Okay, this is swatting a fly with an intellectual sledgehammer, but I got to thinking

See, the mast ball actually RISES when you go up on one hull. Since the masthead's motion in the early stages of heel is mostly sideways even without a rising ball, I wondered how far you'd have to heel to actually shorten your boat's overall height.



Then I wondered, "Can I still cudgel my aging gray matter to actually figger this out?"



So naturally, I just had to try....



Lessee.....granted, the lee hull sinks slighlty, so let's picture the boat as simplistically as to limit the impact of the things we ignore to a couple of inches, for the moment, then pick 'em up later...



So call your angle of heel angle A. The change in ball height (no puns please) is one side of a right triangle, with angle A opposite it, and a 4.25 foot other leg. The total vertical height of the mast alone, measured from the ball, is the long leg of another right triangle, with angle A adjacent, and mast length "M" as the hypotenuse. (let's refrain from advertising how long the leg next to our balls is/are!)



Thus



H(b) = change in ball height as you heel. (Ever have your Balls "heeled" or even "healed"?)

H(m) = vertical height of the leaning mast, measured from the ball up. (Don't go there.)

Then H(t) is the total, overall height of your boat, if you ad a foot and a half for the original height of the ball off the water.



So:

H(t) = H(b) + H(m) + 1



Trig tells us how to figger the terms above:

H(b)= sine of A X 4.25 (the other leg, half a tramp's width, is 4.25) (no jokes about the tramp's balls!)

H(m)= cosine of A x M (where "M" is the actual length of the mast) (no jokes about the tramp's mast!)





I can't solve equations for lowest f(x) anymore, but I plugged all this into a spreadsheet and used "goal seek" for A and both Figures for the mast length. (To check my work, I plugged in 90 for heel and got 4.5 feet, the hight of the ball when the boat's perfectly on it's side, mast precisely parallel to the wet stuff. When I specified 0 degrees of heel I got 30 feet, which is the sum of our mast length plus our starting ball height.





and the results are:



With a 28.5 mast, you have to heel 45.5 degrees to be exactly 24.5 feet tall. If you want a foot for wave clearance, you need to heel 48.7 degrees.





Wow. Almost 50 degrees of heel. Anybody know the "point of no return?" That would vary with sailor weight, wind strength, tramp fabric etc but there's gotta be a rough guideline out there....



At the 48.7 degree heel, your windward hull will be over six and a quarter feet in the air, your (6 foot tall sailer's) head will be almost 4 feet higher, making his hat a total of 10 feet up, darn near halfway to the bridge!



If your mast is in fact 25 feet in length, ball to head (Give it a rest already.), you will only need to heel 39 degrees to leave one foot clearance under your bridge in flat water at mean high tide, smack in the middle, when the moon is in either the first or last quarter and barometric perssure isn't unusually high or low and you have neither an onshore nor offshore high wind condition. Actual mileage may vary, actual california highway mileage will probably be significantly lower. This product is not intended to cure or diagnose any illness. Product is sold by weight, not volume. Contents may settle during shipment. Intermediate markdowns may have been taken. Dealer contribution may affect final price. Not to be taken internally, or seriously, either.



Keep one hull (very high) up!



Ed Norris