Ed. Note: This was posted a few days ago, but we found more to the story. Here are the rest of Bruce’s comments plus some extra eye candy.
C&C 30 High Performance
One look at this very sexy looking rocket ship and you’ll know it is definitely not your father’s C&C. The Pacific Northwest has had a long love affair with C&C and I don’t think there’s a marina in the Pacific Northwest where you won’t find at least one. C&C has been through a lot however this new high performance thoroughbred designed by Mark Mills is certainly one of the very coolest vessels C&C has put out in a long time. Also don’t forget that Mark Mills interned for Bob Perry so he is well acquainted with our conditions and what it takes to win around here. Since then Mark has produced an amazing series of very successful vessels including his very latest Mini-Maxi, Alegre. Even with all his success, Mark remains very approachable and he was happy to provide us with his comments about the C&C 30 HP.
It is also interesting to compare the specifications for this HP 30 with another very popular 30 in the Pacific Northwest, the Olson 30 on which we have a lot of miles. Remember that the Olson 30 was designed in 1978 so a lot of water has gone under the keel since then. At the time however it was almost unbeatable around here especially in light air and HCH Yacht Consultants sold over 30 of them. To this day there are still a fair number that race and are still fairly competitive. The Olson 30 specs are: LOA 30’, LWL, 27.5’, beam 9.25’, draft, 5.1’, displ 3,600lbs, main + jib 380ft sq, and a spinnaker of 761 ft sq. The C&C 30HP is LOA 30.01’, LWL 28.7’, beam 9.84, draft 7.5’, displ 3,995lbs, main + jib 640.6 and spinnaker of 1,249ft sq. If you sail around here these numbers have to make you absolutely drool. Can’t wait for my test!
Design Notes from Mark Mills
“The C&C 30 is an exciting opportunity for us to take a fresh look at what a modern high performance One Design can offer, and do so with some of the best performance experts in the business, including C&C 30 High Performance KND Sailing Performance, a company based in Spain who we partner with on our Grand Prix racing projects like our recent Mini-Maxi Alegre.
“Starting with the certainty that the new design would need to be light with lots of sail area for exhilarating performance, what would be necessary to reinvent the type in 2014? Listening to owners and dealers it became clear that previous generations of Sportsboats now require too many crew, and too many professional crew, to sail to their potential.
Professional numbers were easy to take care of with a well-written One Design rule put together by C&C 30 builder and One Design supremo Barry Carroll who stewarded the Mumm 30 and Farr 40 classes to worldwide success.
Addressing crew numbers was another issue, which required some thought to reduce without leaving the boat overpowered in a breeze under its sizable sail plan. Our solution is to combine the lowest VCG possible with features such as the carbon fin with a hull shape that has a slim waterline beam at rest, like a conventional sportsboat, for low wetted surface area and drag.
In light airs the C&C 30 should be sailed fairly upright, and with the crew weight forwards as usual to maintain that low drag configuration. As the wind increases her wider hull shape above the waterline begins to immerse with increasing heel angle, adding significant amounts of form stability and using more of the sail plans power, allowing the crew to shift aft to further increase stability.
This stability from the hull form allows the C&C 30 class to limit crew numbers and allows teams to focus on sailing and having fun instead of finding and managing large crews, it even encourages shorthanded sailing in the right events.
Specifications: LOA 30.01’ (9.15m), LWL 28.70’( 8.75m), Beam 9.84’(3.0m), Draft 7.5’(2.3m), Displ 3,995 lbs(1,812kg).
Northwest Dealer: Sail Northwest, Shilshole Bay Marina, 7001 Seaview Ave NW Suite #140, Seattle, WA 206-286-1004. www.SailNorthwest.com.
1 comment
Bruce,, I learned to sail ‘Big Boats’ doing bow on Olson 30’s in San Francisco Bay in the late eighties and early nineties, it remains one of my favorite boats. They certainly epitomised that generation of California light displacement, where all the parameters were in moderation, producing a nice boat without much sail area, draft, or beam at the waterline. The C&C30 as you see by the numbers is carrying a lot more sail area because of both the deeper keel with lower vcg, and the more powerful hull shape, producing a much more powerful solution in the same displacement/length ratio territory.