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----- Original Message ---- From: John Marshall <johnamar1101@gmail.com> To: Passagemaking Under Power List <passagemaking-under-power@lists.samurai.com> Sent: Tuesday, March 18, 2008 11:06:17 PM Subject: Re: [PUP] Emergency tiller >A narrow, canoe-shaped stern might help with that, but you'd lose a >heck of a lot of storage and cockpit space. Not necessarily. I have a rounded, canoe stern on a 40 foot boat that will accommodate a dining table with as many as 6 people in dining chairs. My stern lazarette is cavernous. My stern cockpit is as big or bigger than most 40 foot trawlers. What you do give up is a swim platform. Although you can fit a free standing swim platform, generally they do not look good or function well on a canoe sterned boat. But a swim platform does introduce other problems in quartering and following seas. Free standing swim platforms can exacerbate a boat's tendency to yaw and slew around in those kinds of seas. Nordhavn and many other designs have minimized this tendency by integrating the swim platform into the stern and hull and results in a good compromise. That is not possible on a true, canoe shaped stern. Canoe shaped sterns might be more seakindly in quartering and following seas and they might be somewhat more fuel efficient than a squared off stern. But the canoe shaped stern does introduce other compromises and limitations not found on boats of similar size with squared off sterns. I have a saloon/galley/pilothouse area that is probably 25% smaller than a Nordhavn 40 or Krogen 39. Canoe sterns are not everyone's cup of tea, but I just like the looks of them and an owner's pride in their boat counts for a lot. All boat designs are a compromise. I don't know of one that is perfect. Nordhavn has certainly proven the success of their designs by the legions of loyal owners and the sheer number of their boats that are out there doing it with many miles of happy, successful cruising....all over the world. As far as tracking, my boat will manually steer itself better in calm conditions than with my hand on the wheel. I can hand steer with the best of any drunken sailor! Patrick Willard 40PH ALOHA La Paz, MX ____________________________________________________________________________________ Never miss a thing. Make Yahoo your home page. http://www.yahoo.com/r/hs