The Taipan 5.7

I have a few questions about the T 5.7. My dad and I are the proud owners of a T5.7, and to this day (sailed the boat two seasons), we have not met one boat, except for the 60' trimarans, that can outsail us. Living in Norway, the competition is not exactely big, so this really does not say much. I therefore wonder just have quick the T5.7 really is? Could it match a Tornado Sport giving the same conditions in terms of the crew's skills and of course wind and weather? How much faster would a 10' beam make the T5.7? Or a carbon mast?
As it is now, the T5.7 weighs in at approx. 145kg fully rigged with a chute. The custom, 9.5 meters aluminum mast weighs about 20 kg. How much would a similar carbon mast weigh? 15 kilos?
I see that according to the Portsmouth Yardstick, the T5.7 has got 8 to 10 boats under 25' that are rated faster. Is it really possible to determine which boat is faster through these rating systems? I know that the f18ht for instance is rated higher than the T5.7. This despite the fact that the T5.7 has got a longer water length, more sail area, and is only 10-15 kilos heavier. How can this be?
Also I wonder if any of you on the forum can put out some of your speed records, it would be fun to watch how fast the different cats go. Any of you know the theoretical top speed for the T5.7? Any of you tested it? smile.gif
Jimi

5.7 with 10ft beam and carbon rig:

Mast and self tacker

mast close up at hounds

I have just purchased one of the three T5.7's in the US. I have not sailed it yet but I have done a lot of research on the boat.
From everything I have read the Taipan has the ability to keep pace with the Tornado and most of the other 20 footers with sailing ability becoming the deciding factor. The biggest problem with the 5.7 is keeping it depowered enough to be effective when the wind starts to blow. The boat was designed specifically for a heavy crew (over 150kg/330 lbs). The new F18 Capricorn did trounce the 5.7's in the Aus Taipan Nationals, showing that hull design is more important than being lightweight in this case, the Capricorn being 80 pounds heavier to meet class specs. Everyone that I have talked to that has sailed one has really liked them and the speed that they produce. I am very excited and proud to own one and can't wait to put many miles on it.
AHPC's Taipan 5.7 page
TAIPAN CATAMARAN ASSOCIATION OF AUSTRALIA

There were actually a few Dutch sailors at the Taipan Nationals this year. I overheard one of them commenting on both the 4.9's and 5.7's. Comment on the 5.7's, that were beaten by the F18's, is that the sail plan is outdated. The spinnaker cut used on these is still pre 2000. Which means rather full and with a long foot. Also the 5.7's were sailing with class legal sails, meaning very small squaretops. The overlapping jib doesn't help on a spi boat; selftackers are better. Also the skill of the 5.7 sailors in these racers there was not considered by this sailor to be of the same level as the F18's. Comment on the 4.9's was that the skill level there was impressive and that they had trouble getting away from the 4.9 while these were sailing without a spi that the 5.7's were using.

This sailors also said that with a new sail wardrobe the 5.7's would probably be a monster speedwise in light to medium air. From other comments I gether that teh 5.7 becomes a handful in strong weather. The newer large squaretop sails with a straight leech may help out here.

As always the path to succes was for the 5.7 class to renew herself. However, fear gripped the class and any chance was frowned upon and actively discourage. One-designess would garantee survival, it was thought. Reality showed that it didn't.

It is hard to say but T5.7 OD class is dead, without a change to revive. So forget about the OD rules and modify that sweetheart in all she can be and it will be a real killer in her new cloths. Tornado's and I-20's should be easy meat in anything but the really rought weather.

Don't look at the US portsmouth numbers, these things are all-over the place when it comes to rare boats. T5.7 especially has never been raced seriously in the US so its ratings are completely undependable. Look for the Australian VYC ratings to get a feel for what is can do. But with new stuff and new suit of modern sails it should be able to do several % better again.

Jimi, hope over to the Formula 16 forum and learn what you can there. The Taipan 4.9's and 5.7's are rather similar in setup and how they should be sailed. The mods to the Taipans to make the full F16's will largely have the same effects on a T5.7

10 ft beam would make the 5.7 do well in strong winds but at some hit in the light stuff as she is a boat that is said to benefit alot from doing the wildthing (getting luff hull out of the water at all times)

15 kg for a carbon mast that length sounds about right for a low estimate. The 10 mtr F18HT mast is supposed to be 18 kg's same and is the same as the I-20 masts. Tornado carbon is 15.5 kg if I remember it right.

