Good Books and Resources on Proa & Sailboat Design?
I have the Bethwaite book. He focuses on his particular areas of expertise - meteorology as applied to sail racing (which was fascinating), and the development of planing skiff hulls. At least, those are the parts I remember.
Curtis
The book actually covers a lot more ground - Bethwaite was a pioneer in many aspects - bringing scientific evaluation and testing to a field where anecdotal experience and seat-of-the-pants “feel” was the norm. Spar design, sail design, foil design, tow testing and measuring results with load cells as well as wind tunnels all were brought into play. Bethwaite not only questioned state of the art, he quantified it and measured things.
As I come from the trapeze skiff sailing world, Bethwaite’s book was a very appropriate fit for me. It is NOT proa-specific but the material covered is applicable to any one trying to go faster.
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Bill S.
I ordered a copy of Larsson’s “Principles of Yacht Design”. I’ve only gotten around to the second chapter, but based on the first chapter, and what I’ve seen by flipping through the book a bit, it seems really good. Someone said the book is a bit theoretical, but I don’t really agree. Compared to engineering textbooks in general, I’d say the book is pretty light reading. There’s lots of good diagrams, it’s well and clearly written, and the whole thing is very light on the math. The fact the authors stated that they didn’t even use any calculus in the book was a bit of a shocker for me from an engineering textbook, but that makes it all the more accessible, and makes it a good place to get started. So far I’m very happy with the book.
A few weeks back I also came across http://www.outrigmedia.com/ , a fantastic website. For $30 they sell an audio series where Jim Brown interviews the who’s-who of multihulls on all sorts of topics, with lots of discussion about all sorts of different multihulls and their different aspects, and most of the guys being good old friends, there’s plenty of interesting stories about the beginnings of modern multihulls in there as well. The conversations are really interesting, and I at least have really learned a lot, so that was defintiely worth every penny. The last two episodes are about the proas Madness and Cimba respectively.
—Another question though; our admins recommend “The 40-Knot Sailboat”, but mentioned it’s out of print. Is there any way to get a hold of the book? 40 Knots sounds mighty good to me! ;D
Everyone has recommended really great books, and I completely agree with their suggestions. To this list I would add a classic: Yacht Designing and Planning by Howard I. Chapelle. (Amazon’s link)
It’s a very old book, published in the thirties, I believe. The designs will seem archaic, but it is magnificently written and beautifully illustrated. You will learn so much, you’ll think that most of the books published today are half-baked. I would be surprised to find any naval architect that did not have this book on his shelf. No amount of computer design can substitute for understanding basic principles and time spent learning a craft the old fashioned way.
You won’t find information about multihulls, wave piercing hulls, wing sails, or modern materials. That’s not what the book does for you. Yet, to this very day, I use Chapelle’s methods for calculating the volumes of irregular solids without calculus or a computer—to just give one example worth the cost of the book.
Cheers,
Rick
I found the Richard Woods articles which Steen recommended (http://www.sailingcatamarans.com/index.php/articles/12-to-be-published-mainly-technical) really good, especially the bit on hull shapes provided a good, albeit brief, insight into the different alternatives.
I also finished reading “Principles of Yacht Design” cover to cover a few weeks back. I thought it was an extremely well written book, and for the most part was easy reading. I definitely learned something in the process, but unfortunately, as was already known to me in advance, the book is a monohull design book. It’s definitely worth reading to get a better understanding of the engineering side of things, but since I want to crunch numbers for multihulls, I’m still left looking for that killer multihull design textbook after reading it.
How do people who end up designing america’s cup boats, or hobie-cats, or any other kind of fast multihull learn to do their thing? I find it hard to fathom that there isn’t a proper engineering textbook which covers their stuff… Anyone got one to recommend? If not I guess I should start emailing those guys to write one! xD
A few days ago I got Russell Brown’s new Ebook: “Epoxy Basics: Working with Epoxy Cleanly & Efficiently”. At 42 pages it’s naturally a pretty small subset of for example the Gougeon Brothers, but I think it’s well written, well illustrated, covers the most essential points, and has lots of useful tips and tricks. For $6 I’d say it’s definitely worth buying.
I also updated the first post in this thread by compiling a list of recommended reading based on the recommendations here (and my own opinions). I hope it helps!
I recently read through Marchaj’s “Seaworthiness: The Forgotten Factor”. Definitely a good read, and it led me to abandon the idea of flat-bottom / trapeze cross-section hulls, and stick to the deep-v instead. Maybe I’ll post some extracts from the book at some point, there’s definitely some points in there relevant to frequent topics of discussion on the forum here. I’ve added it to the list.
