Am I correct in assuming that adding weight to the front of a boat might cause weather helm? I’m thinking that if the front of the boat was deeper that it would move the CLR forward.
Thanks
Don
Vancouver Island
Yes, to an extent.
It depends greatly on hull shape, keel or fin design, amount of trim etc.
It depends almost entirely on the length of the fin keel if the boat has one. On an EC 12 the answer is yes(I raced one for about three years); on a perfectly balanced Marblehead(raced my own designs locally for a couple of years) the answer is probably no depending how deep your’re talking about. On the Marblehead as the bow goes down a significant amount of a deep keel fin also moves aft and the rig CE being fairly high moves forward both of which would work against weather helm.
Doug Lord
–High Technology Sailing/Racing
<blockquote id=“quote”><font size=“1” face=“Verdana, Arial, Helvetica” id=“quote”>quote:<hr height=“1” noshade id=“quote”>Originally posted by Don I’m thinking that if the front of the boat was deeper that it would move the CLR forward<hr height=“1” noshade id=“quote”></blockquote id=“quote”></font id=“quote”>
Hi Don
On something like an IOM, some folks I talk to think that the hull contributes around 10% to the CLR, the fin and rudder the remaining 90%. So tipping the hull a little wouldn’t do much, and, as Doug notes, the rig (and its CE) gets tipped forward as well.
Lester Gilbert