MitchStellin

I had an AT 32. It was a great boat, no steps but still very fast with HP500s. The boat was very solid, no rattles no pinging, it was a full balsa core boat, side hull, deck, hull, transom which accounted for the quietness and solid feel. I sold the boat due to a D but would buy another one without a dougt and would be a first pick. I also cranked the wheel very hard a few times, I started out slow and worked my way up, by about 50 turns I was standing that thing on it's side. I had to do this by myself, I could not trust someone holding on. All this and at a great price, I sold mine for what I paid for it and it sold fast.

ssm-v1

so car crash you never driven in a turbine race boat before have you.if you were at that particular race you would have known that they over shot the pin and pulled the throttles back and as you know turbine boats dont slow down like piston powered boats and they made that turn. i ran that boat personally w/ animalhouse for 2yrs in every poker run in all water before Jon turned it into a turbine boat

Cignificant

I'm glad you said that Steve.Now buy mine so we'll both be happy. [/QUOTE]

Gotta sell mine first. Know anyone interested? I'm having a "fall special".

Cignificant

Not bashing them at all, and it's happened with more than one driver. Like I said, I'm a straight-V guy primarily, so it's definitely a different feel when the step catches. Since you have a couple of hundred hours, you're probably used to it.

PhantomChaos

That is because you are a BOAT WHORE!!!!

carcrash

Before getting your knickers in a twist, tell me which of these statements is incorrect:

(OLSFFO means "Outerlimits, Skater, Fountain, Formula, and others")

1) The design of OLSFFO is done without any comprehensive mathematical basis.

2) The designers of OLSFFO simply try a very few possibilities, out of all possible configurations.

3) All of these step configurations have been done many, many times in the past. The effect is known historically and can be read about in books written in the first 40 years of the 20th century.

4) History has shown that one step is far better than many steps.

5) The great body of experiments done by NACA between WWI and WWII on sea plane hulls identified single steps as the way to go.

6) Little has been done in research in this area since then, because the concepts were so well understood.

7) The fact that OLSFFO build boats with multiple steps is clear evidence that they do not study their discipline, that the designers are poor students of naval architecture and hydrodynamics.

8) Boats designed by designers who are ignorant are very likely to be poorly designed.

So, where am I wrong? Where do I have no clue?

Ya, no kidding!

Just because something looks really cool, does not mean its well designed. It might be art, it might be beautiful, and I am all for that. I have never and will never buy a boat that is not beautiful. Outerlimits, Cigarette, Fountain, Nor-Tech, and many others are quite beautiful. I really like them. I pour more money into these things than my education!

But if its clearly suboptimal based on well known, long known, hydrodynamic principles, and yet its supposed to be a race boat, well, um, I'll leave the conclusion up to you.

The Skater vees appear to be well built. I'll bet they are measurably stiffer than Fountains due to a higher tech lay-up. The stiffer the boat, the more energy goes into going forward, so it goes faster.

The Skater vees do not appear to be as well designed as Fountains, because they don't do so well on Kilo runs, which are in smooth water, so the stiffness of the Skater is not as much of an advantage.

We don't need to go into any comparisons between the OL and Fountain design, do we? That's been beaten to death, no comparison there.

We don't need to point out that Outerlimit boats are much more beautifully finished, better constructed, better rigged, more comfortable and luxurious, and so on either, do we? That is just as obvious.

Any errors yet? I didn't think so. Not bad for someone without a clue, huh?

TeamSaris

Hey Listen!!! My boat has no steps I love it!!! But you go down to skater, and tell that to Petes face and tell him its all wrong. You know where you will get bashing world class boats? Nowhere! If you can build a better boat. LETS SEE IT!

carcrash

No, of course not.

TUFFboat

The Skater/Fountain speed comparison based of steps alone is not a good one. On the Fountain, in nice calm water that big pad bottom in the front of the steps and the close strakes after the step are coming in to play and developing a tremendous amount of lift.

cosmic12

whats all this got to do with the question asked in the first place? carcrash are you saying that A.T. is better because of one step? I understand your story on steps and that they have been around for years haveing been around wood boats and seaplanes all my yonger years. I don't believe there is a lot of research in most of these boats but A.T. actully has a patten on the bottom( Harry Scholle does) I have heard a joke about steps and dart boards but won't get into that. All I know for sure is the 37 Active works