Wouter

Hey Lance,I heard you bought the T5.7. When are we going to see it at the causeway?

Probably not for another month or so. I still have to get a new trailer for it and I will probably be replacing most of the lines and all of the bungees for sure. In the meantime I will probably keep it at GYC. I can't wait to get everything done. Once everything's done I plan to spend a lot of time on it so you will be seeing a lot more of me out there.

Thanks for so many useful tips! Macca, have you tested your Super T5.7 in heavy weather yet? Would have been interesting to get some feed-back! How has it done against other high-tech
boats?
I do agree with you Wouter that the sail robe for the T5.7 is outdated. My dad has already made a self-tacking system and bought a new jib that obviously does not overlap,though we have not had the chance to test it properly in a fair breeze. Also my dad is working on a kevlar/carbon- snuffer as we speak. These two modifications would do some good for the boat, don't you think? As far as the spi goes, would it not be necessary to change the whole rig in order to make it flatter and more "narrow" without loosing overall area? If you just shortened the foot, the whole spi would be smaller. I noticed that the new Hobie Tigers, even with almost a meter or so shorter mast, has the head spi point attached higher than the T5.7. This despite the fact that the Tigers have 2 sq.meters smaller spi's! Which truly underlines what you, Wouter, said, the T5.7's spi is too full and seems out-dated. So how make it more modern and flatter without changing the entire rig?

With the exception of the spinnaker the sail plan of the 5.7 is not far of the pace. Could realy benifit from a self tacker.

Re 5.7 Vs Tornado...... No contest. T is bigger and a lot more powerful. Macca's super Taipan is yet to see water but when it does it should be VERY quick in light to twin wire conditions. When the wind builds and the T's find their legs the Super 5.7 should still be quicker but as the breeze increases, this margin should reduce.

5.7 class is now dead. AHPC have ceased production with not many built. Those that are left should move on and modify thier boats to cater for the kite as the class was never initialy designed to run it. Maybe also a 10 foot beam and carbon mast hey Macca .

Macca, have you done any changes on your new carbon mast to make it match a flatter chute? Or do you use the custom 23 sq.meters spi?
My dad and I are now considering a carbon mast? We therefore wonder who made the mast for you? As we live in Norway, Marstrom would be natural choice.
Also, have you planned on entering any specific races, or is sheer blasting the main thought behind you upgrades? If so, have you logged any good speeds with this beast of yours?

The boat should hit the water next weekend (21 May) and we are expecting it to be quicker than a Tornado in nearly all conditions.
The carbon mast was made by an Aussie manufacturer who makes yacht masts and used to make A Class masts. It is the same section as the normal 5.7 alloy mast and weighs just on 15kgs rigged. The mast is really stiff compared to the std mast which suits our wide boat.
The kite Halyard attaches a little higher than a std 5.7 and we have the pole a lot lower, this gives us a kite luff length a little longer than a T, Kite area is 26 sq meters.
I would get Marstrom to make a mast but they are not cheap, another option is the Fibrefoam mast from Scott Anderson, he can make a mast to suit and they are pretty cheap. We are planning on doing the long distance races here in Australia, there are quite a few of these races spread through the season. We just wanted to make the 5.7 perform as it always should have from the start.

OF course as Steve says the current 5.7 rig is close in pace but it must be seen as in the light of the difference of a 1998 Tiger rig with respect to a 2004 Tiger rig. The 2004 Tiger rig with the STX mainsail (very large head) is just quicker. Same with the 5.7 standard rig. It was very good and good for the 90's but not for the 00's. F18 class has really stimulated alot of development in this area. The 5.7. should benefit from it.




With respect to the spi :

Don't work yourself up over the total area. This is unimportant. Important things are the modern cut and the luff length. Optimize these two without any regard for the total area. So if the modern cut can only be 20 sq. mtr. in the given setup than go for that. There is no point in trying to sqeeze 25 sq. mtr. in and thus compromise on the cut.




Can you mearure the height of your spi gate with respect to the bottom of your mast for us. The same with the hound fitting and the overall length of the mast ?

I think you can put the mast gate higher on the T5.7 than it is now. We did the same with the Taipan 4.9's and have no problems. The mast is holding up well under the F16 spi. So I feel a similar thing can be done on the T5.7




What is he sheeting point of your current spi ? Both along the hull and perpendicular to the centreline ?

Some mods can be in order here as well.



