Probably the only real disadvantage of sailing a dinghy, to set against all of the advantages, is the ever-present danger of capsize. Until recently we sailed a National Twelve, which, I guess, most people think of as unsafe for venturing more than 100 yards from the nearest rescue boat. My thoughts on this knotty problem may therefore be of interest.

I once overheard a conversation which went something like this:

Old Salt: “Them boats (meaning the Twelves) have got over much sail.” Keen Young Naval Architect: “No! They just have no stability.”

At the time I agreed with KYNA but now I think they were both wrong. In the context of capsize, Twelves of the 1950s vintage with which I am familiar have only two faults. The first is that the rig, designed to be efficient for racing, is too tall. It is possible to set the same area of canvas on a much shorter mast, leading to a big improvement in seaworthiness. The second fault is that only one boat in a thousand is rigged for reefing.

A CLASSIC

I learned that the Twelves' V-bottom is not a fault when my wife and I went rowing in a traditional Norwegian double-ender at Bergen in Norway. Noticing a steep deadrise in the garboards, I rashly questioned the boat's stability. Immediately our Norwegian friend draped his admirably manly frame along one gunwale, to prove that we would not capsize. I spoiled the effect first time round by instinctively throwing my own weight to the opposite side but, after I had been sternly admonished and he had resumed his perch, the boat rolled quickly until the gunwale was about 3 inches above water and stayed there. We shipped not a drop.

Some time later I read a report published by the National Maritime Museum under the delightfully ponderous title: 'The building and trials of the replica of an ancient boat: the Gokstad Faering’. This boat, a close relative of the modern Norwegian Oselver and the Shetland Yole, was 21 feet long with a beam of 4 ft 8 in. The deadrise of the garboards was 21 degrees. After the trials the author wrote:

“This boat is a classic. Not only does she look, row and ride better than she should, but there was the added pleasure of finding a boat that would pass the ultimate test. This was the feeling that she could look after herself when the weather had so tired and perhaps frightened her crew that they were no longer able to do their best for her.”

The Uffa King, prototype of the Twelves, had a deadrise of 16 degrees. As far as I know Ian Proctor, who designed our boat, never published its lines, but he is on record as saying that the rise of floor was near the maximum which had been established by the Uffa King. The Twelves are a lot flatter than the Viking classic.

HERESY

It was then that I embraced the great heresy: V -bottomed boats are good for you. Such a boat typically has slack bilges and plenty of flair in the topsides. When it is heeled to 5 degrees, the righting-moment of the displaced water is low and the boat feels tender; but as the angle of heel increases the righting-moment also increases steadily, reaching a maximum just before the gunwale is submerged.

The effect is that you feel at risk when the boat is upright, but you soon become used to that, and the lack of steadiness is valuable in encouraging you to reef in good time. The important thing is that stability is at its greatest when you need it most.

By contrast, a flat-bottomed boat with nearly vertical sides and a tight curve to the bilge (or even a chine) has a high righting-moment at 5 degrees of heel, when it feels stiff and safe; but as the angle of heel increases the righting moment does not increase very much further. In many boats the righting-moment actually decreases again at high angles of heel.

A flat-bottomed boat therefore deceives you twice: first when its stiffness encourages you to carry too much sail for the conditions, and second when it loses stability just as capsize becomes a real danger. The art of sailing such a boat is to keep it level, but this is easier said than done when you are hit by a catabatic squall near mountains, or when a hundredweight of bilge water sloshes down to leeward.

Give me a V-bottomed boat every time! The only serious disadvantage is that constant changes of heel are tiring. We tend to reef when the motion begins to get us down rather than when over pressed by weight of wind. While this may seem tame, little speed is lost, because another virtue of steep deadrise is that it makes for an easily driven hull.

FIT A RATCHET BLOCK

Our new boat is a Comet Trio. No one will be surprised to learn that we chose it because its stability characteristic is similar to that of the Twelve but being three feet longer, it is steadier.

This brings me to a point raised by Aidan de la Mare. We never cleat the mainsheet, having refused to fit any device which would enable us to do this. In the Twelve, the pull on the sheet used to be very tiring during a long beat to windward, but we now have the answer. The mainsheet of the Trio is fitted with a ratchet-block, which I had previously regarded as yet another of the gimmicks on which racers waste their money, but I am now converted. The ratchet really does take much of the load off the sheet without preventing it from running out smoothly when you let go. We should have had one years ago.