The bows also wont stick underwater when you bear away or if you press them hard downwind like a flat top deck will. Once a flat top deck goes underwater its all over, you either stop or pitchpole. I've actually done bear aways too agressively and the sterns come out of the water the boat bears away with the bows underwater and just the tips of the rudders in the water. Pretty scary the first time I did that. But it didnt stop, it just kept going.
Yeah, I've noticed exactly the same thing on the Blade, compared to the Tiger. I've also had a similar experience on an FX-one.
One of the more convincing descriptions I've read of why "wave-piercing" hulls work talks about making the buoyancy "active". By putting more buoyancy low down, you reduce the amount by which the boat pitches in response to a given force. With a V shaped bow, the boat has to pitch a long way in order to find all the reserve buoyancy, by which time the boat is way out of trim.
The downside, is that it doesn't feel as progressive. On a wave-piercer, you can be using most of your reserve buoyancy and the boat will still be relatively close to normal trim. I suspect that this is why people talk about the Capricorn as being easy to pitchpole: it's not, it's just harder to "read" how hard you're pushing the boat.
Paul