That is easy. You will have to buy a new spi but apart from that the mods are both easy to do and inexpensive.

Wouter

Macca,

Finally some good minds working on the Taipan 5.7 design.

What are the specs on your mainsail. How big is your head. Do you pics of the boat with the rig on ?

Wouter

The Main head is less than the new tiger mainsail heads, I have a number of reasons for this and most of those I will keep to myself, but suffice it to say that there is little point having a massive head if it is always hooked when you want it breathing. There are factors other than the visual head size that help the new tiger mainsail outperform the older versions.
The head of the sail on the new rig is stepped so that at the second batten it is much bigger than the tiger sail.

I guess some pics would help! I will get some this weekend when we are doing the final setup of the boat. That should keep the interest up a bit

New super taipan mainsail head

funky new sails

shot from the middle of the foot with a little downhaul tension and some sheet tension but not max.

Are those sails Kevlar fiber?

Wouter

The cloth is new from Contender, it is called MAXX. really cool stuff. allows you to make a cross cut sail with correct load paths. So you end up with a lighter sail (less panels) and with correct load paths. The sail is very smooth too.

The cloth I am using in these sails is MAXX carbon which is about 30/70 carbon and kevlar.

KICKA$$

Robi, thats your sailmaker in the bottom pic! On a Sunday.... so his hair isn't done

Is he the Arrow Head guru? Damn! tell him I said
whats up!!!
Nuthing but work of art

Have to say that the MAXX sail cloth works really good. My old Taipan had one mainsail with that material made by Steve Brewin and it was heaps lighter than the dacron main.

I see that Macca has taken my idea of the battens not extending past the batten pockets a bit further. Keeping the fastening internal. Looks heaps better than having stubby ends sticking out and using rope to tie them up. Plus less windage (marginal though). My fastening system used a velcro flap which went around the end of the batten.

About time Macca got the 5.7 sorted. Now to go sailing.

Attached a couple of pics of the batten pocket system I used on my Taipan.

JC

Another pic

Totally wicked conversion, Macca !
Can`t wait to read the report on your first sail. With that setup it looks to be the boat to beat, I can`t imagine even the T holding you off. And that mainsail looks like it was poured onto the mast, can`t find a wrinkle.
Our reinforced mylar sails are much heavier than Dacron, is this MAXX cloth much more pricey than regular reinforced mylar sailcloth ?
Boat looks like a winner - have fun blasting.

Steve

The Maxx pentex is approx double the price of high-aspect woven dacrons. The carbon varity is about 1/4 more expensive than the pentex variants..
The price should not be too different tough, as the sailmaker can build the sail faster (due to fever seams in cross cut layouts), less time on the cutting machine and less scrap material. I dont know how well the Maxx range have been tested for catamaran application, but we are putting a Maxx jib/main on our T this season.


Agree with Steve, the boat looks very fast and clean! Your sailmaker obviously knows his cloth as well, with some different (heavier) Maxx cloth at the luff to take downhaul loads. Is it a continous tape, or is it glued/stitched?
Now I am dying to find out why you went for such a rounded top on your main.. It was tried on the T in, I believe, 2002? But everybody are back to regular square tops now. Hmmm..

Care to tell us how your batten end-fittings are buildt? Velcro?

I don't think the MAXX cloth is double the normal price but it's certainly more than normal cloth. The Labour time to make the sail would be a lot less than a radial sail but we countered that by building new batten end tensioners. I can say that it not velcro that holds them in but that is all at this stage. The solution has a big future when mass produced.

Ah, let us know when you get them to the market

Launch day today, but no bloody wind!!!

another angle

clean layout

outhaul pic

another outhaul pic

Thanks for sharing the photos!

Do you have a plan for sucking away and keeping the spi-sheet organized while sailing as well?

I always hate it when the spi-sheet tangles with the downhaul lines..

It would be interesting to see some closeups of how you did the spi-ratchets and how you lead the spi sheet and downhaul lines.


I would have been really keen to go in _any_ wind after a major rebuild project like what you have done! Hope you get an opportunity to test it soon.

Nice! absolutley stunning. Specially the outhaul, its a "set it and forget it" setup.

Ok, here is kits sheet and downhaul layout, the downhaul goes over the kite sheet, the trick with the kite sheet is to make sure it isn't too long. It will take a while to get the right length but when you do you will magically have a clean deck.

