Ryan21 Posted February 20, 2014 Author Share Posted February 20, 2014 We did it on a day sail before the day with the gale Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Baggywrinkle Posted February 20, 2014 Share Posted February 20, 2014 Lovely stuff Ryan, nice to see some more good info coming. A quick foil that a boat I used to know very well, a spring chicken at over 120 years in continuous comission, used to love a bit of a blow. 20kts a sporting tops'l breeze, and off the wind we might set the (smaller) no.2 jib as a concession to 30kts. Start popping reefs in the main and mizzen 40kts over he deck. I'd love to see the balance you get of some vessels being tender and lofty, lovely for light weather work whilst others combine powerful rigs with powerful hulls that excell when the stormy wynds do blow! Used to race a class of old fishing boats and the conditions dictated almost exactly who'd win - some loved the gentle days, some loved the grim ones. To have that variety in game would be very cool. Baggy 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
admin Posted February 21, 2014 Share Posted February 21, 2014 Lets discuss tacking in a separate thread. http://forum.game-labs.net/index.php?/topic/597-tacking/ Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ryan21 Posted February 21, 2014 Author Share Posted February 21, 2014 Here is the tacking video, note the wind was very light at about 10-13 knots. Yes Lady is not a light wind performer for a couple reasons, very round bow, and relatively small sail plan. The current Lady Washington's sail plan was 8% reduced in overall sail area for her regular sail set by the coast guard than what the original Lady would have carried. Lady loves a good stiff blow, the Captain I served under once had her down to single reef topsails and foretopmast staysail, wind was steady 35 gusting low 40's and she was "surfing" above her hull speed down the 20 foot sea state making between 11-12.8 knots. Her hull speed is a little over 9 knots hahaha, but in this instance she was overcoming her bow wave on the run down the swell on a broad reach. I know multiple people who were crew on that transit and it was a white knuckle ride. Keep in mind Lady is steered by a 9 foot long purple heart tiller connected straight to the rudder. The fastest I have personally seen on Lady is 9.3 and we were in the San Francisco Bay with a skipper who really liked to sail her hard, which admittedly I enjoy. It was blowing a solid 20 knots gusting to about 25, we had tops, topgallants, fore course, spanker, foretopmast staysail and jib set, heh heh.. both topgallantmasts and the jib boom were straining at a fairly steady rate and had a good 6 to 8 inch curve in them. If a single gust had hit a few knots north of 25 we probably would have either carried away our topgallantmasts or the jibboom. But she bore this strain well as it was a very steady wind that day with only a few harder gusts, and really we should have set the main staysail as it is low and excellent performer in good wind but it obstructs the deck and hits passengers in the head. If you have seen how round Ladies bow is in person you would have a grin on your face as big as me, we were overtaking modern 20-30 foot sloops, and sent out a 10 foot bow wave with spray flying back above the rail. It was such a glorious day. In the first video you sea the wind state lady likes that I just described, but this was a different day than my last story and at the time we had a more conservative skipper who had us take the topgallants off her when we came out of the lee of sausalito, as you can see she's still moving along smartly under topsails at about 8 knots, so picture her heeled over a few more degrees with the topgallants set and straining, giving it everything shes got Good wind Bay video Tacking video Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BrutishVulgarian Posted February 21, 2014 Share Posted February 21, 2014 If we set a speed record on a particular ship, I would like to see the log line yank the ship's boy holding it over the stern. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ryan21 Posted February 21, 2014 Author Share Posted February 21, 2014 Hahaha! Excellent suggestion. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
maturin Posted February 21, 2014 Share Posted February 21, 2014 The current Lady Washington's sail plan was 8% reduced in overall sail area for her regular sail set by the coast guard than what the original Lady would have carried. Do you have any idea of how the sailplan was reduced? Everything shrunk proportionally? Or just some yards cut down? Royals outlawed? Sail area limitations from the Coast Guard are hilariously pointless because they only limit maximum sail area, which will NEVER be carried in conditions that could become dangerous. Whereas you can easily drown an entire orphanage by carrying half your canvas in a gale. Anyways, since I don't want to get the tacking thread off-topic, I just looked at your boxhauling diagram and had a question. Is box-hauling significantly faster than wearing, or does it take a long time. That's way more maneuvers that I thought there would be. Edit: Another question. Do you rig bowlines on the Lady (or any other square riggers you've seen)? And do you have any videos of diagrams of them? Verbal descriptions really don't cut it here, and the whole know coincidence makes it damned hard to Google. