VOLVO OCEAN RACE--crunch time

Volvo Ocean Race

Oh so thats how timber does it

I crewed on a Sparkman Stevens ketch rigged 100 footer once from Boston to DC....you gotta be hardy to lower the jib when the seas are up...yo ho ho...

Back when I was 17 my boss wanted my best friebd an I to sail around the world with him and his family. Well my sports got in the way.

I took sailing lessons at the East River Yacht Club in Annapolis, when i was sixteen. (To put that in perspective for you, there was a Texan in the White House--and it was not in the last six years; no, Pappy Bush is not a Texan.) We then did a sail around the Chesapeake and back to Annapolis--one week. We were in 25 foot sloops, which slept two, or four very friendly people. It war a gas . . .

I crewed on a Choy Lee in a Baltimore to Block Island Race once. The captain/owner was such a prick that we barely got round Cape Charles when we (the crew) were ready to murder him.
We were there for fun, he was there to win. These are mutually incompatible concepts.

A-involves booze and wimmin

B involves cranking guys and screaming

Besides, a goddam Choy Lee is a "fancy junque" its not a racing boat. Stupid As shole , I keep reading the obits in the hope he will croak before me.

At the Yacht Club, they employed high school kids in the summer. These kids had brick red skin from constant exposure to the sun while on the water. The soles of their feet were brick red, too, though--the red clay of the harbor was so ingrained in their feet, because they spent the summer bare-footed, that their feet were as red as the rest of their skin. I used to envy them--that is how natural watermen are trained up.

just flipping by the channels and caught about 10 minutes of the race on public tv

I wonder what was the fastest recorded speed for a sailing vessel ?

That would depend upon how you would delimit the timing period, and whether or not you refer to modern era sailing vessels, or those in the days when the sailing vessel was king.

In 1851, Flying Cloud, a clipper ship built at the Donald McKay shipyard in East Boston, and sailing from New York for Grinnell, Minturn & Co., made a record-setting run, New York to San Francisco--89 days and 21 hours after dropping her pilot, she picked up her pilot at the Golden Gate. After her third voyage, she was laid up for refitting in 1853. In January 1854, she left for San Francisco on her fourth voyage. She picked up her pilot at the Golden Gate, 89 days, 8 hours after dropping her pilot at Sandy Hook. On both voyages, Josiah Creesy was Master, and Eleanor Creesy was Navigator. The record stood until 1989. Let me repeat that, the record stood until Nineteen Eighty-Nine.

Her one day best run, on the first voyage, yeilded an average speed of just over 15 knots. Other vessels may have had shorter spurts of greater speed, but that was an average for 24 hours. I believe, but cannot state as a fact, that her best running speed when the log was thrown, was in excess of 17 knots.

Donald McKay was a poor boy from Nova Scotia, who arrived in Boston almost penniless, after his own shipyard in Nova Scotia had failed. He was taken on in a local shipyard. There he learned his trade, and himself designed and built ships from 1842 to 1875. He built some of the greatest clipper ships of his day.

John Creesy was a successful ship's master in the China trade, from Marblehead. He met and married Eleanor Prentiss, whose father was a master of schooners, but who had no sons. He had taught his daughter trigonometry and celestial navigation. It was not unusual for ship's masters to take their wives on voyages, but in the case of the Creesy's they offered would-be employers a special, they could hire the master and the navigator as a reliable team. Those who consider that modern sailing ships enjoy navigational and structural advantages not available in the age of sail consider that Flying Cloud's record was never beaten.

12 or 15 knots is about the top speed wed expect from square riggers. The hull design, deep and long is governed by a "top speed achievable equation " wich states that (no matter the propulsion) the top speed achievable is a function where velocity is roughly equal to the product of something like 1.36 X the ratio of the square of the wetted hull length divided by the beam factor (which is a table value that I have to look up)
Thats why catamarans do such great speeds They have very skinny wetted surfaces and their beams are really thin. The only boats that can shoot this equation are the overpowered motor boats who basically set up an artificial "Bow wave" and "plane at extremely shallow deths so they are a power knife) ". Hey, maybe we need georgeob here, he was officer on a carrier and Ive heard that many carrier top speeds are still classified

I read of a speed run by a Catamaran in a high wind and a "J" boat each achieved almost 55 knots in a speed trial . Obviouly the wind, seas, sailing position and plane all affect the outcome and one days run may not be achievable for weeks to come.
In the volvo race, Im certain that they timed stretches of legs to measure their velocities using GPS and technology, so, for any real accuracy one usually records data from satellites for fixed distances. They all achieved their highest speeds in squalls so, who knows what their normal cruise speed in nominal seas is, although Im sure its faster than a square rigger could do because fore and aft sails translate wind energy much more efficiently.