Should we impose a sail area/length2 limit?

Formula 1 cars have limits on engine cubic centimetres but that is not considered a restriction on technology! Technology is fine when it is accompanied by common sense. Otherwise, one will find himself in the ridiculous situation trying to control a square mile of a kite sail before it kills somebody.

 

"one will find himself in the ridiculous situation trying to control a square mile of a kite sail before it kills somebody.

SO WHAT!!!

Its the CHOICE of the sailor , to do whatever he decides will get him there the "best".

IF he kills himself experimenting , just WHO are you to be involved?

Do you have a GOD merrit badge?

Much progress is at the price of a few lives OF VOULENTEERS!!

I believe Lillianthall killed himself playing with kites.
would you give up world Jet air travel , to have "saved " him?

Luddites , and "Panned Progress" are as decietfull and harmfull as "Social Justice", NONSENSE!

FAST FRED

 

For what it is worth, the fastest sailing boats in existence are currently those with the smallest sails, not the largest!

John

 

Oh well, I'll go part-way towards being on the side of Doug and Xarax.

A few random thoughts that strike me.....

The idea of crowding maximum sail on a small hull DOES lead to some problems, and it leads to some good things.

Those massive rigs on and Open 6.5s etc skiffs don't come cheap. The Mini 6.5 is a 22 footer that goes around short courses like a cruiser/racer 31'er, but it costs more and has almost no accomodation. Is that really the only way to go?

The Aussie skiffs are *&^%$#dyt expensive, the way they survive is by owner-building (in 12s), restrictions (14s) and support from the massive clubs that have poker machines for non-sailing members (16s and 18s). They are hard work to sail, hard work to maintain because they are so stressed. A guy from the #2 18 last year is moving into a simple cheap OD because he's sick of sailing in the same fleet ('cause the boats are too expensive to survive in numbers without major club support) and spending time fixing the boat.

The unrestricted 18' skiffs were extremely expensive boats. Nor are they very popular - the most popular of the Australian skiff classes has always been the 16' skiff which has rig restrictions (220 ft2 of sail) and beam restrictions that make it much more conservative than the other skiffs. If you don't have some restrictions, you end up with a boat that has to carry so much rig to be competitive that it can't be sailed happily in rough cold water - the 18' skiffs and 12' skiffs only sail in a few parts of Australia where you get flat, warm water. No-one sails them in the southern areas where the water is rougher, because even the pros suffered carnage under the big rigs when they visited there. So if you have a class with no restrictions it will end up geographically restricted.

You don't always learn much that applies to other boats, because unrestricted boats are designed to sail overpowered, heeled under big gear, and they can have higher-resistance hulls 'cause you can just put on a bigger rig. It's interesting stuff but not the only way.

And what have the unrestricted boats created recently? The modern Assy, that's about it.


Classes with sail area and beam restrictions but few other rules gave us;

Fully battened sails (Renjollen of Manfred Curry.....incredible streamlined high tech machines and probably easily the fastest, most advanced boats of their day; 28 knots over a 1 km course in about 1932 IIRC. )
Analysis of airflow etc (ditto)
Wings (Euro Moths)
Hydrofoils (Moths).
Trapezes (14s, Sharpies, M Class)
Skippers trapezing (R Class from NZ)
Hiking aids IIRC (Canoes)
Versatile planing dinghy (Int 14)
Vangs (I 14 from model yachts)
Trapezing off wings (R Class from NZ)
Bruce Farr (Pennant class, Moth class)
John Spencer and (arguably) the second "modern" dinghy, the Cherub.
Phil Morrison, Andy P. Paul Bieker, Frank Bethwaite and most of the other top designers.
Lightweight hulls (skiffs were very heavy for years, Rs and others were the first lightweights)
U section low wetted surface hulls (Nat 12s).
Arguably, flex-tip rigs (B14 and B18 "restricted" OD 18).

The first lightweight, hard chined, trap dinghies with roachy fully-battened sails (Gwen 12s, Darkie Aust 14s, Taipan 18s) were initially attacked by the guys who liked big rigs , because the small rig boats beat the expensive overcanvassed overweight boats.
The NZ R Class (restricted rig and LOA and very few other rules) was for years arguably THE most advanced dinghy of all, with a small rig.

Hell, even many of the breakthrough yachts had small rigs - Ragtime, the first maxi ULDB. Farr's first yacht, Tituscanby.

Which is not knocking unrestricted rigs, they are fun, but not the ONLY way perhaps - and maybe not the best way, either.

 

to "Fast-Faster-Fastest" Fred

"one will find himself in the ridiculous situation trying to control a square mile of a kite sail before it kills somebody."
What I meant was, obviously, before he kills some innocent spectator of his brain vacuity, someone else than this irresponsible egoistic "sailor"-"faux aviator". It is OK if you voluntarily kill yourself, Fastest, but it is not OK if you kill your unlucky fellow citizen who happened to disturb the orbit of your sailing craft that you dare to use as a weapon. Morever, it is not even OK if you kill your little boy trying to prove that you are as a powerful intrepid hero-warrior you would like to be. That is the meaning of "decietful and harmful social justice". Roads, harbours, societies are not just extensions of your jungle, Fastest of the Universe !

