Hi Simon
Well, we all know that Irens is wrong. The performance hit on the "bad tack" as he calls it is minimal and so insignificant that it doesn't matter. The performance hit of not having a boom is so much more! Just a bit of misguided thinking which he could correct by reading up here!
One of the other things we have found is that full length battens don't work. I suspect that the battens on Romily would have caused severe distortion on the starboard tack which skewed his thinking.
However, the high aspect rig does look nice, but really only possible if the spars are low weight and carbon fibre.
I wonder if a lightweight boom similar to that used on the modern catamaran rigs would work with the Romily rig?
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