Crikey........I've got all that to look forward to when I finally get to Lion Island.

Boats have been carrying flat fore sections for a long time now which will pound into a sea. This is something you have to learn to live with if you want speed and a boat that sails well at most angles. Shaggy will know all about it with his new boat, but he should already be use to it with the Sonata 8 , as they have a very flat fore section in front of the keel. Another thing most modern boats get is slap under the transom, this why I would not have a boat with an aft main cabin. They Hanse 40 is a beautiful boat to sail and it is worth it to put up with the odd thump.

For my two cents, coming from NZ where the seas are always big, I find modern sailing boats are often what I would call flimsy.

I remember seeing a modern "trendy and shiny white" european brand yacht sitting on its keel in a slipway in Sydney, the keel was bowed and pushed into the hull causing it to bend and crack. Pathetic design.

Someone I know had one and hit a sand bar - the centre board/pseudo keel fell off! ie. An ocean going boat that fragile??!!

Masts same. If you look around a bay at the moored yachts you can tell which masts might break and which ones are sized to be sturdy.

Fibreglass is a really good boat material but it needs a few more layers than go onto those boats. More effort needs to go into making them yachts instead of pretty white things used for picking up girls and prestige in Sydney Harbour.

Only my two cents worth :-)

Jode5 said..
Boats have been carrying flat fore sections for a long time now which will pound into a sea. This is something you have to learn to live with if you want speed and a boat that sails well at most angles. Shaggy will know all about it with his new boat, but he should already be use to it with the Sonata 8 , as they have a very flat fore section in front of the keel. Another thing most modern boats get is slap under the transom, this why I would not have a boat with an aft main cabin. They Hanse 40 is a beautiful boat to sail and it is worth it to put up with the odd thump.

Yep to what Jode5 said, that's exactly what happens on the Sonata. When it is a big landing, it robs you of a knot or two in boat speed and drops to leeward another half boat length before you can recover. Rounder hull shapes with long keels ride much more comfortably, but too much so and your wetted surface area increases again (drag) , it is I suppose the archetypal displacement hull shape.
The Pogo I expect will be more pronounced at crashing, at least due to the fuller bow profile.

That is one modern design trend I was seeing: increased volume in the bow. It seems to provide several benefits, ie: more room(obviously), more buoyancy, less nose dive to name a few.
The scow bow is becoming hip

One other thing is that U-shaped bow sections with a flat bottom are very efficient in many ways. They provide lots of volume for low wetted surface, compared to Vee sections. And when you are sailing in a decent breeze and the boat is heeled, the edges of the flat U turn into a Vee, just when you want it - that is, when the boat is heeled and moving fast upwind, the same conditions you are going to get hit big waves.

However, the theory comes unstuck when you motor into headseas with the boat upright. Then the flat section of the U is horizontal, and you land on it - hard.

This came out many years ago when some of the Peterson designs that were among the first to take on the U-sections broke frames in the USA - not when they were racing, but when they were motoring home (IIRC) from a high wind race.

You see something similar in dinghies. NS14s, UK Nat 12s and MRs, Int 14s etc have U shaped sections because they have low wetted surface and good planing lift. Bethwaite boats, which are not built to length and sail area restrictions, can have Vee shaped sections that carve through chop better but slow the boat down in light winds.

Personally some of the worst slamming I have ever felt was a rough trip back from Noumea in a long keel Vee section boat. When she heeled to the gale from the nose, the Vee became a flat panel that the whole boat would drop on. Yeccchhhhhhh!

As Shaggy mentioned, old IOR style boats like the Sonata would slow down when slamming. That meant that the good helms would work the boat around the waves like a Laser, weaving over and through to keep the boat moving fast without bouncing. When IMS boats came in, with their higher stability, some guys who should know said that since they had more power and would not slow down when they slammed, you just kept them pounding over the waves and hoped they wouldn't break. It seemed to be a classic case of revenge effect and in my (limited) experience, that generation of IMS boats was incredibly uncomfortable.