Here is a close up of the kite blocks

As a 5.7 sailor it is fantastic to hear that these great boats are still being sailed all over the world. Jimi get yourself a kite from Landy or Charlie Ogletree, both have cut very fast sails for our 5.7.

Recently we sailed our 5.7 in an long distance race against tornado's, 4.9s and F18 and totally destroyed them all downwind, but not quite so much upwind. Our boat cruises at 20.5 knots with kite and does about 12-13 knots upwind, probably the most unbelievable thing we have recorded is a speed of 23 knots in a lot less than 10 knots of breeze. This is not bad considering, as the dutch boys know, us Australian 5.7 sailors are a bunch of clowns. With someone good on it a 5.7 can make the impossible possible. However, it really gets my rocks off to know that a bunch of hicks who don't know what their doing can do things that most millionaire's yachts can't.

If the Supertaipan works it will blow tornado's, m20's and anything else out of the water, looks to me like it could well be the future, cheap and very fast. Hopefully the dutch boys can make it downunder next time as we have a few suprises here for them.

Paul Henderson
Bockscar Aus 187

[quote]I always hate it when the spi-sheet tangles with the downhaul lines..
quote]

Hey Macca,

Have you thought about running the down haul like the Capricorn.

Also are you going to the Flying Mile Regatta on the 26th June. I may see if INOX or Dave plan to go up.

How is the Capricorn rigged? The lines lead from the mast base and below the tramp to the hull?

Regarding the lengt of spi lines. We have the minimum lengt for sheeting from the transom (when it blows). But with the kite snuffed, the line still have an awkward ability to either drag in the water or tangle with spi-halyard/douse lines or downhaul lines. We have looked at the bungee systems used on some F-18's, but are not sure if we like them.

We are going to be at the flying mile for sure, should be awesome if it's about 15kts. I need to get the skiff boys there too.

The trick with the kite sheet is to tuck some of it under the hiking strap before the start and when you get a chance on the next uphill, not perfect but it does the job.

With regard to the spinnaker sheet arrangement, I have a block at the back of the trampoline that the spin sheet runs through. This helps take up the extra slack and puts the sheet within reach of the skipper so he can start a little presheeting as the crew is hoisting the kite (at least enough to hand the sheet to the crew just after the hoist). This block is attached by a 1/8" bunji that goes through a grommet at the rear of the trampoline and forward (under the trampoline) to the front x-bar. The bunji allows the block to move as additional spin sheet is needed or jammed on the lazy side.

Jake: Are you happy with this system. You dont feel that it clutters the trampoline or tightens the sheet to much when snuffing or flying the spi?

Tucking the sheet under a hiking strap is one more thing to do. Ok in light winds when we are sitting in, but hard to do while out on the trapeze.

I'm quite pleased with the system I have. In fact, I used to have the sheet length set so that there was only about 2 or 3' of slack so that even if all the slack was dangling in front of the main beam, it would barely be above the water. I had some crew complaints that they didn't like the way that it felt when sheeting from the trapeze when the bunji was tugging a little on the lazy sheet. Personally I didn't mind it and when the crew needs the extra sheet while on the wire, it's windy enough that the little bit of tension provided by the bunji on the lazy sheet doesn't affect the spinnaker. However, I rescended and just put a longer sheet on that has about 5 or 6' of slack in it. It's capable of dragging in the water coming out of the hoop but with the block at the back, you just give it a quick pull from either end and the slack ends up back on the trampoline. I'll see if I can get a picture tonight.

Looking at this picture, I think the carbon fiber of the mast may receive some substantial abrasion from the rigging here as the system rotates. You may want to adhere a thin stainless plate underneath these rigging eyes to protect that beautiful carbon fiber finish!

Yep, I'm with you here, ofcourse the F16 tramp is not really the size of a Tornado one so on my boat proper "line-design and layout" is a must.

I'm slowly solving the spi sheet issue. Right now I have no more dragging lines; Now I'm working on having it lay flat and tensioned on the trampoline.

To give you an idea. I have trapeze line coming out the end of my beam and I run the sheet to the inside of them. Together with the snuffer ring and ratchetblocks this keeps the line on board. Then I have a bungee cord parallell to my rear beam at the very rear of my trampoline. I run a ring along it and I run my spi sheet through the ring. I want to do some more testing but it looks promising. Thing is that the ring can move side to side over the full length of the trampoline at the rear. This makes for a arc where not much line is taken out but the holding end of the sheet is moved considerable (about 2 to 3 mtr). This allows you to run with less slack in the line. Also the pull on it hardly changes because of it. If still more sheet is needed than the bungee will flex and give a few ft extra line.

