Realistic tacking/pointing angles for shoal draft 479

[dougm]

Greetings Jeanneau experts!

We are seriously contemplating buying a 479 in the Caribbean. Most/all of the available boats are shoal draft and I am concerned that we will find the sailing performance a little frustrating upwind. (Obviously, the best thing to do is spend some serious time sailing one with decent sails, to understand the performance in a range of conditions, but for various reasons (including sail condition) that is not as practical as we would like.)

I've looked at the polars on the Jeanneau site and, if they are to believed, in 14 kts the speed, at 45 degrees true, there is only about 0.2kt difference  between the standard keel and the fin keel. 

I actually find that hard to believe... Perhaps the polars don't account for leeway (but I think they should)? 

Racing would not be in our plan for the boat (we have smaller boats for round-the-cans racing), but we would want to be able to make decent progress to windward. I don't want to have to be tacking through 130 degrees on the chart and end up using the diesel just to get where we want to go! 

I'm very interested in your experiences of shoal draft 469/479 boats to windward and how the over-the-ground tacking angles work out.

Thanks very much,
Doug

[zaphod]

I can't speak to real world performance of that particular model, but in terms of the poplars I doubt they would take into account leeway.

Anecdotally I have heard many owners of shoal draft boats claim their upwind performance is great. On the other hand, phrf typically rates shoal keel boats slower than their deep keel counterparts.

The way I see it, if you expect to sail in waters where an extra foot or 2 of draft matters, get shoal draft, if not, get deep draft.

If you fall in love with a boat that checks all your boxes except the shoal keel, it would probably do you just fine if you are not racing.

I am in a deep water area and we do a lot of upwind sailing so I wouldn't touch a shoal keel, but that might just be my bias! A broker told me shoal draft boats are harder to sell around here, so I guess a lot of people have the same bias I do!

[moonshadow]

I have a shoal draft 469. I suspect that sail condition makes a big difference. With new main I am really happy with upwind performance. My old sail looked like it was in good shape but the draft had become way too deep and aft. I would suspect that many Caribbean boats don’t upgrade sails often. With a good sail it sails great. I don’t have any comparison data with a deep keep version and I won’t post numbers since I am not convinced that my data sources are all calibrated properly. But I do know that when sailing near friends they are surprised at how fast the boat is upwind.
And for me, as stated above, the benefits of shallow draft far outweigh any small performance hit.

[dougm]

Aug 27, 2021 22:31:39 GMT moonshadow said:

I have a shoal draft 469. I suspect that sail condition makes a big difference. With new main I am really happy with upwind performance. My old sail looked like it was in good shape but the draft had become way too deep and aft. I would suspect that many Caribbean boats don’t upgrade sails often. With a good sail it sails great. I don’t have any comparison data with a deep keep version and I won’t post numbers since I am not convinced that my data sources are all calibrated properly. But I do know that when sailing near friends they are surprised at how fast the boat is upwind.
And for me, as stated above, the benefits of shallow draft far outweigh any small performance hit.

Thanks, this is helpful.

Have you looked at your track to windward on a chart plotter? That would give some rough idea of the tacking angle, including leeway.

I'm very happy to accept some modest loss of performance for the obvious benefits of shoal draft. What I'm really trying to avoid is frustratingly poor upwind performance. Recently I sailed a Hanse 40-something footer, and I could not get that thing into a good "groove" to windward. To get it happy, and not making too much leeway, I had to sail fairly free. This made progress to windward rather slow and I ended up tacking through about 120 degrees!  Similarly, a Dufour 430 we chartered earlier this year made a disappointing amount of leeway. 
I realize that this has a lot to do with sails and, of course, finding the best groove for the boat. We're pretty solid dinghy racers, and have been fast racing our Capri 22 for years, so general sail trim etc is ok. But, I'm aware that the big-hull-small-keel type of boat is not where we have a whole lot of experience. 

thanks, Doug

[moonshadow]

Once I am in a decent groove in small waves I easily get a good vmg while sailing 32 deg apparent. At 30 I am really slow. In big waves of course I need to bear off a good bit, maybe sail 37-40 apparent. But I do well in a gentle swell even if fairly big. It seems that everywhere I sail there is enough current to make the plotter look lopsided.

[moonshadow]

When I get sailing again and have some upwind time I’ll try to get a screenshot of my tacking angles