wing masts and the like on skiffs?

I think that the NS14 is a special case which needs to be explained in a little more detail. The NS14 has small sail area and so the boats often operate below their design wind. Most effforts are made to increase the power out of the small sail area and a stiff wing mast is a good way of doing this. The additional stiffness of the wing section in the fore-aft plane can be used to support the large roach.
This stiffness does compromise the depowerability of the rig to some extent though. It is not as easy to pull a full cut main flat with lots of downhaul and vang as the masts just don't bend enough. Their stiffness can also make the gust response can be poor.
The short foot of the sails might be a partial byproduct of this as it allows big changes of angle of attack with relatively low sheet loads and distances, improving the helmsman's ability to deal with gusts.

Keep some of this in mind before you put that type of rig on a singlehander with challenging handling.

 

I sailed NS14's for quite a while, I found the rigs ability to power up and down remarkably good, never found "gust response" to be an issue. In comparison most dinghies of the day seemed to be over canvased but inefficient. Our mains where cut to the over rotating mast, you didn't need a full cut the rig provided the depth when required and also allowed very efficient flattening of the sail as required. With low vang pressure twist was also highly controllable, you could step on the gas when you needed it and back off just as effectively, she was a marvel to sail in heavy air. I don't know what today's boats are like, only better I can imagine but I couldn't find much fault with the boats I sailed.

 

Nope, nothing to do with it. The 18s don't measure sails, and the modern development dinghy classes that do almost invariably measure true area or something very close to it. You're thinking prehistoric leadmine rules.

 

it was also a joke......

 

No joking allowed here!

 

yah..........right...........nice picture and where did you get that smiley, I don't have that one........

 

Secret smiley stash....

 

Not fair, not cool............ (foolstown.com)

 

Doug

Yet again, you are talking ********. Thomas is a civil engineer. How can you expect anybody to take you seriously when you so regularly post stuff that is simply incorrect.

Now, knowing the rule "photos or it didn't happen", here is a link to Thomas's own company website. http://www.jundt.ch/

Now, where are the photos of you foiling..........

 

Sorry for the hijack. Back to the topic at hand.

A few years ago, one of the 18' skiff skippers looked very seriously at using a Tornado rig on an 18. However, there are serious issues and it didn't go ahead. This thread has got me thinking........

 

What issues did they run into?

 

I know what you mean........all those formula cat rigs are so sexy, long and skinny, like a nice set of legs I wish I could talk myself into using one, but tall and powerful on a skinny little 13' boat isn't cool, can you see a 7.5m mast on there, I've drawn it up a couple of times and it looks scary, (but i bet it would be fast right up till you went swimming)

 

I honestly don't know. It was sean Langman who looked at it. However, I have been thinking of my own "challenges list". As we have just sold our No1 rig, I have about 2 months before the new one turns up so, if I can find a suitable rig and sort out the list below, maybe I will give it a go!

1. Stepping the mast - besides the need for a ball style mast step, is there enough room?
2. How do you get enough headroom. You need to be able to run under the boom
3. Rig tension. The T doesn't sail with a lot of tension and we would need to on the 18, so as to be able to point and also to hold the rig in the boat off wind. The T manages this with mainsheet tension. I don't think it would work on an 18. So, if we add rig tension, will it all still work.
4. How do you keep the rig in the boat with a masthead kite? It isn't designed to take it.
5. How will the mast handle the loads. There is an extra man on the wire and the boats are heavier.

 

I'm no spurt... but you would probably need to re engineer the rotating mechanism so that you can still have effective rotation and carry the higher rig loads/tensions. I can't see why you can't run swept diamonds for the mast head loads and obviously you need to extend the rig somehow to get under the boom on foot. That kinda precludes any cheap experiments I suppose as you have to set up right.

Mebe you could graft a bulk standard T20 rig on for a bit of a suicide run with chase boat in tow just to see what happened... might be a laugh if nothing else but might be expensive to. I'd be really curious to see what came of it.

How does a T20 rig compare to an 18' #1, I'd have guessed smaller but I have not looked.

 

I guess the short answer is you have to take the plunge and design and built the right rotating rig, Could be good, could be expensive folly... how good natured is your sponsor?