ULDB

After the “Banana Split”, I worked for Baltic Yachts and raced their Baltic 33 and then their Baltic 39 demo boats. Both these yachts were called “Krispi”. We won a lot of races and had many exciting stories to tell.

I left Baltic in 1980 and went to work next door at Sailboats Northeast. At Sailboats Northeast I raced their demo Yamaha 33, “Orient Express”. Success continued and with the Yamaha, I won the Mass Bay Championship with five out of five firsts. All my competition was glad to see the Yamaha get sold away from the Marblehead area.

As my enthusiasm continued to build, my thoughts wandered about a different approach to racing and sailing. All the boats I had ever raced were displacement boats, meaning they are relatively heavy for their length. I was taught that the speed potential of any boat was a direct relationship to a formula based on its waterline length. Therefore a longer boat was always faster than a shorter boat and your speed potential was limited to your length. I thought if this was the case, then why do we have a rating system that says some 30-foot boats are faster than others? In some cases like a Cape Dory 30 verses a Pearson 30, the Pearson is a lot faster.

What was this whole water line length speed restriction all about? I have always referred to a book call “Sail Power” which is like a textbook of sailing. There is a ton of useful information between her covers. I read that every boat creates a bow and stern wave as she goes through the water. As the boat goes faster the bow and stern wave get higher and therefore creating a deep trough in the middle of the boat. The boat sinks into this trough creating a huge drag factor. If you get a chance you can look at photos of boats sailing and can clearly see this wave and see that the boat appears to be sinking into her own wave, therefore making a huge speed brake.

Being very involved in the new emerging PHRF rating system, I saw a boat from California called the Olson 30. The Cape Dory 30 rated 207, meaning a time allowance of 207 seconds per mile, the Pearson 30 rates 174, or 33 seconds per mile faster than the Cape Dory. The Olson 30 rated 96, or 111 seconds per mile faster than the Cape Dory and 78 seconds per mile faster than the Pearson. How can this be? They are all 30-foot boats and per their length should be the same speed since length equals speed. There must be a mistake here. I called PHRF people in California to find out if this 96 rater was real. They reported the 96 rating fairly represented the Olson 30. This I had to see for myself.

My inquiries lead me to Terry Alsberg, who was very out spoken about the weight of the boat being a huge speed factor. I was taught that to be ocean safe a boat must be strong and therefore heavy. I was also taught that a light boat will hit a wave and stop, where as the heavy boat will push threw the wave. I was taught that a boat must have a fine entry and a deep vee hull so she will track straight and cut threw the water. Terry laughed at my arguments about yacht design and invited me to Santa Cruz, California to visit his factory that builds the Express 27 and to do a Wednesday night race with him.

I flew out to California and was picked up at the airport by Chip Bem. Chip is a true believer and defiantly attends the church of ULDB. ULDB stands for ultra light displacement boat. A boat with a displacement length ration of less than 100 is considered a ULDB. A ration of 100 to 125 is very light, 125 to 175 light, 175 to 250 medium and over 250 heavy. Chip was full of stories about sailing different ULDBs at boat speeds well into the double digits.

The next day a toured the Terry’s factory where he builds the Express 27. The building process was different than any factory I had ever been in. The boats were built out of vinyl ester resin, instead of polyester resin and the resin was vacuum bagged into the glass. Every effort was made to keep the boat as light as possible. The boat was built to ABS standards which many other well know boats are not. The lead keel was dropped into a mould and epoxy resin was injected around the lead making a very smooth and fair finish. Terry explained to me that the resin, which he called glue, is critical to the building process. Almost every other boat is still made out of polyester resin. Polyester resin will absorb 95% of this weight in submerged water over ten years, where as vinyl resin will only absorb 5%. Of course vinyl ester is much more expensive and is harder to work with, but a lot stronger.

That evening Chip took me to the marina in Santa Cruz and we headed out to the racecourse. There didn’t seem to be any breeze at the marina and I worried that I had flown across the country for a typical Marblehead drifting contest. As we headed off shore the breeze continued to build. Chip explains that the prevailing sea breeze lifts over the mountains by the shoreline, therefore the farther you get away from the shore the stronger the breeze gets. At the starting line it was blowing about 15.

The race started with about 20 boats in our class. Like here there was a mix of custom race boats and racer cruisers. Unlike here, there were 3 Olson 30s, 2 Moore 24s and 3 Express 27s. Chip fought for a good start and we worked our way up wind. The bigger boats were defiantly a little faster, but their water line speed would suggest they should be much faster. The Petersen 43 rounded the weather mark first and set her chute. At the weather mark it was blowing low 20s with a big ocean swell and 3 foot waves. We rounded middle of the pack and set our chute. The course was a triangle/windward-leeward. That made this leg a tight spinnaker reach, pole about a foot off of the head stay. On the first wave we took off. The knot meter showed lows of 12 and highs of 15. We huddled on the rail as far aft as possible. The boat was flat and Chip did a great job working the waves. We passed all boats ahead and led at the jibe mark. Some how we jibed to the next leg which was a similar angle to the wind. We held our lead, but the Olson 30s, Moore 24s, and other Express 27s were close behind. We fought our way up wind again, held our lead and had a much more comfortable final downwind leg with the wind much father aft. This was truly and exciting race and the ULDBs crushed the displacement boats, including a then state of the art Petersen 43.

The ULDBs were clearly faster upwind against boats several feet bigger and faster than any boat downwind in a breeze. I always remember the windy races and the excitement of those days. I rarely dream about light air days with everyone sitting to leeward racing along at 2 knots.

Today’s modern grand prix boats all have displacement/length ratios at or close to the ULDBs. Maybe Terry Alsberg was right after all?

Please mail comments to me at Bump@newwaveyachts.com

Bump Wilcox