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Light air sails - old thread


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Battgirl

PostPosted: Tue Apr 29, 2008 10:02 am Post subject: Light air sails

 

My 34ft on the heavy side sloop is mostly cruised and occasionally raced, usually shorthanded. The mps is the light air sail.

What do people advise/suggest for the tighter wind angles?

Reacher screacher drifter jibtop gennaker mpg aspin my mind boggles.

What works well in practice? What are the relative merits of the different sails? What 1 or 2 sails would really make the difference? All help appreciated.

 

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Willow

PostPosted: Tue Apr 29, 2008 10:29 am

 

Depends what you mean by light winds? If your talking under 5 knots you may be supprised how far uphill you can go with your MPS trimmed properly. On our boat (8 ton 36 footer) we have on occasion gone uphill with the Spinnaker in extremely light stuff, say around 3 knots, although not at very high angles but upwind never the less. I guess for good pointing ability you would be better of with a very large light weight headsail, on an older heavy masthead rig anyway, don't really know much about these new fangled fractional things.

Strangely enough I have owned 4 keelers and 2 trailer yachts and not a one of them was fractionaly rigged. Rolling Eyes

 

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B00B00

PostPosted: Tue Apr 29, 2008 3:34 pm

 

Realisticly if you want to go upwind with a light airs sail you will need a true code zero. This needs its own furling unit and vectran rope up the luff. you can drop it, detach it and flod the furled sail into a bag.

Without knowing what your MPS or your current furling genoa looks like it is hard to know what best suits your needs.

I can tell you that a proper code zero set up will be very expencive ($2k+ for just the furler and up to $3K for the sail) so you might be best to go with an A1 style gennaker made in 1.5oz cloth with a tightish luff which you can use in the light at tighter angles and also use it in stronger winds reaching. a snuffer for a sail like that would be about $500-600 and would make the sail much more usable the sail itself might only be $2k depending on the size.

 

The big benefit of a sail like this is that you would not need to alter anything on the boat. A code zero would see alot of load so you would need to replace the halyard with a vectran one and check the whole rig setup uner the extra compresion.

 

I have attached a profile of a suitable A1 style sail.

 

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Crew.org.nz(a.k.a. Squid)

PostPosted: Tue Apr 29, 2008 7:15 pm

 

In case anyone isn't aware Booboo is our resident North Sails Guru.

 

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Battgirl

PostPosted: Tue Apr 29, 2008 11:23 pm

 

Thanks Willow. Have managed up to about 70degrees with the mps so you have given me reason to persevere on that one. The wind range I am looking at is under 10kts and yes she is a masthead.

 

Cheers BOOBOO. I appreciate your pics and detailed info. The A1 looks like the right track to me. What angles and wind range are achievable please? The boat is not fitted with a furler.

 

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ScottiE

PostPosted: Wed Apr 30, 2008 11:06 am

 

Booboo - am I right in saying that cut looks pretty similar to the red sail you guys used to glide past us on the way down to White Is. last year?

If so - it really does work!

 

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B00B00

PostPosted: Wed Apr 30, 2008 2:49 pm

 

Yep you are right, but that one was actually a A3 reacher, built out of 1oz cloth where an A1 is normally 0.6oz or round about depending on the boat size.

The A1 and A3 designs are very simmilar really, you can see the crossover for the two. we could carry the sail up to about 55-60 apparent so not very tight really if you are thinking about upwind.

 

Actually hearing the boat is masthead and has no furler then you would be best to go with a hanked on light number one with a high clew sheeting from the kite blocks, this would also double up as a reacher/jibtop.

even some 4oz dacron might do the trick but a laminate is better.

 

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Danaide

PostPosted: Wed Apr 30, 2008 5:00 pm

 

B00B00 wrote: Actually hearing the boat is masthead and has no furler then you would be best to go with a hanked on light number one with a high clew sheeting from the kite blocks, this would also double up as a reacher/jibtop.

even some 4oz dacron might do the trick but a laminate is better.

 

 

If you have an old lightweight #1 you can get it re cut into a Jib top,

This is what we did for the RNI and it worked well, we use it to find wind in the really light and as we decided not to go for an A sail we carry it from 40-100 deg apparent with its best angle being between 50 & 60 deg.

The only time it really cost us was reaching up to North Cape when we would have had to run wide under Kite but as we did ave in that leg I don't think it hurt to much. And never under estimate how much time Mr cockup costs you when you are shorthanded especially as the boats get bigger.

 

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88Proof

PostPosted: Wed Apr 30, 2008 5:04 pm

 

That prod is made from a very very special material, even Nasa hasn't discovered it yet. Tom is well ahead with his game.

Booboo... kind of like that shot of Waka aye, over trimmed!!!

 

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Battgirl

PostPosted: Wed Apr 30, 2008 11:15 pm

 

Thanks guys for the awesome advice and photos

 

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