I spoke to Landy quite a bit about this before ordering my new main and again at a resent coaching day he conducted here in Melbourne. Generally speaking he was more than happy to make me a sail out of any of Radial, Cross cut or string (which is still cross cut). For the Taipan his first offer was a radial sail as this is what he had most recently been building (one of his radials was used by Chris Boag to win the 2012 Nationals). However at the time I was leaning towards a cross cut as I blieved there would be a small weight saving and maybe a longer life and he was more than happy to build one (he has since won the A Class Euros with a cross cut sail) My understanding is that the labor cost in building the simpler cross cut sail is more than offset by the additional cost of the material. So if you buy a radial sail the extra cost goes towards your sail maker's wages or if you go cross cut Contender or Dimension make more money, for you the consumer, there is no real difference.

The third option and the one I went with as buying a fixer upper left me some space in the boat budget was a string sail. From a construction point of view this is almost identical to a cross cut but your sail maker gets to specify the fibre types and directions. These are becoming very popular in A classes but reports have been that some of the sails (mainly the ones using Carbon Fibres) are too stiff and basically don't respond to adjusting cunningham etc. Landy makes his quite a bit softer and to date I have been very happy with my ability to change gears with the sail (although I'm still on a learning curve being new to Taipans).