I also just got my hands on “High Speed Sailing: Design Factors” by Norwood. It’s a small book, but I’m super excited to read it, it not only has a small chapter on proas, but it actually goes into hydrofoiling proas... It’s only a very small section, but skimming through it there were definitely some interesting bits in there. I’ll read the book through in the next few weeks, should be quite a quick one to read because it’s so short. I have a feeling that it will end up on the list too! 😉
I just finished reading High Speed Sailing: Design Factors. My verdict is that if you are interested in designing proas, then buy this book! It’s short, but jam-packed with interesting and relevant stuff, and lots of material particular to proas. It’s a little math heavy, like an average mechanical engineering text I’d say, but very light on calculus. The conclusions drawn from the equations are generally more important than the equations themselves anyway. It’s only ~115 half-sized pages long; I read it in the course of a week of morning reading.
A few things which I found really interesting were:
(1) An explanation of a very promising method to re-right a capsized multihull over the bows using a water bag, a large A-truss which can be attached to the crossbeam at one end with the water bag at the tip (well in front of the bows), a winch, and a floodable bow compartment with enough foam so it self-bails once re-righted (invented by a guy named Carlos Ruiz of El Salvador). I wish I could just photograph the page and post it here, but I guess I’d be violating the author’s copyright with that. :/ I intend to incorporate that righting concept it into my light cruiser, so I’ll probably do a post on Ruiz’ re-righting technique at some point.
(2) A very clever trick to get a hydro-foiling proa with the bow pitched slightly up on either tack without requiring any adjustment of the foils. The individual foils are bidirectional foils (an example which was given was the Gö 708 section from an early german glider, which is ogive and bidirectionally symmetrical). The trick to not have to adjust the foils is simply by giving them a particular set of fixed angles of attack in the ladder such that at one bow the lowest foil is mounted at 0°, the next foil up at 1.3°, the next at 2.6° and all foils above that at 4°. The foils at the other end are mounted at 0, -1.3°, -2.6°, and -4° from horizontal respectively, and that combination ensures that the the proa is stable with a slightly bow-up pitch regardless of the direction of travel. There’s also details given on how you can actually build strong hydrofoils, and how you can make ogive sections to a very high profile accuracy (which is very important for foils) with nothing other than a lathe.
(3) What I also found very interesting was a sketch of a foil-stabilized weight-to-windward cruising proa (with a full length, and thus low DWL, ama) dated April 1978. Several times throughout the book I really had the feeling that some of the knowledge contained within it has just simply been lost since the time of writing. There’s definitely plenty of interesting stuff in there still relevant to discussions occurring here on the forum today.
(4) There’s also a pretty unconventional rig which the author calls the ‘pyramid rig’. I’d say the closest thing to it that I know is the balestron rig, but instead of a jib and a main you essentially have 2 jibs mounted next to each other at some distance, but leaning towards each other with their halyards both attached to a central mast. It’s an unstayed balanaced rig, which is freely rotating, requires no external stay tension (already done in the pyradmid structure), and uses 2 relatively high aspect ratio sails instead of a single larger one, to bring the center of effort downwards. The author praises that rig concept highly, but points out that you need a bit more sailcloth for the same amount of driving power, since the sails are not vertical, which may explain why it hasn’t caught on (rating rule!). I personally don’t like it at all from an aesthetic point of view 😉 , but it’s definitely worth having a look at.
Hi all,
Don’t know if those one has been mentionned before, but there are a few very interesting book written by Dubrovsky (yes He is Russian). They don’t deal directly with proa though they are mentionned quite a few times.
It is more general of ships with outrigger and swath.
There is some very good informations on how teh hulls behave between each other mainly, how they have to be positionned etc…
So you have
-Ships with outriggers by Dubrovsky
-Multihull ships by Dubrovsky and Lyakhovitsky
-Small Water plane Area Ships by Dubrovsky (not quite in teh topic, but very interesting though)
Then the basic, they’ve been mentionned earlier, but these are really good:
-Principles of yacht design
-Gougeon Brother on boat Construction
-And all the ones by Marchaj: I quite enjoy the apology of the crab claw sail in Sail performance: Theory and practice...
Finally a good one dealing with engineering is Boat Mechanical Handbook (Dave Gerr)
And while Im in Dave Gerr, I have to add The Propeller Handbook and The element of boat strenght (Title is better than any description…)
I also know a few other but they are in French so it might not be of a great help, anyway:
Voiliers et Pirogues du monde by Eric Riech: lot of hisory, some really old drawings of proa and other ships with outriggers
Architecture Naval Connaisance et Pratique by Dominique Presles and Dominique Paulet…well, basically it is about naval architecture…
That’s all I can think about for the moment but still…
.....And now that I have read Dave Gerr’s “The Nature of Boats” it is worth a read as well.
