Sven Yrind's "mongrel Paradox"

...  of Matt Layden’s 14-foot coastal cruiser Paradox. I got out the drawings and looked at them. Paradox has a strong flat bottom and a draft of only nine inches. At first look one gets the impression that she cannot go to windward as it seems that she has no means of preventing leeway. A closer look reveals her chinerunners, small two-inch wide horizontal winglets sticking out from the chines for about a third of the boat’s length. But was that enough? Intrigued, I called Matt and he told me that he could sail Paradox better to windward than Dave in his slightly bigger centerboard boat, and he invited me over to see for myself. In October 1997, I sailed Paradox for a month. In 2003 I returned, and again in 2006 and 2007. Each time I stayed for about a month, sailing and discussing boats with Matt. We continue to exchange ideas once a week over the phone, which is very enlightening, as Matt is always one step ahead of me. I am now convinced that the chinerunner concept, created by Matt in 1982, is the greatest innovation for small cruising boats in the last century. The reasons why very few people have realized its advantages are that Matt does not try make his voice heard above the din from the egos in our conservative, self-centered society to promote his idea, and that the principles behind it are complex and subtle, and have been subject to little research and experiment. After a decade studying Paradox, and talking to Matt I have come to understand that the boat’s leeway-resistance comes from a combination of three sources, the chinerunners, the lifting body shaped hull and the large rudder.
Unlike the ordinary cruising boat, Paradox has no heavy ballast keel making her stability obvious. Matt uses less obvious means, like her cruising load kept low and her flat bottom which, a bit like a multihull, moves a lot of buoyancy to lee at small angles of heel. At large angles of heel, Paradox’s righting moment comes from a good height-to-beam ratio and the buoyancy of her superstructure. This shape gives Paradox positive stability at up to 165 degrees of heel. Better than most conventional keel boats Matt uses a lug sail. "Yrvind" is a mongrel, based on Matt’s and my ideas. I am grateful to Matt, and would like to thank him here for taking time to engage himself in my problems.

My favourite photo. Mr Yrvind looks so chuffed with his build. Rightly so! 

Sven went on to successfully sail "Yrvind.com" across the Atlantic Sea then up the east coast of America. He went on to build another design to make a record breaking circumnavigation in a 10 foot boat. His later comments about his "mongrel Paradox" was that it was too heavy & did not have enough room for living aboard in rainy weather. Both these criticisms can be partly attributed to the changes Mr Yrvind made to the original Paradox design. 

For full details go to "Yrvind.com" particularly the period May 2008 to September 2011.