Hello Dave,

Yes I know of you. Very interesting background in kites you have.

I think you touched the cause of the misunderstanding. I judged the outleaders as the replacement of the classical rigs as indeed all other kite designs have tried to do.

I'll admit to misintepreting the outleader concept. But I'm catching up quite quickly. I have been over you website totally. Quite a interesting setup for the support lines you have. Truly the way to launch and retieve these things on a sailing boat. Indeed a big issue with most (other) kites.

I'm still very skeptical about the outleader boosting performance on beach catamarans though as we current sail downwind with the apparent wind angle coming from about 70-80 degrees forward. For any sail to work at these angles of attact it must be able to go upwind so to say and must have a good lift to drag ratio. Boosting performance on beech cats is not that simple anymore. But as a kite buggier you sure as hell know that.




Do you throw the assymetics as used on skiff and sport catamarans unders this target as well ?

Because I'm truly facinated by a outleader that can kick a Tornado sport's butt downwind.

With respect to me putting a power kite on my cat, no thank you, I've done my bit of harnassing the power of such devices. I think they are to difficult to control well on a beach catamaran in comparison to an assymetric. But then again I also switch to a conventional class 5 landyacht (with unstayed mast and mainsail)





Sure not looking to do that. Although we are trying to get the kite buggiers into our landyacht club structure because of their actions our sailing license is under scrutiny by the local county. To many cowboy's in buggy land, don't want to be doing pilot exams as landyachters had to do for 20 years now. But this is a totally different topic I agree with you there.


Dave one question I have for you. Can outleaders be used to sail faster downwind than the windspeed ?

Wouter