Thread: Something a bit... different

Howdy AJ,

I was cheeky and put a pic up in your post.

I think proas are pretty cool in some ways - but unless a serious attampt is made to reduce the surface area you may as well build a catamaran and avooid the handling difficulties of not being able to tack in a simple way.

My all time favourite proa was designed and built by Russell Brown.

Meet Jzero

Jzero was built for $400 and I helped Russ re-rig her in FL for about $800. She was the most impressive $1200 boat I ever sailed. Before the storm we had two really good days of steady wind close hauled on port tack. I couldn't get a sight for 48 hours but finally did and we had covered 360 miles under working sail of about 200 square feet.

Aside from being wet, it was a comfortable ride. Just to give another example of her performance, later, in the St. Maarten Tradewinds race on a leg from Virgin Gorda, around St. Croix, to Martinique, about 350 miles essentially a one tack beat, Jzero finished third, I think less than 2 hours behind the leaders.

The two lead boats were Rouge Wave sailed by Phil Weld and a 60 ft Peter Spronk cat (designed built owned sailed by Peter). I was crew on Third Turtle, an open wing 31 Val tri and we were hours behind.

The boats mentioned above were very big 60ft and very hot at the time. Jzero average 15 knots for 2 hours straight - amazing for such a cheap simple boat to be snapping at the heels of two very large and powerful yachts.

You can read more about sailing Jzero to Puerto Rico here
http://www.wingo.com/proa/brown/jzero78.html

Little proas (like the pic in AJ's post) are really cats in disguise because the second hull has to become quite big to have enough volume to stop bad things from happening if the wind comes from the wrong direction.

With big ones ... people complicate them too much - again forcing that second hull to become bigger with all the extra labour.

Essentially 2/3rds of a trimaran.

Australian Rob Denney has been playing with a concept I quite like
http://www.harryproa.com/
but his boats are getting bigger and more complicated too - though I love the industrial design aspects of each of them - lots of innovative thinking

Michael Storer

Originally Posted by Boatmik

Howdy AJ,
Little proas (like the pic in AJ's post) are really cats in disguise because the second hull has to become quite big to have enough volume to stop bad things from happening if the wind comes from the wrong direction.

Michael Storer

I guess one could always build two of the main hull & drive it with a pair of small sail board rigs unstayed in each hull. That would be a really nice looking little cat. Saw a pic of a radical looking tri set up like that once. Would like to try a small sailboard rig on Teal some time but have no idea how/where to get hold of one at a price I'm willing to pay. Like everything else high tech, these things come at a price, even second-hand & clapped-out !

cheers
AJ