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ryan21 Posted February 21, 2014 Author Share Posted February 21, 2014 proportionally, all the "plain sail" was reduced in area by 8 percent. Also she was not permitted to carry anything but tops, topgallants, foresail, jib, foretop staysail and spanker. But she ended up getting royals, and main staysails like she should have, just dont set them with passengers or when the coasties are around. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ryan21 Posted February 21, 2014 Author Share Posted February 21, 2014 Good questions. Box hauling can happen faster than a ware it all depends on the wind and what exactly the captain wants to do. You are basically backing up using the fore braces to steer, so it can be varied. Lady used to have bowlines but if the crew doesn't know what they are doing you can tear the sails if you forget to cast off the bowlines before tacking. Lady has a small crew and stations are not assigned, so it's an extra complication. On a small brig like lady the advantage you would get out of them isn't worth the risk of new crew members or an under manned crew forgetting to cast them off. So lady doesn't run them anymore. If you had a sweet handling fast frigate that you wanted to get every inch of windward performance out of its a good idea. Also warships had the man power to assign set sailing stations for every line. Bowlines are typically three or four small lines attached to the leaches or outboard sides of a square sail, the three merge into one and the line leads forward, so when a vessel is close hauled the weather side bowlines are hauled tight, pulling the leech of the sail forward and artificially preventing the sail from luffing a little bit higher into the wind than normal, gaining a small amount of extra pointing ability for the vessel. I have some pics of hms surprises bowlines on my flikr account I'll link when I get home from my marine course. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ryan21 Posted February 21, 2014 Author Share Posted February 21, 2014 Thus when a vessel is said to be sailing "on a bowline" it means the vessel is as close to the wind as she will lie. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ryan21 Posted February 21, 2014 Author Share Posted February 21, 2014 As a little side note here. I just uploaded a very short video of one of our most exciting battle sails, unfortunately had to shut the camera off before the real action started so I could haul lines. But this gives you an idea on a heavier wind day how fast these ships would close. It's blowing about 30 knots, the sea state is low because its inside san francisco bay. Both ships were making about 7-8 knots with only topsails and foretopmast staysail set. So multiply 8 knots by two and you'll find that the closing rate of the ships is 16 knots, which means things happen very quickly, and maneuvers have to be executed perfectly. Most of our battle sails dont happen this fast but this gives you an idea, 400 combined tons of ship rushing towards eachother with lit slowmatch ready to go. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ryan21 Posted February 21, 2014 Author Share Posted February 21, 2014 Also we are close hauled, had we been broad reaching we would have been going a couple knots faster. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Barberouge Posted March 6, 2014 Share Posted March 6, 2014 I moved here some posts of the "Little things you'd like to see" thread - a discussion about sailing square rigged ships as a living. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Baggywrinkle Posted March 11, 2014 Share Posted March 11, 2014 Ryan, or anyone else, would you be able to provide any info on any traditional vessels you know, like, recommend etc on the Eastern seaboard? Planning to be in Newport, R.I. around May for a bit, and thinking about using some leave (from my job a sailor on a big gaffer) to go sailing on something nice and old...or at least traditional Busman'sholidaywhat?! Baggy Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BrutishVulgarian Posted March 25, 2014 Share Posted March 25, 2014 Where is the best place to sleep on a square rigger when it is on the ocean swells, fore or aft? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ryan21 Posted March 25, 2014 Author Share Posted March 25, 2014 Baggywrinkle, they are building a new fully rigged ship in Rhode Island and she will be sailing this summer, called the Oliver Hazard Perry. There are many many tallships in the eastern US, look on the american sail training association website. Just google search american sail training association. http://www.ohpri.org/ Brutish.. Sleeping amidships will give you the least motion because at the ships center is the pivot point where she will be rolling or pitching, but you usually don't have a choice of where to sleep, it's usually in the Foc'sl at the bow, and there is usually alot of motion there. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
