A List of SC and ARC Firsts
Posted: January 4th, 2015, 8:38 pm
From the technology and boat design and construction point of view the SCs and ARC boats are the best there are. They lead the fleet.
1. First beach cat to have a wave piercing foredeck/forward hull section design. This resulted in a major improvement in pitchpole resistance, 1976. Max hull width at 2/3rds max hull height with high arch foredeck. Hull drag increase is small when elliptical foredeck is submerged at speed. With flat foredecks, hull drag increases dramatically with foredeck being submerged and pitchpole follows immediately.
2. Squared off tips/ends on CBs and rudders for highest span effectiveness; something like square top mainsails except these designs came 16 years before square top sails.
3. Swept forward leading edge on CBs and rudders doesn't ventilate and lose directional control of boat at speed. Hobie 14s came out with swept aft rudders in the beginning and sailors would come back to shore with cramps in their forearms after about 10 minutes of sailing and their arm was tired and sore. The boat was too slow to ventilate the rudders at speed. Swept aft rudders give up mechanical advantage to the tiller and make steering require much force.
4.SCs were the first from the factory boats to come with nonskid under your feet where you stand to trapese.
5.First boat with carpet in the CB trunks to eliminate scratching and gouging surface of CBs when raising and lowering.
6. First boat with shroud levers to make self rescue possible and mast stepping and rig tightening easy.
7. First boat designed with mast section designed to prevent boat turtling.
8. At Yachting magazines One Of A Kind Regatta in 1980, SCs won the regatta and took home all the trophies. All of the California hot shots were there, National Champions in all of their classes. The whole Hobie Alter family was there. Randy Smyth and Jay Glazer were there sailing Prindles, Rany Hatfield was there. NACRA class champs were there sailing N5.2, N5.5 and 18 square. Skip Elliot was there, NACRA class sailmaker.
This was the last OOAK Regatta by Yachting Magazine. Why? After that display of performance by the other slow boat designs, they did not want to race again, no participation.
9.First 20ft beach cat to be rated faster than Olympic Tornado by US Sailing, lower PN.
10. First beach cat without dolphin stricker strut under main beam, SC17 and SC15.
11. First boat with self tacking jib and pelican stricker. Pelican stricker significantly increases jib aspect ratio and therefore windward sailing performance. The pelican stricker also lowers the spin pole and increases spin area.
12. First boat with square top sails. A free improvement in span effectiveness and boat performance/speed.
13. First beach cat with spins from the factory with pelican stricker, low spin pole position and higher aspect ratio jib and spin.
14new. First with mast "prebend". When I was first developing the spin on the RC27, even though the spins were not good
catamaran shape, I ran into the mast inverting problem . At first the spin halyard block was located at half the distance between the mast hounds and the top of the mast. Mast inverted in strong winds. Next ran spin halyard from mast top to rear beam as a test. No mast inversion but impractical, can't jibe. Next built spreaded bracket with outer ends swept aft 3 ins. behind the mast. This induced forward mast prebend. For the mast to invert or move toward inversion, the diamond tension automatically increased which tended to stop the mast from inverting. In very strong winds mast could still invert. Next lowered spin halyard block point on mast to 1/3rd the distance between the hounds and top of mast. Results, no more mast inversion. All of this development was done prior to any spin rigging going into production on any SC or ARC boat. This is an example of product quality for the buyers. "Solve all problems before you sell it to the public. "
Remember when the Inter 20s came out with spins and carbon masts were breaking right and left. They did not do their homework and dumped those problems on their boat buyers. It didn't matter; people still bought the boats.
Side note:
When Tom put "PREBEND" into production and word got out and other beach cats classes with spins began to use it,
so did the A cat class. I would go to races where there were A cats and there was much talk about PREBEND. A cat sailors were asking, "how much prebend should I run"? "How much spreader sweep back"? "What diamond tension should I run? On and on the questions came flying. Here is a fix for mast inversion for boats with spinnakers and the A cat class grabbed it up
and ran with it and they don't have spinnakers. There is an awful lot of tag a long coppy cat going on in the A cat class
and the sailors don't understand what and why they are doing it.
