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In the August 2024 issue of Yachting World magazine: News Few finish a tempestuous Round The Island Race European rules are eased for cruising to France and Greece Olympic sailing…

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World’s coolest yachts: Tornado catamaran

• April 20, 2021

We ask top sailors and marine industry gurus to choose the coolest and most innovative yachts of our times. This month, Carolijn Brouwer nominates the Tornado catamaran

“The Tornado catamaran is a really cool boat. It was my introduction to high performance sailing and it had a big influence on me in many ways.

“Once you get a taste for it, there is no way back. Sailing the Tornado opened up different doors for me in my sailing career,” says Carolijn Brouwer .

The Tornado catamaran was for many years the fastest Olympic sailing class and was the first catamaran to be introduced to the Olympic Games. It was first sailed in the 1976 Olympic Games and saw its last Olympic appearance in 2008.

There was not multihull option for sailing at the Olympic Games in 2012, but the Tornado undoubtedly led the way for the current catamaran class, the Nacra 17, which must be sailed with a female and a male member of the crew.

“Sailing the Tornado is where I got the feel for apparent wind sailing. It’s a pretty big cat in the small boat sailing world with its 20ft length and 10ft width creating decent loads and righting moment.

“Also, the Tornado was the only Open discipline at the Olympic Games but it was extremely male dominated.”

Brouwer helmed for Belgium at the 2008 Games, sailing a Tornado catamaran with crew Sébastien Godefroid. “I hope this showed that being a woman you can compete at a high level and be very competitive against men in a mixed gender configuration – just like the great Paul Elvstrøm did sailing with his daughter.”

Tornado catamaran stats rating:

Top speed: 20 knots LOA: 20ft/6.1m Launched: 1967 Berths: 0 Price: £23,000 Adrenalin factor: 70%

Carolijn Brouwer

A three-time Whitbread/Volvo Ocean Race crew, Carolijn Brouwer is also a three-time Olympian. She was born in the Netherlands and represented the country at the 2000 and 2004 Olympics in first the 470, and then the Europe. She then switched to the Tornado, representing Belgium in 2008, when she finished 12th.

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Published on June 1st, 2021 | by Editor

Tornado: World’s coolest yachts

Published on June 1st, 2021 by Editor -->

Yachting World has been asking top sailors and marine industry gurus to choose the coolest and most innovative yachts of our times , and two-time World Sailor of the Year Carolijn Brouwer nominated the Tornado catamaran. The Scuttlebutt editor concurs the Tornado is one of the sweetest boats he’s ever sailed… here’s the report :

“The Tornado catamaran is a really cool boat. It was my introduction to high performance sailing and it had a big influence on me in many ways,” said the Dutch three-time Whitbread/Volvo Ocean Race crew and three-time Olympian.

“Once you get a taste for it, there is no way back. Sailing the Tornado opened up different doors for me in my sailing career.”

The Tornado catamaran was for many years the fastest Olympic sailing class and was the first catamaran to be introduced to the Olympic Games. It was first sailed in the 1976 Olympic Games and saw its last Olympic appearance in 2008.

There was not multihull option for sailing at the Olympic Games in 2012, but the Tornado undoubtedly led the way for the current catamaran class, the Nacra 17, which must be sailed with a female and a male member of the crew.

“Sailing the Tornado is where I got the feel for apparent wind sailing. It’s a pretty big cat in the small boat sailing world with its 20ft length and 10ft width creating decent loads and righting moment.

“Also, the Tornado was the only Open discipline at the Olympic Games but it was extremely male dominated.”

Brouwer helmed for Belgium at the 2008 Games, sailing a Tornado catamaran with crew Sébastien Godefroid. “I hope this showed that being a woman you can compete at a high level and be very competitive against men in a mixed gender configuration – just like the great Paul Elvstrøm did sailing with his daughter.”

For Yachting World’s list of cool boats, click here .

Tags: Carolijn Brouwer , coolest yachts , Tornado , Yachting World

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• Sailboat Guide

Tornado Catamaran

Tornado Catamaran is a 20 ′ 0 ″ / 6.1 m catamaran sailboat designed by Reg White and Rodney March and built by Sailcraft Ltd., Marstrom Composite AB, and Windrush Yachts starting in 1966.

Rig and Sails

Auxilary power, accomodations, calculations.

The theoretical maximum speed that a displacement hull can move efficiently through the water is determined by it's waterline length and displacement. It may be unable to reach this speed if the boat is underpowered or heavily loaded, though it may exceed this speed given enough power. Read more.

