Eric,

>Do you know if anyone has tried an F16 optimized sail plan (smaller jib, bigger square top on main) on the Taipan as opposed to its stock "grandfathered" sail plan?


Sorry to have to butt in again but I think I have the first optimized mainsail for the Taipan design. And it was tested when fitted to a standard Taipan and reference checked against a Standard taipan with a new Taipan mainsail from the same sailmaker.

Both sails were new, so we didn't compare it to a blown out old sail.

Results : We didn't get eveything we hoped for, but very got we expected would be the case. Please remember that this F16 mainsail was optimized for a doublehander crewweight of 150 kg's = quite powerful.

The gust response of the redesigned squaretop was superb, even the seasoned Taipan sailors doing the testing were very impressed. I is already a well documented fact that the Taipan would rapidly accelerate in every gust but with the quick action of the self adjusting squaretop the boat jumps up and drives much more and heeling in noticably reduced. Result is that less active sheeting, to produce the same result manually, was needed.

From the few tests that have been done in both light air and heavy air the allout topspeed doesn't seem to be noticably faster than the Standard rig. Ofcourse the changes to the F16 mainsail are to small for that. It is mostly a refinement of the old excellent mainsail shape. However, having said this, gust response is very important, especially when flying a spinnaker. When the spi is but it is unwise to sheet out the main to much as that will put your mast in danger when the wind is sufficiently strong. With this squaretop it is intended that to automatic and unsheeted asction of the top of the sail still retains good gust control while flying a spinnaker.

Also, when single handing and the lone skipper has his hand full than a rig that reacts to onslaughts like gusts in a more automatic manner is much prefered. I'll be singlehanding myself halve of the time.

Also, a automatic adjustig of the rig is always faster than manual gust responses. In gusty conditions this would easily constitute "having an edge".

In short, the F16 mainsail rig for the Taipan 4.9 mast was found to be a good further refinement of the well performing standard Taipan 4.9 mainsail. With respect to more all-out topspeed in steady windconditions ? The two rigs seem to perform equally.


>>If so, any benefit other than being able to rig a self tacker?

See my comments above. To this I would like to add that I will be very happy to move the jib sheets to the front of my boat leaving more room for the crew to manouvre and allowng faster tacking even when no selftacker is fitted. Remember, the crew has one hand less now with the spi sheet in his hand. I personally think the selftacker is sexy nice to have and the last refine to the rig but I also have not decided on getting it yet. Last time when I spoke To Greg Goodall he suggested that simply moving the loops to the front of the trampoline right behind the mainbeam and redesigning the jib would be a very effective low cost modification which would still allow good finetuning of the sheeting angle. I might go that route myself.


>Otherwise, why would you want to give up the grandfathered sail area?

The Taipan 4,9 has 16,66 rated sq.mtr. sailarea, the F16 has 16,5 sq. mtr. rated sailarea. Difference is not even 1 %. When taking the real sailareas the difference in sailarea is just shy of 1 % with the F16 having less. As we all know 1 % sailarea difference roughly translates in 0,5 % speed difference (taking the square root) which is 18 seconds per hour racing. My reasoning is :"how many gusts and improved tacks/gibes does one need to win back those 18 seconds?"

Clearly the few tests we did indicated that the standard taipan has a competitive rig in the F16 class but this doesn't mean it also has "the edge".


>>I'm not crazy about the jib blocks on the tramp of the Taipan. I guess the rope loops that act as the block "traveller" are better than a bunch of cables.


Well, the sheeting of the jib differs somewhat when flying a spinnaker. I used to have barberhaulers on my P18 which uses fixed sheeting points for the jib. And thos barberhaulers works, the improvement in downwind sheeting angle was easily translated in more speed. Quickly after I fitted the boat with the spinnaker , I removed them from my boat. I never used them while sailing with a spi and the upwind setting point seem to be acceptable for downwind spi sailing. Not optimal but optimal enough.

This less moving of the sheeting point with respect of sailed courses allows the distance between clew and block to be much reduced. And to retain some finetuning, because windstrengths still have a influence on the sheeting angles; a line of loops near the mainbeam would still be very handy for on beach tuning of the rig.

I hope this answers the questions you may have.

Wouter