The OzRacer should be about as fast as a Sabot anyway. Might even be faster, with the comparatively huge rig.
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The OzRacer should be about as fast as a Sabot anyway. Might even be faster, with the comparatively huge rig.
I was just reminded of another early sailing experience, over at boatdesign.net, from when I raced in Mirrors.
The way this started was that one day we were getting fed up with being passed by boats with kites up on a reach, so I basically said something like "Let's see if I can get the jib pulling better", grabbed the whisker pole, shoved it in the clew, then played around with angles and sheet tension while holding the inner end of the pole in one hand. Worked well, so we developed it from there. :2tsup:Quote:
Back when I were a lad, I crewed on one of the local Mirror dinghies. The bloke who owned it couldn't afford a spinnaker and the gear for it at the time, but did have a whisker pole. So, I came up with a brainwave. We fitted another attachment for the whisker pole on the foredeck, and used it to control the clew of the jib when reaching.
It worked really well. The usual way of sailing Mirrors was with both jib and spinnaker up, which really wasn't that efficient since they tended to interfere with each other on a reach. We found that the properly sheeted jib would often allow us to keep up with the boats flying spinnakers.
In the interest of clarity I should also point out that the spinnaker-equipped boats would still walk away from us a on square run, where all you need is the biggest possible drag device. However, we could generally hold them from a close reach round to a broad reach.
This sort of ties in with something I saw yesterday, while checking out the boat ramp at the Hinze Dam. There was an odd looking sailing dinghy there which rang a bell for looks. I checked up later and it was a Shimmy 12 from Scruffie Marine. There was the usual east coast afternoon sea breeze blowing, and this thing could barely sail out of its own way. Seemed to be utterly hopeless upwind. Rigged with a boomless main that set very badly, and a standard jib. No centreboard either.
I really don't get why people build (sailing) boats that don't sail efficiently. It seems like an utter waste of time to me, when making them sail rather well really isn't all that difficult.
Totally agree of course!
Nice move with the whisker pole trick! I've seen something like that in some other classes, but mostly much after you spent time playing with it.
MIK