Picture Challenge
Just a bit of fun.
I frequently search with google images and came across this great picture of Madness. This picture to me optimises why I think proas are so cool. I thought I would set a picture challenge.
Imagine that with one image you had to explain why proas represent the panicle of sailing boat development, you can assume you are talking someone who sails.
For me this picture shows minimalist nature of proas, Madness looks as if he is almost hovering above the water. The helm on his seat, the outrigger and sail communicate balanced forces and ultimately raw power. This is opposed by the safety pod which shows a vulnerability. Ultimately there is a beauty of form.
So my challenge to is to post your picture.
TINK
Imagine that with one image you had to explain why proas represent the panicle of sailing boat development
I think pinnacle is the more usual term, and you are clearly not trying to imply that Madness’ design represents a frighteningly precarious hold on sanity. But for the occasions when you do want to imply, panicle is an excellent new word. I am at the panicle of my career. This idea embodies the panicle of excellence.
Personally, I like the low tech aspect - this could be done for less than madness’ mast.
Good fun and kept going with scrounging, trading, barter etc etc.
A good work boat and fun to sail.
No safety net, so attention and experience needed.
A panicle is a compound raceme, a loose, much-branched indeterminate inflorescence with pedicellate flowers (and fruit) attached along the secondary branches; in other words, a branched cluster of flowers in which the branches are racemes. - courtesy Wikipedia
Ain’t spell-checkers great….
I love the way threads meander away from the initial subject and are more healthy for it. I am proud to be dyslexic I feel it makes me more creative. I usually put my postings through a text to speech programme but I doubt I would have picked up panicle vs pinnacle sorry
Tink
Minimalist enough?
I would suggest this represents the panicle of proa development. 😊
I would suggest this represents the panicle of proa development. 😊
But later the pinnacle (have got it right this time)
Another digression… is Sailrocket a proa? It rests on three hulls but travels at speed on one hull and a vector fin. It can neither tack nor shunt.
Sailrocket is not a monohull, catamaran or trimaran. Proa comes close, but as you say - it does not shunt or even tack.
Maybe an “Untacker”?
Cheers,
Johannes
This is a lot of pictures in a long stream, so I hope that counts in this “Picture Challange”.
I really like the stone-age technology that whips modern day (retarded design) monohulls before breakfast coffee..
We in the western part of the world use superadvanced computers with billions of transistors and million lines of code, extremly expensive carbonfiber and enviromentaly unfriendly epoxy to flogg that old stupid monohull design to another procent of speed, while the sailors of the pacific cruise along effortless in speeds that we can only dream about. They have been doing that for a couple of millenia already.
I talked with a guy racing some modern carbonfiber/high-aspect/deep fin-keel-monohull the other day. I asked him what speeds they usually sailed in on a good day of racing. “We are happy if we hit 12-14 knots” he said. I showed him the video of Jzerro doing 17,5 knots on autopilot while makeing a cup of tea on the stove… He looked really surprised!!!
I should not bash monohulls any more. Im really glad there is a way to spend millions of dollars to get a really fragile deep bulb-fin-keel, fragile thin laminate, ultralight (with 3 tons of lead bolted on) yachts that will keep me away from all the beautifull coves and cruising grounds, while at the same time makes me totally and utterly dependant on expensive marinas and haul outs…
Cheers,
Johannes
I should not bash monohulls any more. Im really glad there is a way to spend millions of dollars to get a really fragile deep bulb-fin-keel, fragile thin laminate, ultralight (with 3 tons of lead bolted on) yachts that will keep me away from all the beautifull coves and cruising grounds, while at the same time makes me totally and utterly dependant on expensive marinas and haul outs…
That’s a lot to thank monohulls for, Johannes 😊
cheers,
James
I don’t think that it’s fair to say that one is better than the other when it comes to talking about monohulls and multihulls: it has too much to do with what the boat in question is being asked to do. The canoes of Oceania were designed and built to move people between sparsely populated, beach-ringed islands while people in more densely populated centres where rivers flowed into seas could easily travel about by land but used their boats to move huge loads efficiently through the surrounding and often tight waterways. Multihulled boats offer many advantages when it comes to speed and propensity to being built from simple and available materials, but in all fairness they are also abyssmal load bearers and navigational nightmares in crowded water. Their respective developments were driven by the necessity of the people and the time: they were boats that were being built to do something, not just to have.
The racing of boats began in a time when all of the boats were built first to work… be it for fishing, or transporting cargo, or moving people… and the men used what they had. It wasn’t until the iron engines started to replace working sail as the means of propulsion that sailboats began to evolve into pleasure and racing craft, extensions of their traditional working past but still constrained by local conventions, infrastructure, and knowledge: Oceania still had lots of empty beaches surrounded by shallow lagoons and the west still had busy ports that were short on shoreline but deep in water. Absurd amounts of money and resources are now being spent in the pursuit of squeezing most performance out of racing sailboats, both mono- and multi-hulled… but none of it is driven by need nor any sense of efficiency. It’s all about want.
Now, are we talking about what we “need” our boats to do, or what we “want” our boats to do? A boat that is fun to sail around a short course against a fleet of similar boats after work needs to be different than a boat that a family can use to flit about or an experiment in trying to set a speed record in perfect conditions. A boat that I can stash in my garage needs to be different than a boat that I need to keep in my slip at the marina nearby and a boat that some museum might pay to show off when I’m done with it. A boat that I build on borrowed money needs to be marketable so that I can recoup its monetary investment, while a boat built from scavenged bits of flotsam can be left and forgotten to be found again by someone else without obligation, stress, or loss.
I don’t think that any of us frequent this forum because we need to build or sail or dream about a proa, or any other sailboat for that matter: we’re here because we want to build or sail or dream about them. This is about the soul, not the sensibility…
As far as inspiring pictures go? I’ve always loved this print by Björn Landström, of the shrimping boats that I enjoyed watching and trying to understand sailing off the beaches in Sri Lanka: elegant in design, construction, and use. And fast! Indigenous boats from all around the world and all points in history always interest me; the fact that we seem bent on overengineering them and making them better always astounds me. We don’t need to, really….
... I guess we just want to.
Another picture that shows the easy life of cruising with a proa. Beachability, simplicity, beautiful places, low stress life. Happy afternoons chilling in a hammock, roasting a couple of tunas with some seasalt and lime….
Cheers,
Johannes