Know Your Hull Dimensions

To be honest, we haven't done anything with the star since my last post. I've been very busy with racing on other boats and sailing-related volunteer work and I might just talk more about them at a later date.

For now, here's a crude diagram I drew to explain the weird jargon and abbreviations in my last post. What you're looking at is the side of the boat. You have the keel in the centre and the rudder on the right.

LOA = Length OverAll. This is the number we usually answer when someone asks you, "How big is your boat?" According to Wikipedia, it's the maximum length of a vessel from the two points on the hull measured perpendicular to the waterline.

LWL = (Load) Waterline Length. This is the length of the boat at the waterline, or where your boat touches the water. The waterline is drawn with dashes in the diagram.

Freeboard = Height of the hull that's above the water

Draft = Height of the hull that's underwater, usually not including the keel in sailboats. You may notice that the specs of the star doesn't state the freeboard. They just used the word "draft" to specify the overall height of the hull.

Also, not shown in the diagram is the beam, which is the width of the boat.

But enough of the terminology. Here's a little taste of what's to come.

Star Specs

With the introduction out of the way, let's talk about what the star boat is. Here's what it looks like.

Sloop-rigged keelboat with a gigantic mast and gigantic sails. From bird's eye view, it looks kind of like a giant laser. Chine hull, fin keel. The guy who sold us the mast said he likened the star to a keelboat version of the International 14.

As far as we know, all the specs are up to standards. The only thing we need to make sure is that our mast isn't too long. Mast height from deck is supposed to 9652mm. Stupid me, I measured it at 10077 from the bottom, not including the step. I don't think I should get the difference off of the draft either.

Anyway, standard specs are as follows:

LOA = 6922mm
LWL = 4724mm
Draft = 1016mm
Beam = 1734mm at deck and 1372 at chine
Hull weight ≥ 671kg and this includes everything

(We'll go over the sails in another post.)

Our boat in particular is an oldbie with modifications from decades ago. We're still trying to figure out what's changed and if these changes can be implemented on our boat with minimal cost and labour.

It's our first season with this boat so the priority is to simply get it sailing. All the fancy bells and whistles will come if/when we feel competent enough with the boat AND find a smart, fast and heavy enough crew to race regularly.

And to show you just how clueless we are, we're still trying to decide where all our lines should lead. Majority of the fittings aren't secure and the boom vang track is hanging out inside the cockpit.

For those of you who are non-sailors or are new to sailing, I'll go through all the vocabulary in my next post. This is mostly just to get all the information out there.