SHAPE OF HULL AND BOAT PERFORMANCE: Round the Island 2021

I am in Marmaris waiting for the Greeks to allow European Union sailboats to enter EU waters (they closed the door almost two years ago more for political reasons than sanitary ones). I am bored, have time and I will share with you the observations I have made on the Round the Island race regarding the performance of different type of sailboats and hulls, I don’t mean handicap performance but true performance over the water.

 

The Round the Island race (around the Island of Wight) is not a top race and the average crew has lesser quality than for instance the one on the Fastnet, but it has an advantage of having a huge number of boats racing (more than 1000) some of them very well sailed.

Pogo 12.50

To take into account the bigger variability in crew quality I will disregard the worse results of a given boat model and I will consider the best and average results.

Regarding winds, this was a typical summer coastal race with variable winds in direction and strength, from very light to light winds to 25kt. A good race to measure the all around boat sailing potential, especially in summer conditions.

And let’s start with the Pogos, with three 12.50 competing, a moderate performance, with similar elapsed times. The fastest has done it in 8h 16m 22s, then the others in 8.21.39 and 8.37.59.

J122 e

With a similar type of hull but smaller, not so extreme but heavier, an RM 10.70, made it in 8.39.27.

As usual the JPK were fast, with a 11.80 making it in 7.34.59 and a smaller JPK 10.80 making it in 7.42.20.

The Sunfast were a bit slower than the JPK, with the exception of a 3300, that was very fast with 7.52.59, faster than all 3600 (8.01.25, 8.05.27….)

Jboats were also very fast with a J122e making it 7.49.41, another in 7.53.29 and the slowest in 8.32.22. Three fantastic J112e have done it in 7.46.16 , 7.51.11, and 7.58.18. Two J99 made it in 8.13.36 and 8.15.54. Three J111 have done it in 7.36.21, 7.36.27 and 7.43.11. The First 40 were also way faster than the Pogos, with 7.44, 7.45.10 and 7.55.57. 

I know that the conclusions are similar to the ones on other races with variable winds, where it is the overall sailboat potential that counts (and not a boat maximized for a given set of conditions) but some keep thinking that boats like the Pogo or the RM are, out of the trade winds, faster than fast boats with a more traditional hull, and that is not the case.

J 112e

In what concerns fast cruising multihulls we can see that with these conditions the results were not better than the ones of fast monohulls with the same size. A very fast 1295 Dazcat catamaran, that is used extensively for racing, made it in 7.27.08.There were several Dragonflies, two 32 made it in 8.05.46 and 8.38.42; a 35 made it in 8. 36.53. There were two Nautitech racing and these ones, that are among the fastest not very expensive production cats, were slower then the monohulls: an Open 46 made it in 9.02.17 and an Open 40 in 10.14.12.

Nautitech Open 46

This particular race confirmed the performance of the J112e, a sailboat boat with a great cruising interior and that in what regards regatta racing had already proved itself winning a World ORC championship. It shows here that in a more offshore race it continues to shine, being only slightly slower than the racing J111, faster than the racing Sunfast 3600 (on this race) and with a performance similar to the bigger First 40, and of course, going faster than the Pogo 12.50.

I love this little boat, made several post about it, but it seems I fail to convince other sailors to love it too. The J112e sales continue on the low side and it seems that today for a performance cruising boat to sell it is not enough to have a great cruising interior, a stellar performance, to be well built, it is needed to be fashionable and it seems the J112e is not. You have more information about the J112e on this post:

http://interestingsailboats.blogspot.com/2017/11/j112e-beautifull-nimble-fast-cruiser.html