admin Posted March 26, 2014 Share Posted March 26, 2014 what would be the major differences performance wise between sailing a square rigger? and sailing a cutter or a schooner? besides of course that a cutter and a schooner will sail faster closer to the wind. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Marion van Ghent Posted March 26, 2014 Share Posted March 26, 2014 what would be the major differences performance wise between sailing a square rigger? and sailing a cutter or a schooner? besides of course that a cutter and a schooner will sail faster closer to the wind. That is the main performance difference between most fore-and-aft rigs and square rigs: where the best (and worst) point of sail for the ship is. For a sloop- or schooner-rigged vessel, best performance is on a beam reach to a close reach (90-70° off the wind). For a square rig it's on a broad reach (~120° off the wind). Square vs. fore-and-aft rigs also perform differently when sailing downwind. A square rig will usually sail better than a fore-and-aft when running with the wind (~170-180°), and a schooner (two-masted) rig will do better than a sloop (one-masted) rig. The square rig has a nice big amount of canvas dead centre; this pushes the ship well downwind. A sloop has the one large driver sail (plus, in this period, usually a small topsail), but that has to be skewed to one side or the other. That results in a less efficient transfer of energy than the square rig. But a two-masted schooner (or lugger or lateen rig) can "goose-wing" its sails, one to either side of the ship, balancing the force a little better than a single mast could. Also, since I misread your statement at first, I want to emphasise an important point that many people get wrong: A cutter or schooner is NOT inherently faster than a square rig! (You didn't say it was, but it was easy to misread what you wrote as saying that ) A ship's speed is influenced by its hull length, its length-to-beam aspect ratio, and its hull form. For the first two (length and aspect ratio), higher is better: a long ship will sail faster than a short ship, and a narrow ship will sail faster than a wide one. Other factors -- such as the state of the sea, point of sail, and how much canvas is being used -- can influence these general trends, but put two different rigs on the same hull and it won't make a bit of difference on how fast she goes. Don't underestimate length-to-beam, either. For example the fluyt has what appears to be a very round, blunt, and clumsy hull. But they also had very long hulls in relation to their beam (approaching a 5:1 or even 6:1 ratio), and were extremely fast and weatherly for their cargo capacity. This is why they were used for some 150 years and copied extensively by other European powers from their Dutch inventors. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
admin Posted March 26, 2014 Share Posted March 26, 2014 Would like to re-ask besides speeds at angles to the wind... What other differences are there in performance, behavior, feel? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ryan21 Posted March 26, 2014 Author Share Posted March 26, 2014 The physical process of a square rigger tacking is different than a primarily fore and aft vessel like a schooner or cutter, because the most powerful sails on a schooner are fore and aft, if it has a square it is secondary, like an add on, although can be really usefull. Tacking a fore and aft vessel requires taking pressure off the bow, like a square rigger, so luff the headsails, then the main gets sheeted in amidships first just like the spanker because it forces the bow up into the wind, then the foresails gets sheeted amidships, and she passes through irons and sheets are passed to the new side and for and main are eased out depending on the point of sail. Your still using different sails for rotational force but on a square rigger the process of changing the angle of the sails is done by bracing, there is a lot more rotational force on the foremast of a square rigger but on a schooner it is not needed. When tacking a square topsail schooner you get the added benefit of the backing square sail on the fore pushing her head through the tack faster, and you brace it at the same time you would on a square rigger, so when the sail would fill, but not before. Performance as far as speed goes isn't really dictated by whether the sails are square or fore and aft, hull design has more to do with overall speed, what you are gaining with a fore and aft vessel performance wise is easier operation, requiring much less crew. So fore and after's point higher into the wind, they are easier for a small crew to handle but they were mostly designed for coastal work, square riggers were designed to be offshore vessels, thats why the overall sail area is split up into so many pieces, and is very controllable by the braces, with big schooners like Bluenose she has HUGE main and fore sails, which could not be taken in very quickly in the event of a squall, the booms are 60-80 feet long, very difficult to control that large of a sail in a pitching sea offshore. But having said that of course fore and aft vessels sail all over the world, but in this time period square sail was the way to go for long offshore voyages. So whatever you do, please do not make a little 100 foot schooner or cutter faster than constitution, because they werent. Like Marion and I have said, hull shape and length dictate speed. Lady Washington is round in the bow and 110 feet overall and she has a hull speed of 9.5 knots. The Pacific Swift, a Baltimore clipper style square topsail schooner that I started on is 110 feet long but has a sharper bow than Lady, she will do about 11 knots. Honestly