 

For what its worth, the windsurfers who are the fastest sailors were carrying relatively huge sails. Pretty much any windsurfer other than those guys would be on sails around the 3m^2 mark in 50 knots of wind, if out at all. I think you'll find the record was taken using a rig around 5.5m^2 in 50+ knot conditions. Furthermore the boards they use are truly tiny....

 

small sails

Matt, it's not just windsurfers using small sails(compared to larger boats) to go fast: as I said before the foiler Moth is a prime example of sailing efficiency when you consider that it has 85sq.ft. of sail and is beating 49er's(600sq.ft.) and Aclass Cats(150sq.ft.)! I think the day of the overpowered skiff and "normal" multihull as king of the mountain in sailings speed hierarchy is shortly to be over with...
But 85sq.ft. is not a small amount of sail on an 11'(12.75'LOA) Moth-thats a lot of sail! It's just that because of foils that sail generates huge speed and when compared to other larger "hi-tech" boats that the Moth beats it seems like a small amount of sail going along way...

 

What drugs are you taking?

 

As somebody used to say, there are no dumb questions, but there are dumb answers.

 

Doug,
The moth foils all the way round the course in say about 6-7 knots of wind with a good helm. What will people naturally do when the want to build a boat that flies in less wind? Put on more sail area!
Yes I know you could make the boat lighter, but you really cant get significantly lighter than a moth. Or you could play with the foils, make them larger or use a different section, but then what happens to high wind control and speed?
It would be easier surely just to make a boat with bigger racks to increase RM and increase the sail area a bit... oops we've just built a 35kg, 11' boat with 12sqm of sail instead of 8.5, with the helm on a trap that foils in say 4 knots all the way around the course!
Thats a massive sail area on a very tiny platform, that foils in about the same conditions as a formula windsurfer planes and is probally quicker, and possibly handle more wind (assuming the helm can handle it and nothing breaks etc!) You of course would get to a point when you add more sail for no gain, but how do you find that point without trying it!?

 

foils /sail area

New foilers will be extremely adjustable from foil area to high speed "self adjusting" rigs, to screechers ect. But compared to current "skiffs" or "normal" catamarans the speed per unit of sail area will be much higher on a well designed foiler.
The two main areas of foiler development for me now are low speed take off as a priority and top end speed as a lower priority with safe, but exciting jumping in the middle.

 

No limitations allows for any sailor to sail whatever suits you best.

And, we should not look at sail area (SA) alone as an indication of a trend, but SA/Disp. Sure a windsurfer drives one of the smallest sails, but when compared to the tiny displacement of a sailboard, then the sail don't seem so small.

Xarax - I think- just was trying (and succeeded) to provoque you guys.

My 2 Cents.

 

A boat goes its fastest when it has the smallest size of sail that is fully powered up in the lulls. Any more than that is just useless drag and weight. The only exception to that is where the gusts are so strong that you need an even smaller sail to survive. You can add extra righting moment to hold up larger sails, but there's a definite law of diminishing returns. As you add more righting moment you add more structure which is more weight, then you've also increased the loads so that's even more weight, then the boat gets more clumsy to sail, so you sail it at less efficiency, then, then...

 

"No limitations allows for any sailor to sail whatever suits you best."

Not if you want to be competitive! If you want to be competitive in an unrestricted rig class, you almost always have to have a massive, expensive rig. That has been well proven over the years in skiffs and tris etc.

Of course, in small boats having a massive rig means that you also need a smaller rig (or two, or three) for strong winds, adding tothe expense once more.

Haviing an unrestricted rig seems to actually have a "feedback" effect, because if you need say 15% more power, it seems that the fastest solution may be to add (say) 35% more sail (or about 80% more in the case of windsurfers) but change to a very flat, low drag shape that is effective in big rigs but doesn't work in small ones.

So again, costs increase, and the boats can become a bit unwieldy. Try using a big windsurfer rig in light airs, it's a pig to handle but margiinally faster....and a tiny margin is all you need to win. Try using the #1 rig (aboout 41' tall) of an 18' skiff (with about 24' wings) before that class found it need sail-area (mast height) restrictions to survive.

Even in offshore boats there can be problems - ask Nigel Irens about the current 60' tris and he says the rigs allowed by the rules are so large that they harm the health of the class.

Again, IMHO there's no reason to say we can't have unrestricted rig classes, they are great in their way but they are not the only way.

Oh yeah, and can anyone point me to a growing, prosperous class with an unrestricted rig? Maybe the Open 60s (I dunno) and the 12' skiffs are hanging on well in their restricted area, but is there ANY other such class that's doing well?

 

Two things: ONE: it is still any sailor´s choice, no one puts a gun in your head to sail on an unrestricted class

TWO: What percentage of sailors compete on unrestricted class versus restricted or OD classes?

Really, I don´t see your point guys.