Greg,
You are right in many respects and I have been somewhat conflicted over this myself.
My experience with sailing the US1M consists of Racing a freind’s mistral in 3 races last season at our local club. Our club has a fleet of 8 or 9 mistrals but perhaps only 3 or 4 will show up for any given race day.
The performance of the boat was quite a bit different from my lead sled Fairwind as I expected. I was able to get the boat to perform quite well winning 2 of the 3 races, but the boat had been tuned by my freind before he handed me the controls, so I cannot really take credit for the wins.
You are right that my boat is designed with 4 servos. The mast and the rudder are designed to cant and the 4th channel is for the keel wing. The mast canting bulkhead is rather intricate with the servo mechanism mounted on the forward side and the mast canting pivot and cam on the aft side. However, I am also building a second bulkhead which would have a fixed geometry (non canting) mast base I am incorporating a gunwale structure that will allow me to mount either of these two interchangable bulkheads to hold the unstayed mast (and in fact will allow me to move this bulkhead around to change the balance of the boat).
I have designed a crossbeam for the canting rudder that I can put into the boat to lock the rudder in a vertical (non canting) position.
I plan to have a second keel fin that would have a standard bulb with no wing.
bottom line is that I plan to be able to convert my boat to a standard US1M relatively easily. I may in fact sail it in this configuration for a while to get the feel of things before adding in the other bits.
I am building my boat from a Wick Cobra Hull. I thought about the Sterne US1M design, but someone near me had a Cobra hull laying around that needed some TLC and that he was willing to give me for this effort.
Given my racing experience (3 years in RC and 25 years in full sized) I realize the pitfalls that can come from a boat where too many things can go wrong. However, I spent most of my full size sailing career sailing a very complex 2 man boat (the M-20 scow) which has as many sail control lines as a modern 470 plus bilgeboards. Having so many things to adjust requires the crew to be very experienced. but once you have mastered the boat to where pulling the strings becomes an unconscous act, the extra performance that you can get from all those controls is significant.
I consider this boat to be a grand experiment more than a competitive campaign boat. If I was going to challenge for the US1M national championship title, I would probably go with something closer to a standard boat design. Don’t get me wrong - I intend to race my boat. But I expect to have unforseen challenges and am fully pepared to have the answer come back that a canting mast boat is not faster than a standard boat. But, I am not willing to give up on this idea until I have proven it to myself.
Frankly, I don’t think I would join the US1M class if it were not for this radical design. I am a firm believer in one design racing and would choose the ODOM over the US1M for a class that I wanted to race in.
Since the US1M is intended to be a development class, the philosophy is to explore the design space and search for new go-fast ideas. This is different than the philosophy of a one design class where the emphasis is on level playing field racing. So I told myself 3 years ago that if I ever got into the US1M class, I would use my engineering mind to test some radical corners of the envelope. I do not expect to be 100% sucessful, but I am exploring an area that I believe has potential. This is not just based on wishful thinking but on a fundamental understanding of the physics of sailing. I recognize what I am trying to accomplish and also what the potential factors are that could spoil my effort. I enter this design effort with my eyes open…
I beleive that this platform will give me the ability to do some good experimenting. For example, If I leave the mast centered and leave the wings stowed, then the boat is very close to a standard US1M. So I can sail it in that configuration and compare my speed to the other boats on the pond. Hopefully one of the other boats in our club will allow me to trial horse against them. Once I establish a baseline, then I can change one factor at a time and see what the effect is.
Of course straight line speed is only one factor that makes a boat able to win race. Can the boat tack effectivly, can it be reliable enough to compete in a long series without breakdowns. These are all factors to be considered. I have no illusions that I may be creating another TNZ “hula” boat - fast on paper but unable to deliver when it counts. But that is what development is all about (at least for me). I am willing to take the risks…
Will Gorgen