I know,
Actually what most fail to understand is that direct comparisons between sloops and uni-rig can easily be made inside the F16 class and actually have been made often as a result.
Basically choose your crew make-up and have one team (or skipper) sail with a jib and the other without it. Everything else stays exactly the same and can therefor be taken out of the equation. No sail against eachother and switch boats and do it again. On average you will come to one conclusion. Sloop is faster.
If think we did exactly this when you were over Tim. I was uni-rig with Gill and you were sloop rigged with Geert (and an underpowered Ullman mainsail. You guys would eventually overtake us on the upwind legs, no matter how hard Gill and I tried to defend our position and give you guys bad air. You guys just had more speed and as soon as you had passed us you would walk away.
We were sailing in what ? 10-12 knots that day ?
If you have a fixed sail area, I think putting some of that area in a jib vs. at the top of the mast makes more sense but only if you are out in more than 10-15 knots of wind. Below 10, it's probably faster to keep the sail area up top on the mast.
There is limit to how much area you can put in a mainsail, but you can ALWAYS add a 25-35% jib to any given mainsail. In very light airs the boat sails mainly of the top of its mainsail. The jib is not not helping much here, but it also isn't holding you back much. So when both tops of the mainsails are the same then in the light stuff the performance of the sloop is not too different to the uni-rig. When the wind picks up then the sloop will become significantly faster.
An excellent setup for record breaking. Very limited drawbacks while having frequently encountered significant speed advantages.
Wouter
