Been away for a few weeks and just reading all the replies on the Single handed boats. Most things we have been over at various stages but a nice winter rehash may get us interested in sailing again.

A lot of the things people are saying about the main are not correct, flattening the sail makes the top of the sail really very aerodynamically draggy and with drag you get loss of speed and efficiency which in turn creates all the wrongs at the top of the mast which is the last place you want it.

Randy Smythe said to me once in an Email that the major difference between an A sail and one designed to have a jib is that they are designed completely opposite from top to bottom. With a jib you create extra wind speed at the base of the sail and therefore you build it to be much flatter than at the top where you want extra power to fly the hull with the two man ballast on the wire.

The opposite occurs on the A where you have limited wind speed over the bottom and therefore you have it much fuller to cope with the lower wind speed. At the top you just want just enough grunt to fly a hull with one man on the wire and yet create good efficient drive, basically pretty flat.

On Bitsa I tried a very flat Landenberger sail which with my weight just never seemed to get up and going, when you did get it in the groove and everything set, it was a sheer joy, unfortunately at my skill level that wasn't often enough. The present sail ( Micky Pink Hammer ) I have is a very deep sail at the bottom and still deepish at the top until with downhaul on it will flatten out, its not as fast as the Landy but around a course on average it is far superior most of the time, in effect it is a far better all round sail that most people will get 75% out of.

I also found the same scenario on two previous F16 compliant sails, so for a single handed sail you need loads of grunt at the bottom to create lots of drive low down ( remember we probably have to much sail area as a single hander ) and nice simple efficiency at the top to give that final smooth drive foward without lifting the hull too much.

Equally with the spinnaker, we tried at so many times to wire and not to wire, as soon as the wind got over 10 knots or so, those sitting in won everytime. Now with good practice and the top guys I would'nt be so sure. Now I have a spinnaker that was cut about flat as the rules would go and a nice fat rounded early generation Landy spinny. Sorry to say it but the really flat sail is fast but only in a very specific groove, its a bitch to keep flying and when it does set properly it generates so much power that you end up waggling the stick so much to prevent it over powering the boat. Its simply not smooth sailing and not smooth sailing means the brakes are on and you end up in and out on the wire and constantly adjusting the sail.

Now the big fat headed spinny, it seems to simply truck on at a moderate pace in a very broad range of angles. I think on average it is again faster all round but probably doesn't feel it on the water.

Yup most of us as single handers have ended up shortening our poles to get the boat balanced better, not sure why that is.

Beam width is a personal thing and to date I have found the boats at 2.3 metres to be better all round than the 2.5m, not sure why but there seems to be some diagonal forces that when pushed to the max seems to unsettle the boat and force the nose down. I've not sailed one of the new generation of hull design so that may now be countered some what.

So the single handed boat is quite differnt than the dual and as we progress, I think that will become more pronounced. I still think a cut off DNA would be a pretty good start though.