Hi John, It did indeed sound like you were quarrelling with owners about the quality of their boats. Perhaps you overstated your point when you said the C27 isn't "safe on any point of sail in 35 kts." No harm done.
I think we agree on a lot of things: We agree with you that beginning sailors shouldn't try to sail a full suit of working sails or a spinny downwind in 35 kts. We agree that it's not smart to to sail UPWIND with 100% canvas in 30 kts of wind. We agree on the necessity of reducing sail in 30 kts upwind. We agree that it's "unseamanlike" to carry excessive sail downwind -- but my perspective surfing differs from yours. I think it's a hoot to surf a boat. I understand the dynamics and technique of surfing a hull pretty thoroughly. (You can take away my sled, but you can't take the racer out of me, LOL. I used to windsurf and sail small hi-performance sailboats but my body can't absorb the abuse any more. Incidentally, my other boat is a 20 year old non-stock 19 foot West Wight Potter that weighs only 1400 pounds -- and I've sailed her in 25-30 kts of wind and waves taller than her beam is wide. It's a lot of work, but it's kinda fun) We agree that you gotta have waves to surf. We agree surfing a hull is relatively dangerous. I suspect you would agree with me that it takes a great deal of experience (seamanship?) to "safely" drive any sailboat that's surfing. The C27 yahoo group members include surveyors, Naval Architects, engineers, racers, and livaboards who have done incredible modifications to their C27's, as well as beginning sailors who are buying their first boat. I personally have indeed read Vigor's book (as have many others on this list), along with about 50 others texts on yacht design, sail design, foil design, fiberglass repair, and rigging design (including how to specify a chain plate). Like several others on this list, I can do the engineering. Fair winds, Judy B I'm not a naval architect, but I play one on TV :^) (not really) ________________________________ From: Jack Brennan <[email protected]> To: [email protected] Sent: Wednesday, June 10, 2009 10:19:42 AM Subject: RE: [IC27A] Judy - C27 CE Judy: I'm sorry if I'm getting you riled up. My intention in joining this list was to monitor what owners are saying about the C27, not to quarrel with owners about the quality of their boats. But I was a little baffled and alarmed to read posts about carrying working sails and spinnakers in 35 and 40 knots of wind in small production sailboats. Maybe conditions are different where you are. But you would die if you tried that in the Atlantic Ocean off South Florida in a C27 or a similar sailboat. If you haven't already, read John Vigor in Twenty Small Sailboats That Will Take You Anywhere and The Seaworthy Offshore Sailboat. He has excellent assessments of the seaworthiness and construction quality of the C27 in both. After inspecting a C27 at length, I agree with what he says. One last point, and then I'll shut up for good on the topic. Hull speed on a C27 is 6.2 knots. With a 25-knot following wind and a clean bottom, my guess is that a single- or double-reefed main would get you to that speed. At more than 7,000 pounds loaded, the C27 is not going to plane except under exceptional circumstances. So what happens if you carry more sail? You stress your rig while driving the bow down into the water. If you have production sails, as most of us do, they get stretched. You don't get any extra speed. If you have a big following sea, you can surf and exceed 6.2 knots. But surfing is the result of wave action, not wind. As long as you're carrying enough sail to keep you moving through the troughs of the waves, you're good to go. When you turn around and try to beat into that 25-knot wind, you're going to have a truckload of weather helm from that unreefed main. Now your rudder is getting stressed. My point is that it's unseamanlike for people to try to carry that much sail in strong winds. I hope any beginning sailor reading this understands that. -----Original Message----- From: ic...@yahoogroups. com [mailto:IC27A@ yahoogroups. com]On Behalf Of Judith Blumhorst, DC Sent: Wednesday, June 10, 2009 12:19 PM To: ic...@yahoogroups. com Subject: Re: [IC27A] Judy - C27 CE oops, an errant cut-n-paste messed up my last paragraph. It should read: The C27 has a 40% ballast ratio and a modest SA/disp of about 15, and with a few not-expensive upgrades to the rig, is good candidate for sailing in high winds. ________________________________ From: "Judith Blumhorst, DC" <drju...