More later I hope

Wouter

Wouter- pic needed of the ring business. Thanks

You may have to wait about 2 weeks for that. It is unlikely I'll be on my boat before then. Keep an eye on the F16 forum and somewhere in the not too far future you'll see a post with pics and describtions come by.

Wouter

I have the same spin sheet system as Jake and it works well on a Hobie Tiger. When it is really blowing the sheet is only just long enough and the bungee really gets stretched out, but it is just a case of getting used to less slack on the lazy sheet.

One problem with having the sheet this short - you can't rig a doubler system for distance racing. I just bought a separate (longer) sheet to handle this. A little more clutter on deck is tolerable on a 100 mile spinnaker run.

Chris.

Doubler!? On the spin sheet!? Hmmmfff.

When you don't have a gorilla as crew it helps to keep them smiling if you can reduce the load on the spin sheet. I have Harken ratchematic blocks on the hull and at the front cross bar to get some relief when just holding the line. When the wind is up or the distance is great I add a couple of pulleys on pigtails to the clew of the chute and thread the spin sheet through them with the end of the sheet tied of in a figure of 8. When you want to use the doubler you just grab the knot and drag it back to a hook at the side shroud - just remember to release it when you gybe!

My better half insists on it if I expect her to run the chute for anything other than round the cans.

Chris.

You need a tougher crew, even if it is the wife!

You need to make sure you are getting good turn on each block (the radius the rope is turned by the block) Also have you considered a pair of Harken Carbo Ractchamatic's ? They are Lurvly, just trying to justify a second set on the 17 !

If you still have problems, instead of making it 2:1, add another ratchet to the system.

Does all that doubling still meet class requirements?

If so I'd like to figure something out for doubling the traveler, as those heavy air offshore reaches really puts a hurtin' on the ole forearm..

I already have two sets of Harken carbo ratchematics, One at the side of the hull close to the shroud, and another set on the front cross bar on either side of the boat in line with the hiking straps. This gives a double ratchet on the spin sheet with really good wrap on each block. While this reduces the static load on the sheet it doesn't make any difference to the load when sheeting in - which is where the doubler comes into play.

Chris.

Agreed, That's a lot of sheet to manage on each gybe - does it not wash out everywhere when it's windy ?

The doubler only adds around 4 - 5 ft of spinnaker sheet at most (whatever the measurement is from your block at the spin clew to the first turning block on the hull). It is deployed by the crew sheeting the spin and reaching up to the knot which is trapped at the doubler pulley. The skipper then steers down briefly to ease pressure so the crew can drag this knot back to the hook (which I have at the bottom of the side shroud).

You can add a pigtail to the clew of the spin and attach the blocks to it. This shortens the amount of extra spin sheet you need (as long as you don't end up block to block).

A few caveats:

• This system is only suitable for distance racing with long downwind legs - not for round the cans
• In really light air you don't want those blocks dangling off the clew of the spin - so rig according to the conditions for that day
• It will mean extra spin sheet on the tramp when not flying the chute - so wrap it round the hiking strap to stop it going for a swim.

Chris.

pic of the boat sailing on its first day

edit, doesn't work to upload from work account, will have to do later

OK, here we go, pics now working

2/7

3/7

4/7

5/7

6/7

7/7

The boat looks great! What was she like to sail?

The wind was pretty light but some gusts up to 12kts so we were able to test the boat out pretty well. It is very powerful but easily transforms that into forward motion, we didn't use the downhaul all day which was interesting. All the systems worked perfectly which we were happy about considering we had spent so long working on them to make it all streamlined.
Upwind the boat is very well balanced and feels like a light Tornado, there is no noise at all (even less than a Tornado) and the acceleration out of gusts is a bit disconcerting at first, we took a few steps back each time until we got used to it..
Downwind we had a few lee helm issues which are bit shitty to steer with but we are working on that this weekend, I suspect that the rudders are not perfectly alligned which is creating the lee helm downwind (upwind there is no real load but no real feel which indicates that there is a small alignment issue). It is hard to butts the rudder alignment due to the canted hulls..
I am sailing again on Sunday so will have mor einfo next week.

Het Macca, learn how to link the pics in to the posts themselfs, mate !

