Dear Chris The cruising pilot house sailing boat you describe almost fits the description of Randy Repass's boat - Convergence. Randy is the founder and chairman of West Marine, and was on the pick alongside me recently at Thomas Island in the Whitsunday group in Oz. I had an opportunity to go aboard and being an old stick and rag man thought she was an absolute knockout. Have a look at http://www.westmarine.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/DisplayPageView?stor eId=10001&langId=-1&catalogId=10001&page=Convergence&sect=home This is surely the best rag boat you could imagine for a cruising couple, and he and his wife Sally Christine are demonstrating this by what they are doing and where they are now. Best regards to Sonaia Peter Sheppard N55#38

Dear Peter, I had heard of Randy Repass's boat and he's on the right track. My only criticism is that the sails are not wrap around but on a track up the back of the mast. When I was building Freedoms, we tested the rig and discovered that the wrap around sail enabled us to get a shape like the section of a wing of a plane and that was the secret to Freedoms going much faster than hull speed. The then Sales Director of Fairways, Anton Emmerton who later founded Fleming with Tony Fleming, sailed a Freedom 35 (33ft) from Salford in the Southwest of England to the Hamble (Southampton) at an average speed of 9.4 knots reaching all the way. The same model won every race of the Solent race series. I had a delivery skipper bring my 35 from Largs (Glasgow) to the Costa del Sol and when he stepped on shore he told me that the boat was truly amazing. He had averaged over 8 knots in not very favourable winds. The Freedom 40 that convinced Rob & Naomi James with 10-12 knots reaching in 20 knots of wind swallowed a bigger Swan like it was standing still at 7.5 knots in the same wind. The second generation Freedom (US design) went to the tracked sail like Convergence and lost the reaching speed advantage. Sonaia sends her best wishes! How's your Nordhavn behaving? Best, Chris On Tue, Nov 4, 2008 at 1:14 AM, Peter Sheppard <Peter@petersheppard.com.au>wrote: > Dear Chris > > The cruising pilot house sailing boat you describe almost fits the > description of Randy Repass's boat - Convergence. > Randy is the founder and chairman of West Marine, and was on the pick > alongside me recently at Thomas Island in the Whitsunday group in Oz. > I had an opportunity to go aboard and being an old stick and rag man > thought she was an absolute knockout. > Have a look at > http://www.westmarine.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/DisplayPageView?stor > eId=10001&langId=-1&catalogId=10001&page=Convergence&sect=home<http://www.westmarine.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/DisplayPageView?storeId=10001&langId=-1&catalogId=10001&page=Convergence&sect=home> > > This is surely the best rag boat you could imagine for a cruising > couple, and he and his wife Sally Christine are demonstrating this by > what they are doing and where they are now. > Best regards to Sonaia > Peter Sheppard N55#38 > _______________________________________________ > http://lists.samurai.com/mailman/listinfo/passagemaking-under-power > > To unsubscribe send email to > passagemaking-under-power-request@lists.samurai.com with the word > UNSUBSCRIBE and nothing else in the subject or body of the message. > > Passagemaking Under Power and PUP are trademarks of Water World > Productions, formerly known as Trawler World Productions.

I like the design of Convergence - note that one of the other variations on this design, the WylieCat 65 http://www.wyliecat.com/models/wylie_65.html specs 10knots at 2gph. It doesn't carry fuel for 3000+ nm, but you could carry a lot of fuel if you didn't have that rig + 5ton keel. Or perhaps a more modest rig. Another designer along the FPB/WylieCat theme is Nigel Irens, a recent design is 63' Molly Ban: http://www.nigelirens.com/FRAMEMolly.htm The long narrow boats have the advantage of both easier motion in the open sea as well as efficiency and slightly higher speed if you need it. As the scarcity and expense of slips increase, the market pushes more boats to the dock condo design. Even today's trawlers are closer to a dock condo than Beebe's original passagemaker. The question is, will the Dashew, Irens, and Wylie designs always be expensive one offs, or is there a market for a production passagemaker of this type? --- On Mon, 11/3/08, Peter Sheppard <Peter@petersheppard.com.au> wrote: > The cruising pilot house sailing boat you describe almost > fits the > description of Randy Repass's boat - Convergence. > Have a look at > http://www.westmarine.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/DisplayPageView?stor eId=10001&langId=-1&catalogId=10001&page=Convergence&sect=home

Mark, I think you propose a good question i.e. the cost of log narrow boats vs. shorter beamier boats. In my view there are two parts to the answer: 1. The longer narrower design uses more materials, requires a longer slip, and generally costs more except in fuel. 2. People that look at a boat for living space (read - admirals) prefer the spaciousness of the beamier options that can be accommodated. John Harris -- I am using the free version of SPAMfighter. We are a community of 5.6 million users fighting spam. SPAMfighter has removed 424 of my spam emails to date. Get the free SPAMfighter here: http://www.spamfighter.com/len The Professional version does not have this message