I've been given an opportunity to interview Jay and Pease Glaser of the brand new and Very Hot GLASER SAILS Loft in Huntington Beach , California. I've got a bunch of questions for the dual Olympic Medalists (ex: thoughts on materials , theory vs. practice in sail design, collaboration with top sailors in different classes , the future of catamaran sail design , .....).I'd like to represent your burning question as well. What are two questions you'd like to see addressed in the interview ?

Thank You ,

Paul Kilkenny
F16 USA #300

1. Is there a difference in difficulty between designing a sail for a monohull and for a multihull?

2. When somebody asks you to build a sail for them, what questions do you ask? In other words, what information do you need to customize the sail for that particular buyer?

3. How many more new materials can you guys possibly keep coming up with?

I'd like to hear his thoughts on cat spinny shapes & materials. Will there be a future for Cuben fibre laminates in spinny's (Tornado has banned laminated from this sail).

Mike.

Will there ever be snuffer system on A cats? I am looking for him to build me a sail when I get my Nacra A2.

Doug Snell
Hobie 17
Soon to be Nacra A2
www.tcdyc.com

I'm interested in the new main sail designs in the Formula 18 Class - specifically the new sail cloth that is allowing a return to horizontal cuts which seem to be outperforming the radial cut sails in Europe.

Cool interview opportunity - right on.

you guys are good.

John,

That new cloth has been under development since the early 2000s. A NW Florida loft (?) was at the heart of it with Contender Sailcloth.

Bob

Do I remember reading that the Cuben Fiber shrinks over time? Or is that another exotic fabric....

whew

at first I thought this was a mean parody of HWSHBN's infamous thread on SA.

carry on...

Same.... My first though was $hit duck FOSD

On that basis, I'd like to know how future sail designs will cope with the fourth dimension?

Due to the Horse Power on the back, sails will have to be cut flatter to deal with the increased apparent wind........

Well you asked

Sorry for the thread hijack..... Please carry on

Yeah, sorry.

I'd be interested in knowing more about thoughts on square top design and batten angles/stiffness.

Does going bigger with a more upright leech necessarily mean more speed? Does mast technology have to be developed further - before tops are bigger or after (or at the same time)?

Does a bigger square top need a stiffer topmast? etc..

Bob,

I'm a little surprised you're not sailing A cats. Care to comment?

There already is;

Marstom sells his snail system, or you can just fit one of the current ones are.

As for sail questions

1, Does he see any way in which sail design can help in the lift to drag ratios?
2, Re: SPi design; does he see them getting flatter as we learn to sail with them, or will they become fuller as we continue to move to W/L courses?
3, Spi Cloths - what next ?

Not intending to hijack a subject, I deleted my somewhat unrelated remarks.

There is something unstable and duplicitous about responding to one's own thread question. That said.....:

Here are some observations Paul -

1. From the standpoint of pure consumerism few of us have the knowledge / experience to articulate (meaningfully) to our sailmaker precisely what we want our new sail to do ( no surprise here , reference the "How Is Lift Created" thread before attempting rebuttal ).
2. Even the sailors who win consistently in their class are ,( for the most part), "unconscious competents" who will confidently share equal volumes of excellent and totally wrong information about why they win.
3. The classes of cat. that are approaching the refind potential of their boat.( ex: Tornado , Acat), are those classes that have attracted the most theoretically sophisticated sailors with long histories of data driven adjustments via meaningful cross testing.The rest of us have been the recipiants of these developments.
4. The practical value of "theory" in sail design / evolution, is painfully subordinate to practical and on the water testing (again, reference the "How Lift Is Created" thread).In theory a square big head main should be slower than a 1/2 parabola big head. So, why are all the big head mains square (on the water testing i'll bet ) ?
5. Because we know so little about why sails are fast or slow, we're collectively losing mountains of practical data that could advance the art generally.

CODA :

when I ended my research (alot and i'm not that stupid) and sat down to order my mainsail I included my credit card number and one specific design parameter : " Make the sail fast to "A" mark"...

We should know more than we do...

PK

How did each of you learn how to make a sail?

Do you think that sail making will evolve to a point where we will be using sails that have built in ways of changing their shape, besides the rig controls that we now used to accomplish shape changes?

If a material would shrink when tensioned, sails could automatically flatten themselves to de-power themselves when they develop higher loads. Are there any sail clothes available or presently being developed that will shrink when tensioned?

Do you think that we might ever see a sail that almost exactly resembles the wing on a bird with all the feathers, tendons, and methods of changing shape? How soon?

Who should be the honorary person that we name the 4th corner of a square top sail after? Tack, Clew, Head, and ?? Same question for the fourth side, what to name it? Leach, Foot, Luff, and ?? What seems to be the industry standard name for the fourth corner at this time?

Do you predict any changes in battens? (The way we use them, the way they are built.)

Are there any new technologies in Kite Boarding or Windsurfing that we may eventually see in our cat sails?

Would you like me to stop asking questions?

That was a very entertaining post, Paul.