Sail development

The new masts have become softer fore aft and stiffer sideways.

Saarberg uses lower hounds to get a softer top, Fiberfoam makes the top softer with traditional hounds and ARC makes the mast softer by tapering it.

The sails have got both more luffcurve and more broad seam.

Where my two year old Ashby sail has 10 cms of luffcurve, my latest Ashby the 21has almost 16 cm luffcurve. (measured flat on the ground)

Ashby, Brewin, Landenberger, L&R are using Maxx cloth which can be used in crosscut sails. It is my experience that you flatten out the top lof the Maxx sails easier compared to radial sails. In the radial sails, especially if these are not brand new you always see some shape at the first horizontal batten even with maximum cunningham. 

The advantage of radial sails is that you can sheet these hard in 2-3 beaufort, for extra power and height.

The new Ashby sail has quite a knuckle (full entry), where the Brewin has lost of shape more in the back of the shape, which you can remove by pulling the sheet. Brewin prefers the Pentex cloth where Ashby prefers the more stable carbon-aramid Maxx.

Landy goes well both with his radial and with his Maxx sail.

Sails do not only differ in the amount of luffcurve but also in the position of the max. depth of that curve.

Moving that point downward makes the sail more twisty and up give you more control over de leech.

My 2009 Glaser and the standard Brewin have that point slight above the midde of the mast, the Ashby sail almost in the middle and Chris used a very twisty sail last year where the max depth of the curve was clearly below the middle of the mast.

We see the wdith of the top vary between 85 and 100 cms.

Wider tops do particularly well downwind, but the smaller Ashby top is quick too because it twists so well and has great acceleration due to its big  'knuckle'.

In this article I put most focus on the sails of the sailmakers who do well themselves as sailors, Landy, Glenn and Stevie are bignames in the class. Together they have 80% of the market (wild guess, no official data available)
Other sailmakers who make winning sails are Glaser (USA), Pink Hammer (Spain), Bimare (Italy), Oxo (Italy), Challenger (Italy), Ullman (Italy), L&R (AUS), Cairns (AUS), North (Spain) and some French sailmaker who I do not know so well.

Choice of  asail is quite personal, it depends on your style, weight and your favourite windconditions.

One strategy is too look at the weight of the champions and if you have a similar weight just copy.

Be aware that it takes time to get the best out of a new rig, in most cases it did cost me a season to understand a new sail or rig. If you are new to the class, see what the fastest guy in your fleet is using and copy him (sail, mast and set-up!). It helps you to get the right feel for the boat.
If you want to buy a second hand boat, look for a seller who does well in the regattas and who has your weight .

The latest innvoation is to make sails wider at the hounds instead at the top. Those sails will have a smaller foot and will have a ouline closer to that of a rigid wing. Both on Switzerland and Australie sailmaker are experimenting with this. We will probably not see this in the coming Worlds yet,  but the first signs are very promising.

Even with lots of saildevelopment we still see the same guys win the races. So be prepared to make hours on the water and do not purely focus on choice of materials. If you lack time just copy the top dogs both in materials and not the least in set-up (spreader rake, diamond tension, batten choice).

See U in Danmark.

More pics

Ingmar on his DNA

PJ leading

Great start by Guido and Sjoerd

All pics by Mark Cole/Eye  for life (c) 2011

Dutch Nationals

Roeland tacking in front of Sjoerd, the 2011 Dutch Champion

Having fun

More curved foils fun

Making a jump for Mark

Chris full concentration down wind in strong gusts

PJ leading the fleet

Great style by Frank

Eric, Hellecat's chairman crossing the finish line

All pics (copyrighted 2011) by Mark Cole/Eye for life. 

The Dutch nationals are won by Sjoerd Hoekstra, Chris Field was second and PJ was the last man on the podium.

Two days of strong wind and one day of light to moderate winds.

Sjoerd and Chris sailed the new Vision and were competitive with it. They did win  by smart sailing, better boathandling (Sjoerd!) and more consistency than the others.

PJ and Arno showed great speed uwpwind with their new ARC masts. PJ was very fast in the moderate conditions and Arno in the 18 knots plus breeze.

We learned that keeping the daggerboards down in the big breeze (while going sort of flat) gave more control than boards up. The DNA is fast downwind if you can keep the bow up.Working the gust right is key to topspeed. Pushing the boat while it is ploughing is definitely not fast. So ease in a gust and pull in hard shortly after that. If you keep the traveller far out you can both steer very deep and have flow over the back of the sail

The conditions were not ideal for trapezing downwind, either too much or too little wind.

Trapezing downwind in 12 -18 knots is quite common now and is both fun and fast. A footstrap on the transom is too far back for those circumstances. Trapezing above 18 knots is for the experts only at this moment. It makes only sense if you keep the bow up, else you are sailing higher with the boat in displacement mode. It is tricky to handle the big gusts , if you steer up the boat shoots in the air, if you do nothing it will nose dive, come up again and accelerate agressively.  Steering up will lead to a capsize, bearing away too much will haveyou fall in the water along side the boat.

If you ease the sheet a little bit, the sail will only become fuller, which will make your problems bigger instead of smaller. A big ease or complete drop of sheet  is not practicable either else the weather hull will drop in the water and you too. If you can all overcome this and keep the boat in the groove you are rewarded with 3-4 knots extra boatspeed.  We need just to practice more in those conditions and see which style our champions have made work.

Up to Danmark now, where we will see the first World Champion boat with curved boards, as the straight boards will be almost extinct at that event.