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Boat speed - 12 mph
40 degrees from true wind
true wind speed 15 mph
apparent windspeed 25 mph

They have more or less optimized the Miss Nylex cat for these conditions as they found the C-class boats on the C-class course to spend at least 43 % of the time on such a leg. Therefor most gains were to be had with improvements here.


What speed range would we want to optimise a beach cat for, As I said in an earlier post at 100kg displacement shorter cats are only better above around 15knots (according to drag prediction from Michlet). My guess is that the average speed of a cat around a race course would be in the 8-12knot range.

Also it should be noted that Michlet does not take induced drag (leeway) into account. And the induced drag effects the hull drag as well as the rudder/centreboard drag. So I would expect a different story going upwind, but I am not sure how to quantify it.

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Induced drag can be a difficult concept to understand. It is the unfortunate bastard son of lift.....“Naval Architect Chris Cochran from Morrelli & Melvin Design & Engineering”


In simple terms you can look up the drag bucket plots for the foil section and estimate it that way.

But in broad terms upwind has higher drag than down wind for lots of reasons.

Gareth