15. The only beach cat factory to "not" promote spin launchers. Small radius on the entry frame at mouth of sleeve tends to burn slits in spin cloth during fast retractions which results in many trips to the sailmaker for repairs and short life spinnakers. Therefore "not worth it". A roller on the aft side, load carrying side, of the entry mouth, frame/ring, might solve the problem. That is somebody elses job to make.
16. First and only factory to use all phil/truss head machine screws in laminated hull to hold hardware in place. No pop rivets in the hull. Pop rivets losen up and leak in time, low quality.
17. SCs and ARCs use NASA developed CB and rudder foil cross section shapes, low drag and max lift. Million dollar data available in NASA reports. All you have to do is use it. It is free, no cost.
18. All SC and ARC boats are built with highest strength, best properties, and highest cost materials, fiberglass cloth and or carbon cloth, laminating resin and core foam.
19. All aluminum extrusions are 6061T-6 alloy, the best, and are heavy duty anodized. No 6063 alloy used. That's the cheap stuff, junk on a boat around salt water.
20. All aluminum castings are ALMAG 35 alloy. Again the best properties and is expensive, but the best, 35K psi tensil strength as cast and excellent around salt water. Used for aircraft landing gears.
Note: The designer of the Team Phillips boat, the around the world race catamaran, was so impressed with the performance of the SC20 in the 1980 Around Texel race in Holland that he copied the wave piercing hull design of the SC20, elliptical hull cross sections, in his Team Phillips boat. Why didn't he copy a Hobie or a Prindle or a NACRA or a Tornado hull shape? He could have; why did he prefer the SC design???
Another note: Did you know that Juan Carlos, the King of Spain, bought a SC20 in the early 1980s? I wonder why he bought a SC when he could have bought a Hobie or Prindle or NACRA or any other beach cat he wanted to?
Summary: Most beach cats today have some form of a wave piercing bow/hull shape with self tacking jib and spin and square top main etc. They all copied SC and ARC products. With the leadership shown in SC and ARC products, why isn't the beach cat sailing public standing in line at the factory front door to order SC and ARC products???
1. First beach cat to have a wave piercing foredeck/forward hull section design. This resulted in a major improvement in pitchpole resistance, 1976. Max hull width at 2/3rds max hull height with high arch foredeck. Hull drag increase is small when elliptical foredeck is submerged at speed. With flat foredecks, hull drag increases dramatically with foredeck being submerged and pitchpole follows immediately.
2. Squared off tips/ends on CBs and rudders for highest span effectiveness; something like square top mainsails except these designs came 16 years before square top sails.
3. Swept forward leading edge on CBs and rudders doesn't ventilate and lose directional control of boat at speed. Hobie 14s came out with swept aft rudders in the beginning and sailors would come back to shore with cramps in their forearms after about 10 minutes of sailing and their arm was tired and sore. The boat was too slow to ventilate the rudders at speed. Swept aft rudders give up mechanical advantage to the tiller and make steering require much force.
4.SCs were the first from the factory boats to come with nonskid under your feet where you stand to trapese.
5.First boat with carpet in the CB trunks to eliminate scratching and gouging surface of CBs when raising and lowering.
6. First boat with shroud levers to make self rescue possible and mast stepping and rig tightening easy.
7. First boat designed with mast section designed to prevent boat turtling.
8. At Yachting magazines One Of A Kind Regatta in 1980, SCs won the regatta and took home all the trophies. All of the California hot shots were there, National Champions in all of their classes. The whole Hobie Alter family was there. Randy Smyth and Jay Glazer were there sailing Prindles, Rany Hatfield was there. NACRA class champs were there sailing N5.2, N5.5 and 18 square. Skip Elliot was there, NACRA class sailmaker.
This was the last OOAK Regatta by Yachting Magazine. Why? After that display of performance by the other slow boat designs, they did not want to race again, no participation.
9.First 20ft beach cat to be rated faster than Olympic Tornado by US Sailing, lower PN.
