Professional BoatBuilder - December-January 2018

52 PROFESSIONAL BOATBUILDER

 ying o the waves at 20 or more.”

Smyth had raced Sizzor in four

Everglades Challenges with a conven-

tional carbon mast and high-perfor-

mance sails, but with that rig there

were times when the boat became dif-

 cult to handle. “You know, jib down,

out of balance, couldn’t head up to reef

the main, had to sail aground to regain

control,” he says. “But the wing is

located directly over the daggerboard,

so the boat is always balanced, and on

any point of sail, you can quickly turn

a big wing mast that couldn’t weather-

vane even halfway around because of

con ict with the rigging, he recalls, “At

one point we were tied to a dock and

the wind changed. It blew hard and the

boat tried to sail o the dock. Very dan-

gerous, and it got us into real trouble at

sea. We just couldn’t turn it o .”

 e hybrid wing is a di erent story.

Smyth: “Now, with just me in my little

200-lb [91-kg] trimaran, those gusts

were maybe 50 knots, at least a steady

40, and at times I was really going,

reef a traditional rig. And the gusts

hammering down from that thing, they

came from all directions. I could just let

the wing weathervane, shut o the

power, and it was silent. You know, usu-

ally there’s a lot of noise in a squall—

sails  ogging, mast moaning—but this

thing was steady and quiet. Or I could

trim the bare wing with one hand, drive

the boat as hard or as easy as needed to

retain control. Amazing, really.”

Smyth confesses that until this race

he’d been focused on the performance

of the new rig, and had never consid-

ered its safety or seamanship potential.

“In a real blow, I could feel comfort-

able, in absolute control of the boat. It

made me realize that we’ve come up

with something that is actually practi-

cal in many ways,” he says. “Not only

can you leave it up like an ordinary rig,

but when, say, you’re running in a gale

or maybe even anchored in a hurri-

cane...we’ll see, but at least in concept

it has less drag than an ordinary rig.”

Smyth knows the limitations of big,

solid-wing structures. Citing his expe-

rience circumnavigating on the 110'

(33.5m) cat Team Adventure,  tted with

T

he original course for the

Everglades Challenge led

competitors from the open

sea into a swampy creek and

under a low bridge to an

obligatory checkpoint.  is

not only required sailing

cra to lower their masts, it

also effectively ruled out

most multihulls because the

channel under the bridge

was too narrow. Randy

Smyth is a multihull man, so

when designing a trimaran

for this, race he arranged

for the crossbeams (akas) to

pivot horizontally at their

connectives to all three hulls.

By advancing one outrigger

hull (ama) way forward,

and retarding the other way

a —like collapsing a pantograph or

parallel rules—such a cra could be

paddled through the narrow gap

under the bridge.

Smyth then realized that panto-

graphing favored other features that

might make his boat faster. For

example, by advancing the buoyancy

of the downwind ama and retarding

the sailor’s weight on the upwind

trampoline, the amas could be made

smaller and lighter while still provid-

ing adequate longitudinal stability.

He knew that the multihull’s widely

spaced hulls, when trying to respond

to the same waves at di erent times,

exert wracking stresses on the whole

platform, which requires structure to

resist them. However, with his smaller

amas, the akas could be located closer

together, thereby sharing the heeling-

versus-righting loads. And, if these

akas were rather light and  exible,

they would allow the amas to articu-

late in pitch, the better to “walk their

own water” for reducing drag, while

also reducing wracking stress and its

attendant structure.

 is successive reasoning also led

Smyth to make the vessel’s main hull

(vaka) nearly cylindrical, 21' (6.4m)

long, and less than 1' (305mm) wide.

Its slenderness ratio is more than

20:1, making it very slippery indeed.

What’s more, he chose to give the

ama hulls a planing shape, like long,

slender sur oards.  e downwind

ama, therefore, would generate con-

siderable dynamic li at speed with

much reduced wetted surface, so the

amas could be made still smaller and

lighter. To avoid the tendency for

planing amas to spank on the sur-

face, they could be mounted high

enough for both to “ y” well above

the water in light air. By adjusting his

hiking position and trimming sheets,

Sizzor: The Right Boat for a Crazy Race

Sizzor under way with a reefed hybrid wing and

a blade jib.

DESIGN: Hybrid Wing

COURTESY FAST FORWARD COMPOSITES

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