Design Brought to you in association with
Very different from the Whitbread 60 of the same name that went around the world in the 1997/98 race, but as you get a little more mature every yacht owner deserves a little more comfort and a little less freeze-dried food. Luxurious or not, the performance profile of the new Chessie Racing is cranked well up, pushing the sail area/displacement ratio well beyond the point where it is most efficient with respect to rating. This emphasis on outright performance is common to a growing number of today’s new yachts – and at all sizes. Go fast, have fun and let the rating systems keep up if they wish to
Creation and prediction
With 495ft of groundbreaking yachts launched in the past 12 months, it is designer Bill Tripp’s new 62ft Chessie Racing that Seahorse readers are most likely to encounter on the racecourse
Chessie Racing
I had a conversation with my neighbour, who is an economist, over dinner recently on the subject of creation vs prediction. He had been looking at some photos of our most recently launched boats and asked how we could possibly deliver on a complex set of expectations involving so many unknowns.
Despite the fact that his expertise is economic modelling, he said that in his world predicting anything approaching an exact outcome was a pipedream. To him, the idea that in the design and engineering world we could use predictive modelling to achieve an exact outcome was close to miraculous. I told him that pre- dicting designing and engineering results was what we did well – it was predicting how to make a living at it that was the iffy part! Ah, if an economist could only help us there.
We went on to speak of the differences between the chaos theory in economic modelling of an open system vs chaos theory in fluid dynamics and structural analysis within the confines of our more ordered systems. We are both regularly using CFD and FEA tools to look into the future, but his economics training taught him that no effort, however disciplined, would overcome the randomness of unforeseen events. I, on the other hand, described how as engineers we work with a combination of exact sciences and predictive models to overcome randomness – not something that we want at sea!
Where our two implementations of predictive modelling differ
is that in naval architecture and design ours can be checked and benchmarked against existing forms. In fact, in the design and engineering sciences we cannot be afraid to seek change, but we had better be able to predict the outcome.
This year we delivered three very different boats. The biggest
is Aquijo, an 86m (282ft) ketch built in steel, that, while enormous, is a true sailing yacht with two 300ft masts. The second, Skade, is a 46m (151ft) modern world-cruiser built in aluminium that was
delivered in May and is already out in the South Pacific. Both of these vessels were built in Holland.
Moving back to the US, our most recent launch is the 62ft café
racer Chessie Racing, built by New England Boatworks for an experienced owner looking for a very particular boat that is sexy, fast, easy to sail shorthanded and comfortable for both daily use and cruising. She is also the perfect boat to review the creation vs prediction design and engineering spiral that I spoke to my neighbour about in something less than 200 pages. This owner is coming off a bigger cruising boat and wanted something both easier to sail and faster, but having enough accom- modation, rather than as much as possible, to simplify how he went sailing. The primary focus lay on three things: the ability to go very fast, take friends and family out daily in comfort, and have fun racing offshore. Beyond that he needed to have shoal water capability for his dock and beauty to look at. What an old friend of mine boatbuilder Bill Green once called ‘a Tour de Force’. In the pure raceboat world there is a constant seeking of relent- less simplification or minimalism – the best way to save weight is to not have it. In the world of dual-use boats there are systems, equipment and volumes to accommodate. While our bigger boats had their own set of challenges, putting all these worlds into what we describe as a pocket-rocket is nothing less than a ‘mission’. To meet this challenge one must get the balance just right and, while this also includes some level of simplification and optimi- sation, it will exist at a higher level of complexity.
Design brief
In our brief the owner called for a dynamic boat to be used primarily to sail extensively as a day boat in New England and Florida as well as in some of his favourite distance races. These races run the gamut of handicap rules, including IRC and ORR, and with an eye to ORCi for further down the road. All in a simple state-of-the- art design, rather than a rule-centric boat. Some specifics: l Ultra-modern carbon daysailer l Three private sleeping cabins, two heads, a comfortable main saloon
SEAHORSE 57
BILLY BLACK
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74 |
Page 75 |
Page 76 |
Page 77 |
Page 78 |
Page 79 |
Page 80 |
Page 81 |
Page 82 |
Page 83 |
Page 84 |
Page 85 |
Page 86 |
Page 87 |
Page 88 |
Page 89 |
Page 90 |
Page 91 |
Page 92