Classic hull speed formula:

Hull Speed = 1.34 x √LWL

Max Speed/Length ratio = 8.26 ÷ Displacement/Length ratio .311 Hull Speed = Max Speed/Length ratio x √LWL

Sail Area / Displacement Ratio

A measure of the power of the sails relative to the weight of the boat. The higher the number, the higher the performance, but the harder the boat will be to handle. This ratio is a "non-dimensional" value that facilitates comparisons between boats of different types and sizes. Read more.

SA/D = SA ÷ (D ÷ 64) 2/3

• SA : Sail area in square feet, derived by adding the mainsail area to 100% of the foretriangle area (the lateral area above the deck between the mast and the forestay).
• D : Displacement in pounds.

Ballast / Displacement Ratio

A measure of the stability of a boat's hull that suggests how well a monohull will stand up to its sails. The ballast displacement ratio indicates how much of the weight of a boat is placed for maximum stability against capsizing and is an indicator of stiffness and resistance to capsize.

Ballast / Displacement * 100

Displacement / Length Ratio

A measure of the weight of the boat relative to it's length at the waterline. The higher a boat’s D/L ratio, the more easily it will carry a load and the more comfortable its motion will be. The lower a boat's ratio is, the less power it takes to drive the boat to its nominal hull speed or beyond. Read more.

D/L = (D ÷ 2240) ÷ (0.01 x LWL)³

• D: Displacement of the boat in pounds.
• LWL: Waterline length in feet

Comfort Ratio

This ratio assess how quickly and abruptly a boat’s hull reacts to waves in a significant seaway, these being the elements of a boat’s motion most likely to cause seasickness. Read more.

Comfort ratio = D ÷ (.65 x (.7 LWL + .3 LOA) x Beam 1.33 )

• D: Displacement of the boat in pounds
• LOA: Length overall in feet
• Beam: Width of boat at the widest point in feet

Capsize Screening Formula

This formula attempts to indicate whether a given boat might be too wide and light to readily right itself after being overturned in extreme conditions. Read more.

CSV = Beam ÷ ³√(D / 64)

The TORNADO first appeared as winner of the 1967 international “B” class catamaran trials. It was an Olympic class from 1976-2008. The class rules were changed to allow twin trapezes, ‘flat head’ mainsail, and asym. spinnaker.(2004?)

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November 30, 1999 by Sail1Design Editor Leave a Comment

The Tornado was designed in the autumn of 1967 by Rodney March from England, with help from Terry Pierce, and Reg White, specifically for the purpose of being the new Olympic Catamaran, which was to be selected by the IYRU in an Olympic Catamaran Trials. The boat was developed mainly in Brightlingsea, England.

International Status was granted to the Tornado as a result of its outright winning of the IYRU Trials held in England. The next step, adding the Catamaran event to the Olympic program, occurred two years later, with the result that the first Catamaran event, sailed in 1976 in Canada, was sailed in the Tornado. The Tornado is an outstanding example of a class that was designed specifically for Olympic competition that has become a successful International class on its own merits.

2000 Olympic Silver Medalists: Darren Bundock and John Forbes (AUS)The Tornado has since remained unchallenged as the ultimate one-design catamaran. With its modern, stylish rigging and sleek lines the Tornado is quick to catch the eye of any water-drawn on-looker as it speeds across harbors, lakes, and oceans in over 30 countries around the world. With its ability to reach speeds of 15-18 knots upwind and downwind, and 33+ knots reaching, the Tornado is truly the purists’ speed machine.

Over 4,800 Tornados have been built, with 1,200 class association members worldwide. In 2004, on the Saronikos Gulf in Greece, the Tornado will be sailing in its seventh Olympic Games.

Except for refinements in technical details – improvements in hull, sail, and spar technology, better blocks and lines – the Tornado was unchanged from its beginnings in to the early 90’s. Then, as a result of the increasing popularity of other, smaller catamarans, the Tornado class undertook a major development program in 1993. It was specifically to respond to a request from the IYRU to search for ways to improve the public and media awareness of the sport of yachting, and secondarily to answer the possible challengers to its ‘top cat’ role.

Two weeks of intensive on-the-water testing and development took place in Miami, following considerable discussion and planning. Among the participants were the three medalists from Barcelona as well as designer Reg White. The International Tornado Association spent nearly US$22,000 on the testing, evaluation, reporting, and finally balloting process to the class membership, to find the fairest and best ways to improve the class and the sport in ways acceptable to the sailors.

