WaltH reminded me that full size Cats have floats at the top of the mast. So i have emulated this with a ping-pong ball on a 2mm GF rod that slips into the pocket and is therefore transferable between rigs.
This should help greatly to try and prevent the boat going totally turtle
Then with any luck the ballast on the end of the keels will take over and right her.
Rgds
AndyT
Now for one of my more stupid ideas ~ but one which i hope will work in practice.
I knew that i had kept the hulls to the minimum that i could by copying at scale the Hobie Tiger hulls.
It would seem that my main chalenge was that i could not rely on the crews weight transferring as they would in a real Hobie Tiger and that the cat therefore had a recurring tendancy to somersault.
So i resulted to my most ingenious solution ~ reactive buoyancy.
Instead of a live crew, I have a set of three spherical buoyancy tanks, that in normal operation are not required and are therfore above the water line.
However as the bow is depressed the additional buoyancy is automatically deployed to prevent the bow trying to submarine.
These are also known as ping-pong balls ~ drilled and glued to a 2mm GF rod between the two bows.
As you can see from the photos, this is quite legal and within the box.
Now i just have to see if it works??
Rgds
AndyT
Andy, to have the cat right itself after capsizing to the point that the ping pong ball is in the water and keeping it from turtling, the keel weight needs to be heavier than the weight of the rigging and wet sails. Simple leverage with the fulcrum being the semi-immersed leeward hull.
Most likely when she flips she will naturally weathercock with the rigging pointing upwind eventually. The windage from the “trampoline” should help to right her once the keel weight has started to raise up the rig from the water.
Of course. it would be better not to capsize in the first place.
Hi Neil,
If you look at the photos you will spot a lead weight on th inboard side of each keel.
This should a. assist stability, b, certainly (i hope) to the trick with self righting.
The original weight was 299g, this then dropped to 202g and with the latest modifications has risen to 271. Clearly i have to try and achieve some sort of balance here but it is still a saving of 9% over the original weight
We need to remember that this is cutting edge experimentation and no-one else has tried it so there will always have to be some changes and modifications along the way.
Nice thing is i am the first to do it and enjoy sharing it with you all!
Try some more stuff tomorrow
Rgds
AndyT