Motorized yachts seem to be quite a bit larger with much more Sq footage built above the water level than their masted brethren, why is this?
I’m assuming the masts have something to do with it. Is it because they would torque the boat too hard if they were higher up? They already seem pretty high up as is and older vessels like Galleons in pirate movies seem just peachy with a ton of room above the water level. Why is it that most luxury yachts now are so low?
Edit: to clarify I mean shorter as a function of verticality not the length of the boat.
In: 21
The dynamics of these boats have some serious differences though.
A motorized boat is driven by some sort of thrust out the back. The hull is designed to behave certain ways in the water to maximize cruising efficiency/speed.
Sailing vessels are powered by the wind. The big concern there is how the hull reacts to the forces the wind puts on the sails. Think of your standard recreational sailboat. It has a mast, and then right below the mast, a keel. Often a very deep one. An upside down sailboat hull sometimes looks a lot like a shark or an orca. A big fin on the bottom. That is there to counteract the force of the wind on the sail. The wind will want to lever a boat over using the sail, but the keel provides a counter force to it. If the wind is to push it over, it has to overcome the weight of the water on the keel.
So, right there the hills are dramatically different simply due to propulsion.
Now, galleons came up and they have a different keel than most recreational sailboats. The bottom is flatter, but the keel is also heavily ballasted to move the center of gravity down and help counteract any forces on sails. There are actually several different approaches to a sailing hull, but they all have some sort of counter to the forces that the wind will put on the sails.
Latest Answers