Review of California 5.50

Basic specs.

The California 5.50 is a small sailboat designed by the French maritime architect André Bénéteau in the mid eighties. The California 5.50 is built by the French yard Bénéteau.

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Hull

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.

Interior

The boat is equipped with 2 berths.

Rig

The boat 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 genaker or a spinnaker for optimal speed.

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.

Stability and Safety

What is Capsize Screening Formula (CSF)?

The capsize screening value for California 5.50 is 2.69, indicating that this boat would not be accepted to participate in ocean races.

Immersion rate

The immersion rate is defined as the weight required to sink the boat a certain level. The immersion rate for California 5.50 is about 84 kg/cm, alternatively 474 lbs/inch.
Meaning: if you load 84 kg cargo on the boat then it will sink 1 cm. Alternatively, if you load 474 lbs cargo on the boat it will sink 1 inch.

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.

L/B (Length Beam Ratio)

What is L/B (Length Beam Ratio)?

The l/b ratio for California 5.50 is 2.39.

Compared with other similar sailboats it is more spacy than 82% of all other designs. It seems that the designer has chosen a significantly more spacy hull design.

SA/D (Sail Area Displacement ratio)

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): 19.08

Maintenance

Rig

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.

**Guiding dimensions of running rig**
Usage	Length		Diameter
Jib sheet	5.5 m	(18.0 feet)	8 mm	(5/16 inch)
Genoa sheet	5.5 m	(18.0 feet)	8 mm	(5/16 inch)
Mainsheet	13.8 m	(45.1 feet)	8 mm	(5/16 inch)
Spinnaker sheet	12.1 m	(39.7 feet)	8 mm	(5/16 inch)

Boat owner's ideas

This section shown boat owner's changes, improvements, etc. Here you might find inspiration for your boat.

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Finally

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References

[Ref 1]: ISO 8666 Small craft — Principal data.
[Ref 3]: ISO 12215-5 Small craft — Hull construction and scantlings.