A lot of it relates to motor boats (planing and resistance etc), but there are interesting sections on rudders (areas, conterbalancing and shapes relative to speed) and very simple lateral resistance, scantling, mast and rigging guestimators / rules of thumb. Although the rigging ones seem to come out worryingly light when compared to doing them longhand using “Skenes” and “Principles of Yacht Design” And some amusing “detective” yarns as well…....
(4) There’s also a pretty unconventional rig which the author calls the ‘pyramid rig’.
Below a picture of the rig on a small proa. This particular instantiation of the rig has a narrow base and the jibs are fairly close together.
Norwood described in a later Multihulls Magazine article the catamaran Gaia with bow steering and a pyramid rig. There he said it didn’t work so well when the owner insisted on first trying plain full length battens, but it did work fine when some of the battens were replaced by Bierig CamberSpars, which are basically rigid curved battens that rotate around the chord inside a wide batten pocket.
What may be the first example of the rig is described in one of the AYRS Airs booklets from the 70s.
All of the Bolger books are good when it comes to general design. Boats with an open mind and 30 odd boats are 2 of my favorite.
I’ve also got a multihull design book by Derek Kelsall that’s very good.
Tom
Thanks for sharing that pic Robert!—Do you have any idea why the normal battens didn’t work out?
One another note, the list of potential books to read is getting rather long here, and there’s a couple which I haven’t taken up in the list which have been mentioned more than once (Dave Gerr’s “The Nature of Boats” being one of them, Skene has popped up two or three times as well I think). Thus far the list only contains pretty much only books which I myself have actually read and found good, which is a little biased to say the least… xD
I think I’ll start taking up those books which pop up two - three times. I can only rank them though once I’ve read them, or gotten a recommendation from someone as to where to rank them.
Marco
P.S. - Too bad the forum doesn’t have any voting / rating feature we could use; a poll is unfortunately totally unsuited to the task, since it supports neither votes for multiple items nor can it, as I just found out, be edited or deleted (oops!).
One another note, the list of potential books to read is getting rather long here, and there’s a couple which I haven’t taken up in the list which have been mentioned more than once (Dave Gerr’s “The Nature of Boats” being one of them, Skene has popped up two or three times as well I think).
If you have read “Principles of Yacht Design”, then “Skene’s” won’t be any better, unless it has radically changed in the latest of its umpteen editions. My copy is a fairly early one: 1981.
I have recommended 2 Dave Gerr Books: “The Nature of Boats” and more importantly, “Boat Strength” which gives a good guide to scantlings and pros and cons of all materials and construction methods, plus things to watch out for…
It has a particularly good metal section where he gives around 16 good reasons why aluminium is a better material (and stronger material, weight for weight) than steel for yachts under 100 ft. He is also one of those highly experienced practicing (eccentric??) Naval Architects who believes in Euler’s laws, slenderness ratios and hull plating needing sufficient thickness to resist bending and compression loads.
The strongest material (including exotics) weight for weight by the way is WOOD and yes, plywood is a gift from God.
I have recommended 2 Dave Gerr Books: “The Nature of Boats” and more importantly, “Boat Strength” which gives a good guide to scantlings and pros and cons of all materials and construction methods, plus things to watch out for…
The former, judging from the book’s description, seemed kind of esoteric and all over the place, which is why I’ve been sort of reluctant to add it to the list. xD The latter seems like a pretty good idea, so far the only thing we’ve got on the list that involves scantlings, is “Elements of Yacht Design”, and as I recall it the section in the book left me wanting a bit.
He is also one of those highly experienced practicing (eccentric??) Naval Architects who believes in Euler’s laws, slenderness ratios and hull plating needing sufficient thickness to resist bending and compression loads.
NO, not Euler’s laws! You’re saying we’re actually going to have to do some structural mechanics here? *gasp* :D
The former, judging from the book’s description, seemed kind of esoteric and all over the place, which is why I’ve been sort of reluctant to add it to the list.
Gerr’s “The Nature of Boats” IS all over the place, being presumably a collection of his magazine articles written over many years, some of it coming from (or preceding) “Boat Strength”
Nevertheless it has lots of nuggets which people might find useful and is an interesting and amusing read anyhow.
With regard to “Boat Strength”, I am no mathematician, but the scantlings formulae are pretty straight forward, and if you can’t be bothered with maths, you can get your answers straight from graphs and tables as well, albeit not as accurately. Either way, you will not be left wanting….............