Unusual Sails for Cats?

Are there other kinds of sails that have been used or tried on cats, beyond the main, jib, and spin? (Is the fixed wing considered a main?) For that matter, has a missen mast ever been tried?

I remember seeing a video some years ago, of a big kite, like a kite sailing kite, pulling a cat with two guys on board.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SzN8ziJZqQE

Another one, a little better view of the kite:


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aRVnL79JNdI

A mizzen mast would make tacking a small cat pretty brutal.

If you had extra long hulls, would a mizzen be more of a possibility?

softwing on a f18 anyone?

I wonder how much weight aloft it adds. It looked like they had some minor stability issues at times. Maybe rake it back some? Can you do that with a wing?

I've been thinking about that concept (soft wing, where you can raise/lower it with a halyard) since I first saw something similar on a windsurfer.

Question: Where did the fore stay attach?

And why no jib?

Also, if it does develop more lift than a traditional F18 mainsail, perhaps you can get away with a shorter mast/sail combo, helping reduce the weight aloft issue?

I would think this could work quite well on an A cat, where you don't have the jib/spinnaker issue. I wonder why we haven't seen that yet.

Regarding a shorter rig, isn't it best to go with a higher aspect ratio? IIRC, tip losses start to kill the efficiency of shorter low aspect rigs.

Regarding the jib, I think AC72 guys had it mostly for maneuvering. Even with near zero camber they generated too much drag at high speed. This boat isn't in that speed realm yet (add foils?) but watching the video they didn't look like they needed any more pressure up front.

There was the solid winged 18 sq Wild Turkey, whose dominance may have contributed to the demise of the fleet. Very shophisticated construction for day, both the wing and the boat, which was very lightweight. Lots of money and time invested at the time.

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Dave

I just read that Cruising World article about the 70 foot wooden cat built a long time ago (70's?) just restored and it hit a rock at anchorage and partially sank.

It has a mizzen and broke all kinds of records in it's prime

There is also a commercial production cruising cat (maybe 40'?) with what looks like two furling jibs and no main.

Someone here posted pics of a cat with what looked like two windsurf rigs (one on each hull).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IeMVCL6t8vQ

Flight Risk(custom 24' cat) briefly supported a biplane rig before I owned it. It was being used as a test bed for the concept, the owner was contemplating a 65' cruising cat with that set up. Worked quite well, lower center of effort, no heeling in our testing, great simplicity with no headsails, which was his quest. Only the windward rig was powered up in a beam reach, but the leeward rig was quite docile, and the boat still moved nicely on that course. Both rigs outboard on a dead downwind run was great. Probably not as high performance as a sloop rig, but great for recreational sailing, worthy of more experimentation in my eyes.

In the vid when they're raising the sail you can see the fore stay going to the top of the mast.

this one ????




borrowed from ..... here

This is Cat2Fold ....

Team Phillips which was supposed to compete in "The Race" in 2000, but broke up in the North Atlantic during testing.

This is the one I was thinking of...

Atlantic 47 (Chris White design)

Anyone heard anything about how successfully this has sailed. I think it an ingenious concept. Any articles/reviews?

only saw a brief summary in Cruising World. Possibly this month's issue?

Light air boat test, but apparently the owner who bought one is a pilot and really liked all the foil tweaking he could do..

I believe it has daggarboards which might help it get upwind because I can't quite picture how well it goes upwind...

That is a really interesting cruising cat concept. I can't believe it would be quite as efficient as a sloop rig but the sail / foil handling with that system would be really easy to single hand.

The write up on their website was pretty interesting.

I remember me that maybe 15 years ago there was a guy in Holland who tried exactly the same design on a beach cat. But then with 1 mast and one sail ; so the mast was aft. His name is Nol Twigt, but I can't find a picture anymore in my old magazines.

I presume it was not a succes because I never heard or saw anything about his cat anymore
You can also contact his brother Fredjan Twigt.

I think the concept objective was to make it easier to reef/depower more quickly and effectively than a huge main that many large cruising multihulls have.

It looks like a regular jib and a small wingsail main to me...

I wonder how the trailing sailplan is affected by the windward or forward sailplan (turbulence, etc)

I must admit that when pondering 4 years ago about what cat I should build, this design crossed my mind for the same reasons (simple roll system).

I saw also benefits for the back-stays instead of side-stays and the trapeze-wires should also hang more just in the same level as the mast. So the hang on broad reaches should be more comfortable.

Besides that, on broad reaches the sail could act as a genoa with easy possibilities to switch to a full spinnaker.
And for instance also uprighting after a capsize would be much simpler.


But I had too much questions about real-life working and the efficiency of the sail concept and I didn't dare the experiment.