@blumhorst. com> To: ic...@yahoogroups. com Sent: Wednesday, June 10, 2009 7:50:34 AM Subject: Re: [IC27A] Judy - C27 CE Your email suggest that you wouldn't be at all happy buying a C27. I suggest you look for a different boat. Are you suggesting that everybody on San Francisco Bay should get rid of his C27 because it isn't safe to sail in our local conditions? There are hundreds of C27s and crew that have survived thousands of hours of sailing in 35 knots of wind on all points of sail without catastophic failure of a sound deck or chainplates. The deck doesn't pulsate at the shroud backing plates on my boat. (The deck is permanently deflected upwards there, LOL! But it hasn't ripped apart after 32 years!) The C27 has a 40% ballast ratio, and with a few not-expensive upgrades to the rig, is good candidate for sailing in high winds. In my opinion, sailing skill, seamanship and maintenance are usually the limiting factors. Fair winds, Judy B Sailing an imperfect boat in an otherwise perfect world :^) ________________________________ From: Jack Brennan <jackbrennan@ bellsouth. net> To: ic...@yahoogroups. com Sent: Wednesday, June 10, 2009 6:19:06 AM Subject: RE: [IC27A] Judy - C27 CE Hi Judy: Thanks for the welcome. You folks out in San Francisco remind me of Vito Dumas in "Alone Through the Roaring 40s." The difference is that Leeg II was a double-ender built like a tank. Not so the C27s. On the '85 I looked at, the chainplates for the forestay and the backstay were stainless steel straps a couple of inches wide. The chainplates for the shrouds were L-shaped brackets supported solely by the deck. This isn't equipment built to take the strain of 35 knots from any point of sail, in my opinion. On my old C&C 25 (which, for the record, didn't sail as well as a C27 does), the shroud chainplates were six inches wide, a foot long and through-bolted to the main bulkhead. To combat this problem, Patrick Childress had custom chainplates built and strapped them to the topsides because he was frightened by the pulsating deck where the shroud chainplates were. Even then, his sail plan for 35 knots of wind was a storm jib. I briefly traded e-mail with Childress a couple of years back on an unrelated topic. At one point, I suggested that he write a book about his circumnavigation. He said he had decided against it because he didn't want to encourage anyone to do what he did. He said that while the C27 is a great boat, it just isn't built for offshore-like conditions. -----Original Message----- From: ic...@yahoogroups. com [mailto:IC27A@ yahoogroups. com]On Behalf Of Judith Blumhorst, DC Sent: Wednesday, June 10, 2009 3:32 AM To: ic...@yahoogroups. com Subject: Re: [IC27A] Judy - C27 CE Hi jack, Welcome to the C27/270 Association list. I agree that it's a little crazy to fly a spinny in 30+ knots, but I think you'd be surprised at how much canvas a C27 can carry sailing downwind in those conditions. I've been sailing 49 years, and so far I haven't yet lost a rig, nor twisted any hulls nor put a smile at the front of the keel. My hubby and I regularly fly a 95% (equivalent to a 110% on a std rig) or 135% (equivalent to a std 150%) with full mainsail downwind in 30 knots from the Golden Gate Bridge to the Bay Bridge. That's enough canvas to get the boat surfing on the waves. It's scarey fast. It takes considerable skill to drive in those conditions, because you steer the boat mostly by heeling one way or the other as the waves pass under her, with only minor correction with the rudder. If you over react with the rudder, the boat will round up violently or round down spectacularly and broach. I certainly agree with you that a flat boat is a fast boat on a reach or a beat. We reef and shake out reefs all day long depending on our point of sail if we wanna go fast and flat. We can put one in and or shake one out in under 60 seconds from the cockpit without even rushing. It's second nature to us. I'd go even further and say that a well trimmed boat is a flat boat is a safe boat is a fast boat. Even though we don't race, we can shift gears with the best of 'em. We play the traveller and the sheet leads to put twist in the sails, outhaul to control the lower profile, backstay on for upwind to shape the draft in the jib, cunningham for acceleration or high end speed. That's probably even more important than reefing. Fair winds, Judy B 1977 C27 Tall Rig #3459, "Bijou" San Francisco Bay http://www.blumhors t.com/catalina27 /catalinahomepag e.htm ________________________________
