How Sailboats Measure Up
Design ratios tell a story, but to get the real picture about a vessel, sail area, displacement, and ballast deserve a longer look.
Boat reviewers rely on numbers to describe some of the key attributes of their subjects, such as length, beam, draft, and displacement. And while judgments on interior layouts and decor are subjective, these figures describing dimensions are not. There are, however, other numbers commonly cited in spec boxes that can prove more elusive, since they attempt to put a numerical value on how a sailboat might be expected to perform while under way. The commonly used ratios are sail area to displacement (SA/D), displacement to length (D/L), and ballast to displacement (B/D). And though they’re so commonly used that a certain amount of dogma has accrued around them, these figures can, in fact, be misleading, or at least misunderstood. And the result is that a boat can be assigned attributes based on numerical values that don’t take into account how sailboat design has changed over the past several decades.
Here, then, is a look at those ratios, what they attempt to describe, and how they should be interpreted when you go off exploring new and used models. (Click to page 2 for a more in-depth explanation.)
