On 9/25/06, Craig Jungers <crjungers_at_gmail.com> wrote: > > On any boat, any time the center of effort is aft of the center of lateral > resistance that boat, left to its own devices, will rotate into the wind > (weathercock) and any time it's forward of the center of lateral > resistance > the boat will rotate downwind (leecock). I wanted to expand a little bit on Craig's excellent treatise on balance in sailboats and kayaks. Before I started kayaking, I sailed small boats (14') competitively. It turns out, as Craig mentioned, that boats go fastest when the rudder is not actively steering the boat (i.e. when one does not have to put pressure on the tiller or foot pedals). A sailboat with a large amount of weather or lee helm will experience additional drag because of the steering required. One exercise we sometimes employed was to pull out the rudder and steer the boat entirely with the sails and our position in the boat. This taught us how to balance the sailboat for optimal efficiency - and provided some entertainment to people watching. Where this whole topic becomes really critical is in windsurfing. Since windsurfers have no rudders, they can only be steered by balancing the center of lateral resistance against the center of effort, i.e. by rotating the mast/sail fore and aft or, to a lesser degree, shifting one's weight on the board. So, while most boats are more efficient when properly balanced, a windsurfer will not even sail when out of balance. Or, as Miyoko Ohno said, "Balance is beautiful" -Mark *************************************************************************** PaddleWise Paddling Mailing List - Any opinions or suggestions expressed here are solely those of the writer(s). You must assume the entire responsibility for reliance upon them. All postings copyright the author. Submissions: PaddleWise_at_PaddleWise.net Subscriptions: PaddleWise-request_at_PaddleWise.net Website: http://www.paddlewise.net/ ***************************************************************************Received on Tue Sep 26 2006 - 04:16:11 PDT
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