To bad this baby can't be at Texel. Would be the best proof that selective use of carbon and proper use of plain glass and aluminium will also produce a real line honours boat.

Wouter

Great concept Macca. Something like this should have happened years ago to the T5.7 It is good to see that a private owner has the guts to just give it a try.

Congrats and I wish you all the best !

Wouter

The only trouble with embedding the pics into the post Wouter, is that they don't re-size automatically to fit the browser window and they then screw up the forum page formatting. Much better to leave them as attachments in my opinion, unless they are already the right size for a 1024x768 display!

Great looking boat Macca! Hopefully some of the other T5.7 guys in Oz will follow suit.

Phil

Macca,
Did you do anything to adjust the Ackerman angle on those AHPC rudder heads?

Mike.

P.S. Great job! Nice to see the creative juices are still flowing down under

One additional issue is that folks with modems get clobbered when they open the link if it's full of in-line photos. Attaching gives them a choice to see the pic or not.

Mike.

That is such a photogenic machine Macca! You're going to get more than a few envious looks as a result

I'm already starting to go green myself .....

Here's a drink to your new baby

Maaca,
One you get everything tweaked on the Super Taipan is there any chance of you doing a head-to-head comparason with a stock 5.7? I would be very interested to see how it fares against them and the Capricorn as well. I thought it very interesting that the Capricorns pretty much stomped the 5.7's in the Aus Worlds even though the Capricorn is about 80lbs heavier. It will be interesting to see if the weight savings and wider beam will help or hurt overall performance and under what conditions the benefits will show.
Good Luck,

Your super-Taipan 5.7 looks terrific, Macca. We all look forward reports of comparisons with other boat classes. Being a proud owner of a Taipan 5.7 in Norway, a country with no race classes of Taipans, F18s or other high-tech cats, we are looking at modications of the boat. (I am also the proud father of JIMI).
My question is: Have any of you Taipan owners considered deep high-aspect daggerboards? It seems that AHPC (like Julian Bethwaite) used to prefer rectangular wide/short daggerboards for their boats. The trend during the last 5 years has been to long high-aspect boards and everyone seems to maintain that these are much more effective. Hence, the Capricorn has a foil shape which is very different from that of the Tapipans.
Of course, avoiding contact with the sea bottom is nice, but upwind effciency is king.

Tim Bohan recently told me (and showed) me that the Nacra F18 has come back from very long and slender boards to shorter and wider boards. Seems the trend is reversing a little now. Mind you the Taipan boards are way shorter and wider.

I have considered longer and more slender boards for my boat (Taipan 4.9 based F16) and I could easily modify my wells to take the new boards, but I don't feel uncompetitive upwind with the current boards. I seem to hang in there just fine. So I think I will put this modification of for a while.

Wouter

The original Nacra F18 had the long slender boards (about 8 to 10" wide) as can be found on the Nacra 20. Aparently they work great when the boat has decent forward speed. In light air, however, I hear that the slimmer boards tend to allow a little more leeway and not develop as much lift.

I heard that the new Auscat has long/small daggerboards.
Bimare also uses this kind of boards.

Sorry, small should be read as "slender"

I have sailed the Capricorn and the std taipan and I can't really pick any difference with the boards, I sometimes thing that it more of a trend than a real performance gain. I like the fact that I can leave my std 5.7 boards in the down position when I go downwind, where as the Capricorn boards need to be lifted to stop them breaking....

Macca, since you have both sailed the Capricorn and the 5.7, can you share your opinions on other similarities and differences between the two boats? How is the "feel" with the C compared to the 5.7 in terms of upwind performance, downwind speed etc? Did the "new" hull type make a big difference? The 5.7 does have quite large volume below in the bows.

The Capricorn feels like a much bigger hull, it seems to be sitting on top of the water and with the very straight rocker the boat sometimes feels like it's planing upwind.

The 5.7 feels like a smaller hull but it still feels like it is on top of the water, it has more rocker which makes it much better in waves.

Other than that there are too many differences to make them comparable in a real terms.

Ok, So after sailing the super taipan a few more times (been very busy with work..) we decided that the stock rudders were shithouse. whilst the helm was ok uphill it was [censored] scary downhill. heaps of lee helm and load. we tried different tricks like different rake on the blades, then we tried different pivot axis on the stocks but none worked as well as I had hoped.

