Hey Peter, my cantankerous Aussie pal! Glad to here you are living the life
with that Nordhavn of yours. I was jealous to read about your trip around
that big island down under.
For a lot of different reasons, I opted not to get the roll tanks. Those
were developed by a Don Bass, PhD, who is somewhere up in the northeast
(USA) I believe. Dave Cooper on Swann Song fitted his boat with them and I
understand they work really well for him. On my new build, I concluded that
they just could not be easily incorporated into the design when I started to
consider them as an alternative and I was a little worried about whether
they actually worked or not. I later heard from Dave Cooper and his
excellent results with the roll tanks. They do take some design and
engineering expertise; you can't just slap them on the roof, but everything
I have heard from Dave Cooper is very favorable and they work quite well for
him.
I ended up using with paravanes and twin bilge keels, along with the big
centerline keel. The "wings" as Brian Smyth (my builder) called them are
pretty big and the thought that they would help with tracking and also with
stabilization. When I needed additional help I always had the paravanes in
reserve.
My boat also has a pretty low profile, which helps as well:
The "wings" or bilge keels seemed to work well on the passage from Halifax
to Boston. We were at sea for about 50 hours; from the southern tip of Nova
Scotia to Boston we had beam seas the entire way and the boat was rock solid
throughout the trip. Now, we were not in heavy season, no more than 6 feet
or so I think -- but for most of the trip they were dead on the beam and we
were rolling so little that I never even thought about putting the paravanes
in the water.
I was really happy with the stabilization (so far).
By the way, while I am in the reporting mode, if you have a Spot follow me
"thing" you need to make sure that you hit the dang button every 24 hours.
I had not read the fine print. The tracking feature turns off after 24
hours. The little green light continues to flash, as if the dang thing is
on, but the tracking feature no longer sends after 24 hours unless you push
the button again. Of course, for me, my tracker feature turned off
somewhere between the tip of Nova Scotia and Boston -- which sent everyone
at home that was following me into an absolute tizzy.
More to post in a bit on PUP . . .
Alan Wagner
Passage of Time
Presently in Boston (but I am home in Tampa)
-----Original Message-----
From: Peter Sheppard
Sent: Friday, September 10, 2010 1:43 AM
Subject: Re: [PUP] Stabilization
Talking about the gyro principle as an alternative, Alan Wagner how is your
water transfer system going?
Peter