Posted by Ed Kiser on October 21, 2005 at 16:54:37 from 152.163.100.6 user Kisered.
In Reply to: Finish on Scarab, ballast and turning turtle posted by Jock on October 21, 2005 at 16:00:45:
Learning to recover from a capsize in a boat similar to Amazon is one thing, but now consider that action in a boat like my 4 meter CATAMARAN. The twin hull design made it very stable, but only up to a point, and once that point is reached, it can get very suddenly alarming for someone seated on the high hull and suddenly finds himself launched to land on top of the sail that is lying flat on the water. Once a "Cat" turns over, you have a 32 foot cloth keel, and two 2.5 foot metal sails, assuming these daggerboards do not just drop out of the hull and become totally lost, as they are not fastened, depending on gravity to hold into its normal positions. But inverted, that gravity will drop those daggerboards to be gone, gone, gone.
The affect on the wind on the upturned deck of a cat sailing with one hull down, and the other "flying" can make for quite a sudden flip, similar to what happens when there are high performance speed boats that hit a bit of wave and get the nose a bit too high, and it starts to fly, flipping end over end. The wind can get under that cat deck so that it itself becomes quite a sail, and suddenly one is involved in a rather uplifting experience.
As my timidity in pushing the envelope made me rather conservative, with me chosing to pay out the mainsheet a bit to spill a bit of a strong puff rather than make the heeling over reach any critical limit, I never had the experience of flipping that cat. Not that I regret having avoided the excitement of that experience, but I do wonder what one does to get it back up right once it does "turn turtle" as the procedure must be quite different from how it is done in an Amazon type boat.
But, gosh, it sure was exciting, running close hauled, one hull flying, and me hanging on, thrilled, scared, and having more fun that I could imagine, the wind in my face. Wow...
Ed Kiser, South Florida