Review of Privateer 18
Basic specs.
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The hull is made of fibreglass. Generally, a hull made of fibreglass requires only a minimum of maintenance during the sailing season. And outside the sailing season, just bottom cleaning and perhaps anti-fouling painting once a year - a few hours of work, that's all.
The Privateer 18 is equipped with a fractional rig. A fractional rig has smaller headsails which make tacking easier, which is an advantage for cruisers and racers, of course. The downside is that having the wind from behind often requires a gennaker or a spinnaker for optimal speed.
Fin keel
The Privateer 18 is equipped with a fin keel. A boat with a fin keel is more manoeuvrable but has less directional stability than a similar boat with a full keel.
The boat can enter even shallow marinas as the draft is just about 0.84 - 0.94 meter (2.76 - 3.06 ft) dependent on the load.
Sailing characteristics
This section covers widely used rules of thumb to describe the sailing characteristics. Please note that even though the calculations are correct, the interpretation of the results might not be valid for extreme boats.
What is Theoretical Maximum Hull Speed?
The theoretical maximal speed of a displacement boat of this length is 5.4 knots. The term "Theoretical Maximum Hull Speed" is widely used even though a boat can sail faster. The term shall be interpreted as above the theoretical speed a great additional power is necessary for a small gain in speed.
Sailing statistics
This section is statistical comparison with similar boats of the same category. The basis of the following statistical computations is our unique database with more than 26,000 different boat types and 350,000 data points.
The ballast ratio for Privateer 18 is 34%.
What is Displacement Length Ratio?
The DL-ratio for Privateer 18 is 184 which categorizes this boat among 'light racers'.
SA/D (Sail Area Displacement ratio)
Indicates how fast the boat is in light wind:
- Cruising Boats have ratios 10-15
- Cruiser-Racers have ratios 16-20
- Racers have ratios above 20
- High-Performance Racers have ratios above 24
Sail-area/displacement ratio (SA/D ratio): 24.15
Maintenance
If you need to renew parts of your running rig and is not quite sure of the dimensions, you may find the estimates computed below useful.
| Usage | Length | Diameter | ||
| Jib sheet | 5.3 m | (17.5 feet) | 8 mm | (5/16 inch) |
| Genoa sheet | 5.3 m | (17.5 feet) | 8 mm | (5/16 inch) |
| Mainsheet | 13.3 m | (43.7 feet) | 8 mm | (5/16 inch) |
| Spinnaker sheet | 11.7 m | (38.5 feet) | 8 mm | (5/16 inch) |
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