Round Mast with golf ball texture

[rwatson]

"the same time improving aerodynamic of the round mast"
What makes you think the grooves would improve the aerodynamic performance with grooves ?

 

[CT249]

Honest question from a non sailboater who likes to dream of one day going to sea on something without noise...

In the system of a sailboat, is the mast that critical? What's the benefit from a bone stock standard mast vs a hyper complex super specialized one? How far out in the significant figures do you have to go to perceive a tangible improvement?

Good questions.

Nope, the mast is not that critical.

The benefit from a bone standard stock mast to a hyper-complex specialised one is something that only becomes apparent in a race between world-class full-time sailors who have spent eons working on their fitness, technique, class-specific training and analysis, sail development, keel and rudder development, hull development, constructions, etc etc etc.

This concept was probably first used in the 1970 America's Cup with the mast of Gretel II. She was the faster boat but she lost.

I've been lucky enough to race with America's Cup winners. The typical sailor worrying about mast profile is like the 200lb guy who has never ridden a bike since he was 12 year old worrying about the aerodynamics of the texture over the tubes on the Walmart bike, complete with panniers and spoky-dokes, that he is going to use to get half a mile to the shops at 9mph.

 

[CT249]

Probably very much easier to paint a textured or stippled layer on a plain mast, or apply an adhesive treatment, which is removable if you don't like it. Machining would be a nightmare, with flex, tool wandering and blunting, then de-burring, and who has a milling machine with 30 feet of travel that you can use cheaply ? If there was any real advantage, the America's Cup millionaires would have taken it up already, to help their ridiculous foilers.

One of the AC guys did take it up, 54 years ago. No one bothered to replicate it. That says a lot.

 

[CT249]

A high performance mast on a cruising boat will give you about the same advantage a spoiler in your car gives you to go grocery shopping.

At least the spoiler on the car could give you somewhere to put a coffee cup while you load your shopping. A turbulator mast on a cruiser wouldn't even have that benefit.

There is some bizarre attraction to the idea that conventional spars are terrible and alternatives are much better. I have five wingmasts and about 10 similar devices (ie pocket luff sails) and still think it's weird that so many people who have probably never even seen one think that they are worthwhile. They provide a very marginal advantage at the pointy end of racing fleets in a few classes, and some dodgy pages in a few books rant about them. That's about all.

Various leading-edge devices have been failing to live up to the hype for a century now. Perhaps in another hundred years people will start looking at the reality rather than the claims.