Yeah, I misread your post - I'll dig them out.

Most of them were smoking me too

John and Mark,

I try to look at the re-routing of the main halyard with a neutral position.
1: The Tornado fleet dont invent everything, as their creative pool is limited to fleet members and reliability is a concern.
2: The Shearwater dont look too fast (I would not know) by the photos on their website. Looks like they have centerboards not daggers and the hullshape is kind of V'ish. Would the relatively small difference in drag/lift be noticeable on that platform?
3: 2.5 to 6 minutes delta upwind is a lot, and so it's worth researching now that the horse is out of the stable.
4: Shearwater assocs. website crashes my Firefox every time


I got to say, if I were planning a really secret weapon for a major event, I would also like to keep it quiet. But then again, I would not go racing with it. Two boat testing is the way to go if you want to keep something hidden. The openess is partly what makes this forum so cool.

I suppose the increased pitch resistance from T-foils (like the ones Darryls F-14s use) could help neutralizing the advantage of the A's longer hulls upwind.

Mark, good of you to kick some Tornado ass. Got to say tough that the boat is not easy to get the most from. Sailor skill makes up for so much speed on the boat.

One question. What will 20kgs difference in crew weight do to your pointing ability? How about 40kgs?

Second question. How many go low after a tack to build virtual wind before heading up? Is it worth it?

Question one; I can't answer as I don't have a crew of any description (Unless 20 Marlboro lights count)
Question two; When it's windy I stay very high after a tack until I'm safely out on the wire and then bear away to a proper course. In medium winds when I'm not aiming to roll tack it's beat to beat or as close as I can judge it. In light winds I don't move across the boat until it has tacked completely and has started to make headway on the new course. slightly lower than normal as the main has been dropped off, the new windward hull often lifts and at this point I'll move over (mainsheet at the ready just in case). I find using this method of tacking doesn't upset things as much as moving over when there is no wind in the sail.

Rolf,
Try updating the Java on your computer, that might solve your FireFox problem.

The Shearwaters aren't particularly fast, that's true, but they've been around a verrrry long time and have quite sophisticated rigs (there was at least one square top main in regular use back in the late '70s).

They had very slender wing masts with 3 sets of spreaders and airflow was critical. I notice that the more recent boats have masts more similar to the Tornado section. I should think that, being a development class, they've experimented with just about every combination of sail control and routing imaginable!

Interesting then that a lot of the 'top' boats still have a pretty 'standard' layout that is comparable to most modern cats. The Shearwaters even had curved tracks before the 'As' !

Curved tracks even with a spi? What would the advantage be unless the boats dont build much apparant wind when going downhill?

I got the impression that the impressive deltas to windward was down to the re-routing of the halyard. Now it's sailor ability and a series of improvements. Not sure what to belive


John, I dont think it's Java crashing Firefox. The applet they use for navigation works well enough, but there is some kind of silly Javascript/DHTML 'transitions' in use:

Quote:

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<meta http-equiv="Page-Enter" content="revealTrans(Duration=2.0,Transition=2)">
content="revealTrans(Duration=2.0,Transition=3)">

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Javascript is a can of worms, and DHTML and abomination..