10. First beach cat without dolphin stricker strut under main beam, SC17 and SC15.
11. First boat with self tacking jib and pelican stricker. Pelican stricker significantly increases jib aspect ratio and therefore windward sailing performance. The pelican stricker also lowers the spin pole and increases spin area.
12. First boat with square top sails. A free improvement in span effectiveness and boat performance/speed.
13. First beach cat with spins from the factory with pelican stricker, low spin pole position and higher aspect ratio jib and spin.
14new. First with mast "prebend". When I was first developing the spin on the RC27, even though the spins were not good
catamaran shape, I ran into the mast inverting problem . At first the spin halyard block was located at half the distance between the mast hounds and the top of the mast. Mast inverted in strong winds. Next ran spin halyard from mast top to rear beam as a test. No mast inversion but impractical, can't jibe. Next built spreaded bracket with outer ends swept aft 3 ins. behind the mast. This induced forward mast prebend. For the mast to invert or move toward inversion, the diamond tension automatically increased which tended to stop the mast from inverting. In very strong winds mast could still invert. Next lowered spin halyard block point on mast to 1/3rd the distance between the hounds and top of mast. Results, no more mast inversion. All of this development was done prior to any spin rigging going into production on any SC or ARC boat. This is an example of product quality for the buyers. "Solve all problems before you sell it to the public. "
Remember when the Inter 20s came out with spins and carbon masts were breaking right and left. They did not do their homework and dumped those problems on their boat buyers. It didn't matter; people still bought the boats.
Side note:
When Tom put "PREBEND" into production and word got out and other beach cats classes with spins began to use it,
so did the A cat class. I would go to races where there were A cats and there was much talk about PREBEND. A cat sailors were asking, "how much prebend should I run"? "How much spreader sweep back"? "What diamond tension should I run? On and on the questions came flying. Here is a fix for mast inversion for boats with spinnakers and the A cat class grabbed it up
and ran with it and they don't have spinnakers. There is an awful lot of tag a long coppy cat going on in the A cat class
and the sailors don't understand what and why they are doing it.
15. The only beach cat factory to "not" promote spin launchers. Small radius on the entry frame at mouth of sleeve tends to burn slits in spin cloth during fast retractions which results in many trips to the sailmaker for repairs and short life spinnakers. Therefore "not worth it". A roller on the aft side, load carrying side, of the entry mouth, frame/ring, might solve the problem. That is somebody elses job to make.
16. First and only factory to use all phil/truss head machine screws in laminated hull to hold hardware in place. No pop rivets in the hull. Pop rivets losen up and leak in time, low quality.
17. SCs and ARCs use NASA developed CB and rudder foil cross section shapes, low drag and max lift. Million dollar data available in NASA reports. All you have to do is use it. It is free, no cost.
18. All SC and ARC boats are built with highest strength, best properties, and highest cost materials, fiberglass cloth and or carbon cloth, laminating resin and core foam.
19. All aluminum extrusions are 6061T-6 alloy, the best, and are heavy duty anodized. No 6063 alloy used. That's the cheap stuff, junk on a boat around salt water.
20. All aluminum castings are ALMAG 35 alloy. Again the best properties and is expensive, but the best, 35K psi tensil strength as cast and excellent around salt water. Used for aircraft landing gears.
Note: The designer of the Team Phillips boat, the around the world race catamaran, was so impressed with the performance of the SC20 in the 1980 Around Texel race in Holland that he copied the wave piercing hull design of the SC20, elliptical hull cross sections, in his Team Phillips boat. Why didn't he copy a Hobie or a Prindle or a NACRA or a Tornado hull shape? He could have; why did he prefer the SC design???
Another note: Did you know that Juan Carlos, the King of Spain, bought a SC20 in the early 1980s? I wonder why he bought a SC when he could have bought a Hobie or Prindle or NACRA or any other beach cat he wanted to?
Summary: Most beach cats today have some form of a wave piercing bow/hull shape with self tacking jib and spin and square top main etc. They all copied SC and ARC products. With the leadership shown in SC and ARC products, why isn't the beach cat sailing public standing in line at the factory front door to order SC and ARC products???