I hate to say it but this part of the design is also 4 years old now :

See below the artist impression I made for Phill Brander in late winter 2003.




Notice the mainsheet setup ?

Phill is going to be really pissed at me, but I'm going to say it anyway. The time has come to actually produce a design and not more artistic impressions. It is great to see Phill has found a new person with much more advanced skills to make these flashy pictures but in the end of the day these are nothing more then a bunch of glowing pixles on a computer screen. It is time to produce detailed cost and weight tallies. Work out the materials used and the individual dimensions of the parts. Many will find that a few more snags are encountered here and will need to be overcome.

I really love how Phills Blade 12 looks and indeed we discussed its OD status as far back as 2003/2004. I was surprising to see Phill come out for a more open class rules based F12 class on this forum knowing he was fully working towards his own OD Blade 12 setup. This is confirmed by his own admission on the main forum. His pod like setup for the unstayed rig will most definately work. The mast design I have presented in this post can be used for his setup without any modification. It appears his mainsail is basically the same area the same as the sail depicted in the photographs (5.5 sq. mtr).

But the flashy picture do mislead people a little bit. The Hulls for example. These "appear" to be scaled down Blade F16 hulls with a rounded keel. Not even Phill himself believes that these can be homebuild without a serious building effort, meaning multi panel construction that is steamed into a rounded shape. Basically these hulls will not be much different in building requirement then the Blade F16 hulls. A multichine hull or even a deep V-ed hull design are much more likely to be chosen eventually and as such it will be much better to show these in the CAD drawings, like RG does. At least then we all see what we are getting into.

Either that or Phill will do best to clarify how exactly these compounded hulls can be made with very simple tooling and small time investment.






It is interesing to note that the OD class rules that I have written up earlier actually do NOT rule out the pod setup that Phill prefers. Basically, in that OD class both the rod and pod setups can be used legally. I would like to stress once more that the OD class rules are not SMOD and that apart from limiting a few design features in a very strickt sense, like the hullshape and the requirement of an unstayed mast, other aspects are left completely open to personal preference. I don't see any reason to not allow design freedom in these ways.


I do really like Phill Blade 12 and I always have, even though I have differed in opinion on some design aspects. But when made well the Blade 12 will be a good design.

Wouter