Let me explain: The Drascombes were designed in the sixties. Then the RCD / ISO came into effect in 1997 which made it mandatory that -at minimum- boats to be sold henceforth have enough buoyancy to keep their crew well above water if the boat is swamped. The old Drascombes would not do that, and with the designer dead by then, they could not do a proper new redesign. So they started filling up the former stowage areas solid with two component foam. There went the stowage, and in came a big increase in hullweight, plus the uncertainty what the the foam inside the inaccessible compartments really does, if it soaks up water slowly. The new post-RCD Drascombes sail like wet sponges in comparison with the lighter older ones. I must continue below, for some reason my cursor disappears if the posting gets too long. ...

[Craic]

And why may the new boats be even more dangerous: I am convinced they can no longer be righted from an inversion at all by any small crew. With the increased foam buoyancy of the new boats they are more stable when swamped, but also more stable when inverted.
Dinghies typically capsize to lee and in some high wind. With more buoyancy under the side decks the knocked down hull floats higher and gives more windage , so the wind pushes the capsized boat to lee. There lies the masttop with the mainsail up already under the water surface, pointing down steeper into the water the more buoyancy is under the side deck, and the wind then pushes to lee and practically spears the mast and mainsail under water, thus inverting the boat fully. And there you are sitting on the inverted hull and all you have to right the boat is your weight and very little lever. The old boats floated fairly low and could be 'rolled' back through the water by two crew, on a good day. But with the increased foam buoyancy of the new boats under the sides, much more of the hull mass would have to be raised even higher above the water during the process of righting. I doubt even four full size crew could do it today. Ever wondered why there is no video of a new Drascombe being righted from inversion on the web? -I don't. The problem is all that is being hushed, they jump at you when you mention that Drascombes do capsize and invert, and cannot be brought back then. I had several Drascombes over the years, because I thought they were the best boats on the market for my requirements then, but not any more today.

[Rich Maynard]

I've righted my 1976 Lugger from totally inverted. I think you were there, Claus! Sail Caledonia 2007. It was very calm conditions, though. And deliberately capsized, I should add...

[Craic]

I've righted my 1976 Lugger from totally inverted. I think you were there, Claus! Sail Caledonia 2007. It was very calm conditions, though. And deliberately capsized, I should add...

Right, Rich, I was watching then, also took a lot of photos. Even you as an exceptionally tall and athletic young man (2007 ) had a hard time to get an old pre-RCD Lugger finally back up, and that was in calm and preprared conditions, and you also had the two guys in the water to help you. Actually, your capsizing drill and that of Lovely Lady (also an old pre-RCD Lugger) in the year before had triggered Matt to design the ACB system and put it into the BayRaiders.

In both capsizing cases the initial attempts to right the turtled boats had failed. Only after a while -and several attempts- the boats came round, but then they were very deep in the water. In your case the sealed compartments under the benches had filled to some degree, and with Lovely Lady also the sealed bow compartment had filled while the boat had lain turtled.
So we figured that what had finally made the righting possible was that the boats had sunk in and shed some of their initial buoyancy. Which then had made it easier to roll the hull back as less of it had to be levered out of and above the water surface in the process. So the trick was to have less capsized buoyancy, not more.

continued below...

[Craic]

... continued from previous post:

... And exactly there is where the new Luggers have gone wrong. They can no longer sink in like the old original boats as they now have all that extra fixed foam buoyancy under the side benches. The extra foam was put in to remedy the formerly poor  stability of the swamped boat, but -in my opinion- has never been properly tested and assessed with regards to what it does to bringing back up the turtled boat. 

There was a lot to be learned from watching your old Lugger capsize drills. The Swallowboats difference is that Matt has watched closely (he was there in 2007 too), and that he has done something clever about it, while the Drascombes didn't.
He designs for the worst case scenario right from the start and personally and openly tests his designs using the toughest Option No. 7 of the ISO standard (righting a turtled boat in practice through a single crew in under 5 minutes). And shows his testing on the Internet. That is what all boatbuilders should be forced to do, IMHO.