So after some calls and emails to Marstrom a set of M20 rudders were ordered, they were meant to be ready at for shipment with my Tornado after the Europeans, but they got a bit busy and didn't have them built in time. Turned out to be a blessing in disguise cause the Tornado is still on the way here and the Rudders were airfreighted last week and today was the first day sailing with them.

Now the boat steers like it should! The tiller arms are shorter so it is very jumpy but I will adapt to that in no time. The helm is perfectly neutral uphill and down. the rudders feel awesome through the water. Oh and they look way cool (most important part)

some pics (wouter might want to put them in the post, cause I don't know how to. I own an IT consultancy too.....)

another angle

rudder head closeup

Which stock rudders did you have ?

The ones with the alu stocks ? The NACA profiles.

Or the newer ones of AHPC (since 2002) with the DACA profiles.

Personally I dislike the older standard rudderboards and think the newer DACA sections to be significantly better. Still the Blade uses an even better profile (no noice as the AHPC ones) and I'm thinking about upgrading to those.

What profile are the M20 ones. NACA or DACA ?

Wouter

I'm not sure which profile the old rudders were, but they were built about 2000, so must be the NACA section. The Alu sock is a [censored] design also, heaps of play in the blade/stock fitting.

I think the M20 blades are an NFI section (No [censored] Idea!!) they look a lot like the T blades but with less chord and a slightly less prominent hollow in the rear 1/3 of the blade.

Hollow in rear 1/3 of board = DACA profile. NACA don't have that.

I understand what you mean. I like the DACA profiles alot better. Board don't stall easily and you really turn them and pull the boat around without much fear of stalling them. It feels like the grip (bite) the water much better. That is unless the cord on them is too small. I think the I-20's suffered from that last issue before they went to the newer and larger cord rudder boards.

Wouter

Any on-line references to DACA profiles?

Nice rudderheads on the foils you bought, all carbon foils I assume? Wonder what the principle for the kick-up system is..

Macca, have you been able to compare straight line speed for the super-taipan vs. an equally skilled Tornado?
Cool to hear that you are getting back on a Tornado! (I assume you are going to sail the boat you ordered from Marstrøm yourself).

Ref: http://www.catsailor.com/bb_files/58299-P1320500.JPG
In the background, what are the fabric-samples hanging on the wall doing there??

We are racing the boat against an OK tornado today I hope, so should have a good idea shortly. But I expect that it will be quicker, it just feels like it is accelerating much more through the gusts.

I bought a 2 year old Tornado of a mate (Jojo Polgar) and ordered a new carbon rig from Marstrom, the whole lot gets here in a few weeks.

The fabric is the background is from my Taipan crews work. Hence I have the most expensive rudder covers you can imagine!!

No tornado today, but there was a well sailed capricornand some A class too.

in a 40 min race (10 - 14kts) we beat the Capricorn by nearly 5 mins, same story in the second race.

We used the T hcp of 65 and the Capricorn was on 70 so it was a big difference. we won on hcp in both races.

Macca, how about a report from the Forster Wildcat regatta?

I understand that you have some tuning/teething issues from your post on the F-16 forum.

How do you like your Maxx carbon sails after some sailing? Still holding their shape and good leech control?

We have been playing with the mast to get a wider range in which the boat is quick. The basic issue is that the mast is very stiff and we have limited luff curve to play with so we have tried running with a slightly softer diamond setting and also with less spreader rake, both resulted in improved performance in certain conditions but reduced in others. It has been hard finding a happy medium but I think we are getting closer. When the boat is in the groove it is very quick it just takes a bit to get it there. I guess it's to be expected with such a new thing.

The sails are still very nice, super smooth and easy to trim. hard to say how they are lasting as we have only really sailed the boat half a dozen times. Interestingly I did the Sydney 38 state titles on the weekend just gone, I have all Maxx sails on the boat now (used to have jibs only but just took delivery of a new Maxx mainsail) and we had heaps of boatspeed (we won the regatta) The amazing thing is that all the other boats had new jibs and ours were exactly one year old! from that I would think that the Taipan sails will last very well.

Thanks, please keep us posted! I would really like to see you succed with this project.

We have all Maxx sails on our T now, but I think the Pen09 cloth is a bit on the light side for the mainsail (T-class rules doesn't allow heavier Maxx cloths). Agree on the trimming comment, very nice to trim and soft enough to show eventual backwind etc.

Here we are, mixing it up with some leadswingers with our new 'cross-cut' Maxx sails.
http://www.moldeseilforening.com/resultat05/hoststormen014.jpg