On Compromises & Beauty

What can I say, she's perfect in all ways!

Well, no, not really.  But this is a very, very difficult question and usually a simple answer doesn't work.  The problem is that all boats are compromises and there often is no one, "right" answer and when "right" answers are available, they're often very subjective.  And to make matters worse, what you might want at one time is sometimes diametrically opposite to what you might want at another time.

While it's easy to say "I wish they'd have done this or not done that",  that's not really the right way to look at things.   Boats are generally pretty "tight" designs in that there's not a lot of slack or wasted space.  It's usually close to impossible to change just one thing and not impact other features as well.  To reasonably consider any change, you must also consider what else will be changed.  So a better approach is to say "Is this compromise artful enough as it is or would I really prefer to have pushed the solution more one way or the other?" 

As a very clear example -- when we were in Mexico in the summer, it could be quite hot even late into the night.  At times, I would have liked to to have been able to sleep in the cockpit, where it was a bit cooler.  But the seats in the cockpit are too short to stretch out on, so I was only able to sleep there with a little contortion.  It would have been possible, while in design, to stretch the seating a bit going forward, BUT we'd have had to give up some headroom in the aft stateroom.  And it would also have resulted in a materially larger cockpit which was the very last thing we wanted when we were in 25+ foot following seas, worrying about being pooped by a rouge wave.

Now it's quite easy to provide more cockpit space with a different design --  you can see it in Beneteaus and the like all the time.  But it means a wider transom-type stern which can result in unbalanced lines which, in turn, can make a boat much more difficult to handle in extreme conditions and/or cause heavy weather helm when heeled over.

So, on balance I guess I'm satisfied with Daydreamer's balanced lines and canoe stern and resulting cockpit design compromises.  Well, no, that's not quite right either ... I'm enamored of her stern.  I think it's gorgeous and sometimes, when I'm out in the dink, I'll come alongside and run my hand along it just for the shear pleasure of it.  You know how sometimes you run across a tool or some such that is just the right size and shape and density and texture that it's just pleasurable to hold or to use?  It's kinda like that.  I've got a fid with just the right amount of curvature to fit my hand perfectly and every time I get it out to do a bit of work with it, I'll spend a moment or two just admiring its elemental perfection.  So, while I'd like to have longer cockpit seating, I guess, on balance, that I would prefer to not make the compromises required to get them.

I'd like to have a larger dinette and have seen a sister ship that did just that.  The bulkhead between the galley and dinette had been pushed aft a foot or two and it had a nice, luxuriously large dinette.  BUT it lost some space and three drawers in the galley, drawers that we would miss severely.  Given that we only had two children, a single berth in the forward stb'd stateroom would have been more comfortable rather than the bunks we do have but we use the upper berth for storage so it's not wasted.  Actually, I've seen about a half-dozen other FD-12s and I like our interior layout at least as well as the others and better than many of them.  Again, good compromises I think, but others may not agree.

Probably the bit I complain about most is the engine size.  Every time I'm slogging into headwinds and seas and keep getting knocked back to 2.5 - 3 knots, I want an engine half again larger than the one we have.  But I'm delighted to have a smaller engine when I've been motoring along for several days and still have a tank and half of fuel left and I'm grateful for the smaller engine whenever I go to the fuel pump.  In fact, when I had to rebuild the engine I looked quite hard at replacing our Lehman with something larger.  As I recall, I could have shoehorned a larger Yanmar into the engine space BUT I would have lost much of the relatively easy maintenance access I have now and I would have probably had to disassemble the Yanmar to even get it through the companionway (the Lehman just, I mean just, fit).  At heart, this is really more of a convenience issue than anything else.  I mean, it all works, I just want it to work faster sometimes.

Even the size of the boat is a compromise.  I'd like a boat about 10 of 15 feet shorter when I go to pay the berthing fee or when I'm cleaning the bottom.  But I also know that stability goes up exponentially with size so when things get a bit bouncy out there, I'm really glad to have the extra size.  And when I'm able to help another cruiser because I carry more bits, pieces, and parts than he can, well, he's glad I've got a big boat too.

As for most of the rest of the stuff I would have liked to change, I changed!  The anchor chain locker is now quite a lot larger, I've built and added some more cabinets, the bench tops in the galley are way better than original, and the refrigeration system is now equal to or better than just about any other cruising sailboat out there.  I'm still not satisfied with the dodger, at least esthetically, but it sure is functional.

And this brings up the point I want to close with.  I once heard a talk by Robert Perry, a relatively well-known yacht designer in the US (viz. Valiant 40).  He said something that really stuck with me, to the effect that "when you're rowing away from your boat on her mooring and you look back at her ... if you don't think she's beautiful, you've got the wrong boat."  I really think he's absolutely right about this.  If you've got the right boat, one that pleases your senses, then those compromises will be palatable.  As for Daydreamer -- she isn't perfect but, by god*, she IS beautiful.

*That god would be Aphrodite, of course.  I almost named the boat Callipygia, from the word callipygian meaning "... pertaining to, or having beautiful buttocks".  The word derives from the Greek Venus Kallipygos, a statue of Aphrodite that was thought to have a particularly shapely bottom.

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The Black Art of Propeller Pitching

Standard practice is to have a propeller with a diameter and pitch that completely loads the engine at it's maximum rated RPM.  If the engine is big enough, the resulting boat speed will be at or above the "hull speed".  An oversized engine will have excess power and can handle fouled hulls and props and other adverse conditions with relative aplomb.  It'll also cost more to install, repair, and operate and consume more space to boot.

Now, every engine has a "sweet spot" where it seems to run best.  This operating point is usually around the rpm where the peak torque and maximum fuel efficiency occurs.  If I were to run the engine at this speed, which I like to do when motoring for extended periods as on passage, a prop pitched as per standard practice would not come near utilizing all the power that's available at this rpm, which means that the boat is a bit slower than it could be if it were to fully load the engine at that rpm.  A coarser pitch allows me to pick up the boat speed a bit at this operating point BUT it overloads the engine at high rpm.  Reducing the pitch as per standard practice would allow me to get full engine rpm/horsepower, which would come in handy when slogging to windward and increase top speed as well but at the the cost of more noise, wear, and fuel consumption when on passage. 

We used to have a 3-bladed Max-prop installed.  This is a feathering (not folding) prop whose blades will rotate into a fore-and-aft orientation when the boat under sail and the engine is stopped.  The main positive aspect of this is to reduce propeller drag when under sail, which will add to the boat's speed in light and moderate winds.  The main compromise for this propeller, aside from its high cost, is that the blades are flat and are, therefore, less efficient that the cupped blades of a fixed blade prop.  There are two other side benefits to the Max-prop; they're more efficient in reverse, so the boat can back straighter than with the fixed-blade prop and they can be easily re-pitched when the boat is out of the water.  If maximum speed under power were to be more important than the ability to run for days at the engine's most efficient speed, then less pitch would clearly be in order.  This might be the case if the boat were to be spending a lot of time coastal cruising, when the ability to make a marina or anchorage before sunset would be most important.

Of course, we anticipate a lot of motoring while coastal cruising in Mexico so changed the Max-prop back to the original 3-bladed fixed prop we carried around for years.  This is the uncompromised setup for motoring speed and efficiency BUT light air sailing performance suffers a little.

The ideal technical solution to this problem is available, a continuously variable pitch propeller.  With one of these, you can set whatever engine RPM you want and dial in the pitch that'll best load it up.  An exhaust pyrometer will keep you from overloading the engine.  The downside?  You probably guessed it -- these things are horrendously expensive!