Kirt

That has to rank as one of my all time favorite posts…LOL…Like yourself I have great respect for Bill Roberts…his expertise is undeniable…however you have brought up some very good questions with the pontoon boats.



However…my question is… are they really planning? Or are they just narrow and streamline enough to be forced through the water at what are normally considered planning speeds? Tornado’s can hit speeds of 30 mph in perfect conditions right? But are they planning? What about a torpedo? It is perfectly round in section and goes very fast but is it planning?



The bullet analogy falls through the cracks by virtue of the velocity involved ( interesting word picture though…LOL)



How much horsepower does a modern sailing rig generate? (I would love to hear the answer to that question) Is it on par with the outboard motors used to propel these pontoon boats? Or is the power to weight ratio grossly in favor of the powerboat?



To relate this to another type of sailing craft…sailboards…it is immediately apparent the minute you step on one in planning conditions if it has hard crisp rails or soft egg rails.

In fact if the board has too much rocker and soft rails it is almost impossible to get it to plane…even while all around it, designs with less rocker and harder rails, are planning instantaneously when sheeted in.



With that said, I would still love to hear how your experiment turns out…it may not prove the boats can plane but might prove very interesting as to how much resistance each of your designs exhibits when pulled behind your power boat…Maybe you could borrow a accurate heavy duty hanging scale and hook that up to the tow rope, giving you a way to quantitatively measure the differences…at least with relation to each other…



Your logic reminds me of what my 85-year-old High School chemistry teacher told our class. He said that most of the real break troughs in research were found by the new (fresh out of school) chemists. He attributed it to the fact that the more experienced chemists knew too many reasons why an idea wouldn’t work; therefore they never tried, and therefore never came up with a solution. Think about it!



Give it a go…can’t wait to hear the results.



Bob