On DeckMovable Ballast

I've been tossing this around for a while: what about a 16-17' fairly high performance dinghy designed so that the skipper sits down in it like a mini 12 but with a difference: the majority of ballast would be in a"wing" between 6 and 10' long and would slide side to side either by electric power or by the crew using a "bicycle winch":leg power moves the weight(weight about 170-200 pounds). The whole wing would move side to side along with a weight sliding on it so the CG of the movable weight could get up to 8' or so from the CL of the boat.The wing would be supported by "Trapeze" wires. The wing and the crew seat would be somehow tied together so that the crew could slide aft as necessary and/or the boat would be equipped with a rudder t-foil.
There would be a deep daggerboard(retractble) with some weight on it- and the ends of the wing would contain buoyancy pods to help prevent a permanent capsize.The hull would be fairly narrow and the wing would pivot for trailering or stowage.It would have a spinnaker...
These are pictures of an rc model with such a system on it:
http://www.microsail.com/pictures/m24c5.jpg

http://www.microsail.com/pictures/m24c6.jpg

The concept is to allow high performance without the physical requirements of most dinghies in order to open up the thrill of performance dinghy sailing to people that for whatever reason don't want to or physically can't hike or use a trapeze.
I'd really like to hear comments...
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Edited to try to determine why the url's here are "live" and the one on my last post is not...

Edited by Doug Lord

true, not only that, the idea of a high performance boat is that its your weight keeping it flat therefore they dont weigh much, so i feel it wud be good but not quite a skiff!

What happens when you capsize with the ballast on the "down" side (which is going to happen sooner or later)? OK, so you have flotation, so the boat doesn't actually sink, but how do you right it?

You actually need quite a lot of flotation to generate 170-200kg. It would be bulky.

Electric power and dinghies in salt water - sure - that will work for about 5 minutes.

Isis's point about the need for righting moment to be dynamic is also a very good one.

 

 

Hm....have you had much actual experience with boat electrics or keelboats?

Electrics fail all the time, even on bigger boats, let alone something as wet as you are proposing.

Anyone who has sailed high performance keelboats for very long has had the experience of them not self-righting, even without the benefit of moveable ballast on the wrong side pinning the boat down.

Another problem with the electric option is the weight - batteries are very heavy and I can't see how else you'd power it. You could make them part of the ballast, but then you've got the risk of electric cables being snagged when the thing moves. Also, I think model boats tend to be sailed on small ponds with little in the way of waves- I'm not certain on this but the pics I've seen suggest that - so simply scaling up may not work. Finally, even if the weight can move fast enough, I doubt you could control it accurately enough to be able to keep the boat flat in gusts/waves.