Wednesday 4 March 2015

Up hill

One of the unknowns with this design is how well a boat without dagger boards can go up wind. The KD650 is an asymmetric hulled Catamaran and is designed to be able to go upwind without boards.

Below is a Google Earth image from my latest outing with my GPS track overlaid. The wind was a good 15 knots or so and a bit gusty. I sailed from the top right of the image down wind and on to a reach then back up wind again with a bit of tacking. This is the Waitemata harbour in Auckland and the tide was coming in so I was going upwind against the tide. As I got closer to the bridge I was more going for speed than height, and having some fun :)


As you can see it is not bad, considering the pros and cons of the design I'm pretty happy with this performance..

Average speeds up wind were about 7 knots and top speed on this trip was 13.6 knots.

4 comments:

  1. Hi Rodney

    that's getting pretty impressive. Glad you are sneaking a few outings
    will mail you

    regards
    Bryan

    ReplyDelete
  2. I love this! It looks perfect for a small cruiser. Please keep us updated on the sailing performance (especially upwind). How hard was it to set up the original bulkhead framing? What do you think... Can someone with just a little experience really build this?

    ReplyDelete
  3. Hi Michael.
    Thanks for your comments. The framing was not hard to set up, however a lot of care is needed to make sure they are lined up properly.
    As for how hard it is to build, you don't need much experience, it is fairly simple woodwork to begin with. As the build progresses it gets a bit harder but you get better at. So the learning curve in a way, matches the build.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I'm really happy with to see the upwind angles. I was expecting the worst, but apparently, Bernd knows what he's talking about with his assym boats. I'm planning to build a Strike 15 to learn to do the boatbuilding (and teach my son how to sail), and then come back and make something like this for coastal cruising.

      Delete