Two excellent free boat calculators

Sailcalc in operation

Boating enthusiasts love to fiddle with things – for many of us it’s part of the joy of owning and using boats. Some, like me, go further and start to create actual new boat designs, even if we do keep our creations on the small and simple side of the street.

If you’ve tried designing or re-designing a rig, you’ll know that the arithmetic can be tiresome and if you have you’ll be interested in these two calculators developed by one of my friends from the Yahoogroup Boatdesign, Peter Vanderwaart.

The first is Boatcalc, a handy calculator for use with boat hulls modelled using Gregg Carlson’s very useful Chine Hull Developer. See the Boatcalc_documentation. Even if you’re not working on a boat designed using this software, it may be worth reverse-modelling an existing hull in order to make your calculations, and to study its hydrostatics, wetted area and so on.

The second is Sailcalc, a fabulously useful rig calculator that works out centres of effort, sizes and dimensions – from experience, I can tell you that it’s a boon when you’re trying to balanace up the hull of a boat, its skeg and centreboard, and a mast that can only be in one place and a variety of sail options.