My math was more than essentially correct ! it was entirely correct-- as well as glaringly vague and incomplete.mastreb wrote:Judy's math re: righting moment is essentially correct. .... At 90 degrees, there's zero force upon the sails (because they're horizontal) and the righting moment is maximum at 4375.
Whaaaat on earth am I talking about
My math was intentionally incomplete so that I wouldn't have to go into more detail than I did. Here's more details, but I'm still not gonna go into full lecture mode.
1. Gravity acts on the center of gravity of a boat to pull it down. The center of gravity of the boat occupies a fixed position.
2. Water acts on the boat's center of bouyance to push it up. The position of the boats center of bouyancy moves around, depending upon what part of the hull is submerged.
3. When the boat is floating level and at equilibrium, the center of bouyancis is located directly below the center of gravity.
4. When the boat heels, the two centers become horizontally separated, creating a torque force (righting momemt) that tends to right the boat.
5. The maximum righting moment occurs when the COB and the COG reach maximum horizontal separation
A boat's righting moment reaches a maximum when the the horizontal level arm (usually notated as Gz) between the boat's center of gravity and the center of bouyancy is maximized. This condition typically occurs between 55 and 75 degrees of heel, depending on the hull shape.
When I googled looking for a good reference, I found this one:
http://www.sailboat-cruising.com/gz-curves.html