The testing involved 10 standard and fully competitive Tornados, one boat with a larger main and jib, and two boats with a variety of sailplans that included spinnakers of up to 32 sq. M. Fourteen races were run over the testing period in addition to in-line speed and handling evaluations.

As part of the testing process, new courses were also used, most involving a leeward gate.

Following the testing and regatta, the following points were clear; the larger main/jib combination was only marginally faster than the standard rig, and the spinnaker boats were a surprise, only beating the standard rigs in 2 of the 14 races. The ITA then balloted the class membership, with not only the conclusions but also all of the data and the testing procedure, helping to provide insights to the rig selection process.

A two-thirds majority is required by the class constitution to implement any change; this majority was not reached, the class voting against the expense of a change with no real benefit to sailing. Thus the class retained the same sailplan for the next two Olympics. The course changes, giving the possiblity of better spectator access and greater media coverage, received the votes necessary to be adopted by the class.

The Class felt then that the changes in course, rather than changes in the equipment, would have a greater impact on public awareness and media coverage. Courses are adjustable in length for wind, thus giving a fixed racing time for the event, and the shorter-than-before course also tend to keep the boats closer, making the racing more exciting and more easily viewed. The fixed Start/Finish lines also is a help, allowing faster turn-around times between races. The new course formats have been in use in the World Championship beginning in ’93, and have proven popular with both the sailors and committees, and are continued today.

The issue of changes in the boat were revisited in 1999, when the ISAF decided to have a Multihull Evaluation Trials in France to look at “possible replacements” in the Olympic program for the Tornado. At the time, there were a number of technical changes in materials that allowed for better spinnakers, and better control, and there were then a number of successful double-trapeze plus spinnaker catamarans on the market in the Tornado size range – 20 feet – that were becoming popular.

The Trials were interesting. Except for the custom, all-carbon Marstrom 20, the standard Tornado dominated upwind, beating all production challengers from Hobie, Nacra, Mystere, and others. Only by piling on sail area, plus a spinnaker, were any of the challengers able to beat the Tornado around the race course, and even then the advantage disappeared as the wind increased. But the extra athleticism needed to sail with a double trapeze, and the extra visual interest provided by the spinnakers, was undeniable, and the final outcome was that the ISAF decreed that the equipment for the 2004 Olympics would be the “Tornado with double trapeze and spinnaker”, and left it up to the class how to implement the changes.

The class took an approach that allowed some development and testing, with the goal of keeping crew weight in the same range as with the old rig. The final result, approved by the class in early 2001, were both evolutionary and radical. First was a new mainsail with a flat top and more area, providing more heeling moment to compensate for the double instead of single trapeze and help keep crew weights with the same range. Second, done to clear the trampoline to make spinnaker work possible, was to redesign the jib. The new jib had the same area, but was longer on the luff and shorter on the foot to allow it to be sheeted to the main beam. Interestingly, this change, moving the sail area forward, overcame one of the Tornado’s handicaps, tacking, and made this maneuver much easier. The innovation of a self-tacking jib appeared later in 2001, and was quickly adopted by the entire fleet. Finally, of course, there was the spinnaker, and the class set only size limits, allowing the question of spinnaker handling equipment to be settled on the race course. Again, the advantages of spinnaker launching tubes quickly established themselves, and became a class standard. Interestingly, the two biggest boathandling improvements, the self-tacking jib and the spinnaker tubes, were quickly adopted by the classes below the Tornado, especially the International Formula 18, which was becoming the Tornado trainer for future Olympians.

Class website: http://www.tornado.org/

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The Tornado was for a long time the king of sport catamarans. She was the Open Olympic catamaran for 32 years! It is a unique, elegant, fast, long and wide catamaran.

An extremely fast boat around 3 buoys.

the last Tornado ads at the best price

Tornado Scheurer for sale in Arradon

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Tornado presentation

The tornado, the king of 20th century sport catamarans.

With a length of just over 6 metres and a width of 3 metres, the Tornado is a terribly efficient machine on a course between 3 buoys. Since 1996 the Tornado has been equipped with a spinnaker, a horn mainsail, a battened jib and a double trapeze.

The platform has been adapted to this new equipment, and is very similar to that of a Formula 18: a rigid or fabric spinnaker swallower is fitted along the spinnaker pole, a self-tacking jib track has been fitted on the forward beam, footstraps have been fitted at the rear of the floats to prevent the helmsman and crew from flying downwind.

An alliance of power and finesse, the Tornado is undoubtedly the fastest and most spectacular sports catamaran before they were fitted with foils!

For the crew, the ideal weight is 145 kilos.

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