when you are sailing they dont feel that different, the difference in sailing feedback is more to do with the hull shape and size. They generally tack a little quicker but not always. Running downwind is a pain in the butt on a schooner, if you are running wing and wing, with your foresail out one side and main the other you have to be very careful with the helm, especially if its blowing at all, you could be brought by the lee in an instant, square riggers are a little safer in this regard because the braces are hauled tight, and the spanker is nowhere near the size of a shcooner or cutter main, so accidental gibes arent as damaging. Really the biggest difference if you had two vessels of the same hull, one a schooner and one a brig, would be the number of crew required for manuevers and how high each could point into the wind, the square rig is a more stable controllable platform and works great off the wind, for what it was designed for, the offshore trades. 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
maturin Posted March 26, 2014 Share Posted March 26, 2014 what would and sailing a cutter or a schooner?besides of course that a cutter and a schooner will sail faster closer to the wind. It will be very difficult to get either of these craft stuck in irons, and making sternway while tacking is probably unheard-of. AFAIK, backing fore-and-aft sails to go backwards isn't really feasible. In terms of gameplay, you would need to adapt the yard control scheme. On a sloop or cutter, for example, Z/C could control the mainsail (gaff), while Q/E could control the headsails. Or perhaps the Q/E could control the square sails, if it was a type of cutter with a square mainsail as well. (http://img1.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20091227225437/potbs/images/a/a6/Mediator_Cutter_400.jpg) Note that if you have Q/E control the headsails, they will only have half as much rotation. That is, the jib will move from parallel with the keel, out to leeward. But you can't really haul it out to windward, except for a few degrees. (So really, you could add headsail control to ALL vessels with only one additional keybind.) Schooners would probably just use the yard controls for the two main gaff sails. I don't think there were that many three or four-masted schooners in the era of the game. When running dead downwind with a fore-and-aft rigged vessel, you will want to use manual yard controls to let the sails go 'wing and wing.' This would the optimal trim, and something that autoskipper shouldn't do. (http://www.photoseed.com/uploads/2012/02/06/single-wing-and-wing.jpg) I don't know how much you plan to implement heavy weather. But because sloops and schooners rely on a small number of very large sails, they are not as well-equipped to deal with extreme conditions (even without going into hull design). So their performance in high winds will suffer more, than that of a square rigger. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ryan21 Posted March 26, 2014 Author Share Posted March 26, 2014 Im behind you Maturin! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BrutishVulgarian Posted May 7, 2014 Share Posted May 7, 2014 I'm setting up Voice Attack software to control game ship with voice commands only. It's working quite well. For example, "My compliments to Mr. Babbington and could he please add more sail" presses the W key. However, I don't have appropriate nautical sounding phrases for some commands. What could I say to manually swing the foremast yards to the right? Or to swing the main and mizzen yards to the left? Any suggestions? Saying "E" or "Z" just lacks pizzazz. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mirones Posted June 21, 2014 Share Posted June 21, 2014 i'm not really sailing but just rowing in our 11man ZK10 Cutter, it can be equiped with 2 masts but we cant really sail on our river. 600m sprint in 3:03 and 3:12 roughly avrage 6 1/2 knots you can achiev more but the padels we used where cheap ones so if one breaks its quick to replace specially on an amateur regatta where scool classes and other groups of people can try it out. our wooden ,,horst liebig,, with masts our seasportclub at the regatta on 14.06.14 kinda decent bow wake but normaly witht he big padels we would have gone way faster. and some video footage: german chapionship 2012 sadly i cant help you with your voice comands bruty Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BrutishVulgarian Posted June 24, 2014 Share Posted June 24, 2014 i'm not really sailing but just rowing in our 11man ZK10 Cutter, it can be equiped with 2 masts but we cant really sail on our river. 600m sprint in 3:03 and 3:12 roughly avrage 6 1/2 knots you can achiev more but the padels we used where cheap ones so if one breaks its quick to replace specially on an amateur regatta where scool classes and other groups of people can try it out. our wooden ,,horst liebig,, with masts our seasportclub at the regatta on 14.06.14 kinda decent bow wake but normaly witht he big padels we would have gone way faster. and some video footage: german chapionship 2012 sadly i cant help you with your voice comands bruty We need boats and boat crews in game, there's probably plenty of technical details to make operating them at peak efficiency real interesting. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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