Category Archives: Sailing

Sailing, Security

The Onion Terror News Update

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You can really tell there has been a lull in terror attacks and warnings when The Onion writes a story called “U.S. Authorities Can’t Really Fault Al-Qaeda For Deadly Bombing Of Carnival Cruise Ship”:

“Terrorism is a crime against humanity for which there can never be any justification,” Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano told reporters. “But then again, so is a 130,000-ton boat with an indoor ice skating rink, 24-hour buffet access, and a dance club called the Caliente Lounge. To condemn al-Qaeda outright for this attack would be to ignore the fact that, well, you can’t really argue with them on this one.”

[…]

Foreign leaders in France, Britain, and Germany, as well as citizens in the Carnival Cruise port city of St. Thomas, have joined the U.S. in issuing strongly worded statements of their own, saying that the suspected architect of the attack, Ayman al-Zawahiri, did the United States a huge favor. In addition, sources in the State Department said their only problem with the strike was that it wasn’t on a Disney cruise ship, which they claimed would have allowed al-Qaeda to kill two birds with one stone.

Energy, Sailing, Security

America’s Cup Planning for San Francisco

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Craig Thompson is interviewed by Sailing in Marin. He discusses how two factors are influencing the location of the event: poor and unsafe state of the city piers and proximity to automobile parking.

It just happened that piers 27-29, 26-28 are in better shape than some of the piers being considered further south, which will help speed things up as they wont require as much work or environmental assessment work allowing us to up and running a lot quicker. As is well documented, pier 30-32 which will be part of the new plan is going to require extensive rebuilding. It’s not in good condition. It’s not so busy in the southern part and there’s not as much foot traffic. Being in the northern part has other benefits – it’s much better from a public standpoint as this is where the people are anyway. It’s phenomenal and doesn’t get much better. How often can you come into a city like San Francisco and stage an event right there in the center of everything? And then having the course running along the waterfront like it does so that people can actually come out, park their car, walk down to the beach and watch the racing. It’s a very unique opportunity.

That is a strange statement. No one who lives in the Bay Area is going to say people should come park their car at the piers, given that parking is impossible even on a regular day. Maybe it is a plug for an automobile sponsor like BMW?

However, trains, trolleys, cable cars, subway (BART), and buses all run directly and within walking distance to southern piers. There also is no beach at any of the southern piers that he mentions, so he must be hinting that races will happen further north.

I understand the benefits to use piers in better shape but the city is wise to recondition and make use of the piers that are in the worst shape like 30/32. Wind and water conditions are more favorable at the southern piers also, further away from the nuclear gusts that fire through Golden Gate to Angel Island.

Development to the south is great news for the city and improving the safety of the waterfront. South Beach / China Basin is the most exciting area for commercial development. It helps shore up public use of these areas, while providing excellent views from both sides of the Bay. The northern piers make sense for tours, parades and photo shoots when the weather permits but public access and transportation options are limited. Hopefully the focus of events will be southern…and hopefully no one will drive a car.

It is notable that Thompson is from Southern California, which allowed the automobile companies to back-stab and murder mass transit systems in order to boost car sales. Although San Francisco also was threatened by the same situation, much of the infrastructure has been able to survive.

San Francisco was a city without much surplus land to use for roads and depended on its cablecars and its Key system, a system operating 230 electric trolleys and trains. Immediately after acquiring controlling interest in the parent company of the Key system, National City Lines announced its plans to replace the entire system with a fleet of—you guessed it—General Motor’s buses. The Key system owned rights of way across the Golden Gate Bridge; these rights of way were paved over to make way for cars and buses. San Francisco’s recently developed light rail system, (the Bay Area Rapid Transit system, generally known as BART,) had no right of way across the Bay Bridge and was forced to tunnel under the bay at a cost of $180 million.

The right of way issue is essential to the success or failure of a transit system in America.

Once we had a mass transit system, a system that was the envy of the world. This system was almost entirely a private enterprise. What began the demise of mass transit was the loss of rights of way. When trolleys are forced to compete with the more mobile cars and trucks for space, the trolley loses time. This reduces the number of passengers per mile a trolley can carry. It plays havoc with the transit schedule. It also means that it can be quicker to get somewhere using your own car than taking a trolley.

It may be quicker for a few, but less efficient and more harmful overall. So, again, hopefully the development groups working on the next America’s Cup think about the inefficiency of the automobile and discourage people from driving. After all, the America’s cup is about technology and efficiency — using a set amount of input (wind) — so modern and clean public transportation options should be integrated into thinking about the event.

Sailing, Security

Littoral Combat and Multi-hulls

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The latest development of multi-hulls for the US Navy called the Littoral Combat Ship (LCS) has some interesting parallels to recreational boating.

The US Navy, after the end of the cold war, moved from preparing for open ocean confrontations with a major navy to rapid engagement near land to support operations against “asymmetric” opposition. We have seen some of this already in Somalia, where special forces in small helicopters stage reconnaissance as well as surgical strikes on enemy land convoys.

A white paper by the Secretary of the Navy in 1992 called “From the Sea” defined the scope of “littoral” combat:

Operating forward means operating in the littoral or “near land” areas of the world. As a general concept, we can define the littoral as comprising two segments of the battlespace:

* Seaward: The area from the open ocean to the shore which must be controlled to support operations ashore.
* Landward: The area inland from shore that can be supported and defended directly from the sea.

The littoral region is frequently characterized by confined and congested water and air space occupied by friends, adversaries, and neutrals–making identification profoundly difficult. This environment poses varying technical and tactical challenges to Naval Forces. It is an area where our adversaries can concentrate and layer their defenses. In an era when arms proliferation means some third world countries possess sophisticated weaponry, there is a wide range of potential challenges.

This explains how the LCS design had to depart from prior designs in the Navy. It sails extremely fast but also has to be maneuverable; it can complete a 45knt turn in only 4.6 ship lengths. A one ship length turn can be done at 7knts. It accelerates to 45knts in less than 2 minutes and stops from 30knts in two ship lengths. Even with these performance numbers it still carries sophisticated and heavy arms as well as attack helicopters and small rigid hull inflatables.

A hull design suited for shallow water, a small crew and an open space for modularity further distances it from old warships. Although it sails the open ocean the main value will be achieved navigating around harbors, major rivers and near shoreline.

What does this have to do with recreational boating? Multi-hulls are pushing along the same performance/cost and complexity formula. Why sail a million dollar 52-ft “sled” with ten crew or even a million dollar 40-ft “turbo” with seven when you can get twice the performance with a quarter-million dollar 30-ft trimaran and less than half the crew.

The polar chart below shows speed in 10knts of wind at various angles.

This video shows what performance (capability per dollar) can look like these days:

While a trimaran built for fun provides speed, a shallow draft and a wide berth in the main hull for storage like an LCS, it also has a major downside. Compared to a monohull if it capsizes the crew will be unable to right the boat again and continue sailing. That should not be too much of a problem as these boats, while seaworthy, are meant to be raced only “littoraly” (near shore).