Something very interesting about fish fins, a real American hero, and in the "Hey, this is way cool" department...
I recently reread a review of a boat design I really like and it pointed out that the boat in question...
"Owners report it is fast and maneuverable, but is prone to weather helm, so paying attention to the tiller is key."
A statement I found to be somewhat irksome for a couple of reasons. The first being that some weather helm is actually a good thing. If the boat has excessive weather helm it's not really something you have to live with but something you just fix.
The good news is that fixing weather helm is pretty simple and for most folks just involves trimming your sails to move the center of effort forward a kiss. If that is not enough to bring the weather helm down to a manageable level then adding a bit of area to the rudder or adding a skeg to the mix should sort out the issue finest kind.
Which is why I find a boat review by someone who really should know better would accept that excessive weather helm is a known issue and not point out that if it indeed exists that there are various simple fixes to deal with it as well.
On Loose Moose 2 there was a bit more weather helm than I thought there should be and I dropped a note to Phil asking how best to deal with it. Phil responded with a note that he thought that the rudder might be a tad small but that adding a little extra area to the rudder would be an easy fix, He also pointed out that adding a small jib (LM2 was a catboat) that would move the center of effort forward enough to solve the problem or I could add a couple of small skegs to add a little more lateral resistance to the mix. So, we played with the various methods and came to the conclusion that if we were building again that we'd incorporate all three methods in a way that made for a more tunable situation. What we wound up doing though was to add a small blade jib and that combined with the extra lateral resistance provided by our auxiliary rudder self-steering resulted in just the right balance and put us in the Goldilocks zone.
Later we came across a French design that sported small twin daggerboards aft that made the boat self-steer in just about any condition/situation that worked a treat and something that I'd very much consider for any new build I'd be getting into...
Which is a roundabout way of saying beware of boat reviewers who don't seem to understand how boats work.
Listening to Half Waif
So it goes...
