I got some good advice once, always try to breathe trough your nose when a discussion get heated. (It's quite hard to raise your voice or yell then..)


Rhody: I'm not saying anything bad about the US team. I'm not even "marginalizeing" their accomplishment. Norway dont have a Tornado team in this olympics, so I'm pretty neutral with regards to who wins!

If you re-read my post, you will hopefully see that I _agree_ with you regarding the sails. The sails are within the rules, and I dont have any gripes with them. Hence the comment about watching the blood pressure.

Jake got it right, 'everybody' tought it was alternative 1 based on the information available at the time. It seems like it was alternative 2 instead, and that is of course OK.

Now, the other comments you obviously seem to read some "marginalizeing" in, is my views on class building and has nothing to do with the olympics.

You are mis-reading both my post and intentions. I care for the T-class, and not so much about this olympics.

Please watch your blood pressure..


Stephen:
The rules doesn't say anything about the construction of sails besides permitted sail materials. Everybody has used panelled construction so far, probably due to cost.
The US team and partners appears to have developed and costed a mould for moulded T sails, and agreed with the sailmaker that these sails are for exclusive use by the partners in this olympic.

This is OK in my opinion.
Doesn't Roman Hagara have a sailmaker working exclusively for him with panelled sails ? I dont quite see the difference between the moulded sails and Hagara's approach. It boils down to the flying shape of the sail in the end (as Bill Roberts said).
Moulded sails have some advantages, like weight, crimp, airflow and shape. But the technology for making them is not new or exclusive, so all teams could have done this if they tought of it and had the budget.
The only new thing might be moulding with pentex fibres, but I dont know if that is a new technology ?

The real issue, is indeed exclusiveness, like the RYA masts. And I believe that the only way to stop this is tighter tolerances in the rules.

Rolf