The sail fairy visited

Ready for the Mumbles Global Challenge now, are you not ? <img src=

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Wouter

Nope; Need to settle the above sail; re-work

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settings, learn what it does differently to the other sail. Oh, and try and sail the boat a few times between now and then. Re-rig the downhaul; change Spi pole settings (nothing to do with the mainsail); re-fair my daggerboards; fix a couple of spare rudder blades and make some new trap lines.

And get a shed load of

proper

work done as well.... <img src=

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Using the soccer ball as a scale, you must have the worlds biggest F-16, and some REALLY big kids to fit in that swing set <img src=

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Nice! New sails are cool.
They don't look that expensive laying on the lawn though do they? Don't look all that complicated either. amazing transformation when it is put up a mast

The sail looks reasonably flat.......Why, becuase it sits really flush on the ground & the luff has not pushed out much.? Just an observation. <img src=

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Intersted to see some pics of the new rags up on your rig.!

Yes I'd say it is farly flat; difficult to really say on the grass; Battens have not been tightend yet as the sail has niot been up the mast yet - hopefully have pictures on Sunday.

Sorry, no pics of it up the stick as is was windy with a capital F

Boat blew down the field when just on its trolly and I had to pull the mast down when I was de-rigging.

Some fools went sailing...

3 Lasers went out and came back again.

1 Flying 15 went out - broken mast

1 29er went out - broken mast

1 Dart 16 went out - pitchpoled after about 15 mins

1 Hobie 18 went out - caspized within about 200 yds of the beach.

Yep, we got the same wind overhere too and I'm already thinking about getting my high wind landyacht out of storage !

With these conditions for a couple of days the beach becomes very hard and flat, like a proper speedway !

Wouter

I was out racing this weekend at the coast (scheveningen).
Saturday we had very little wind (+/-5kts), where today we started the first race in the morning with 15-20kts and finished it in about 20-25 (28+ in gusts).
We didn't do the 2nd race but from the beach I saw even the best sailors capsize sooner or later.

sailed it for about an hour over the weekend at Rutland (Put hole in Spi on the 2nd lap of the first race and by the time I'd fixed it the 3rd race had started; Woke up this morning feeling awful and could not cope with yotting)

Anyway, now have some pictures of the sail up the stick and new Downhaul set up (16:1)

Full sail shape

Nice and flat:

Mast bends a lot with loads of DH on !

And you can see the block attached to the sail

and now the Downhaul:

<img src="http://www.catsailor.com/bb_files/149788-downhaul2.jpg" alt="" />

The DH is very powerful I can get it all the way down with one hand with ease!

All I did was attach some 4mm D12 to the top of the double blocks each side and then put a loop in the other end so It can pass thru the block on the sail to a bobble at the base of the mast.

That mainsail looks pretty sharp Simon! I like it a lot. Looks like Grant have a good design going. How does it feel when sailing? Looks like the leech could use a few short battens at the egde to stop flutter?

Thanks, yes it came out well.

As for the leach, my other sails have done the same. It's a function of loads of DH and mast bend. More battens might help reduce flutter but we'll see; I was sailing in a gusty F4 and there was a bit of flutter...

I think I'll be moving to the

Fat boys

setting on the spreaders to get more power in the light stuff as the downhaul is more than up to the Job.

It was the same with our mainsails. Once you added some real downhaul the leech had some small flutter. I think some 10-15cm battens taped to sail would have helped us. Just like we used to do with the overlapping Tornado jibs.

How did the sail feel? Going forward and accelerating in gusts?

Felt good upwind but needs more time for me to work out what exactly to do with it.

Downwind I was too busy keeping the boat upright to look at the mainsail much.

I must say that I am fascinated by your use of the stopper ball for the downhaul. I really like that. even without a cascading system like you have it would come in very handy to just run the downhaul through the block on the sail.. provided it is loaded enough all the time so that it doesn't come out.

That was not taken while sailing; but in the bigger gusts on the lake it did not look much different!

Thinking about this a little more I think I will have to be carefull not to over-downhaul the sail with such an efficient system in place.

I'm about 75kg in by birthday suit and would like to be a little lighter; but work and injuries keep getting in the way of sailing and training.

We wondered where you'd got to. You missed a good day's racing.

After a pretty frustrating day on Saturday when we weren't anywhere near the groove, let alone in it, we started off much better on Sunday. I think a few beers and 10 hour's sleep might have had something to do with it... We started to give the Spitfires some trouble - on the water, if not on handicap - and managed 2nd in race 4. We were doing OK in race 5 when we suffered a

minor

technical fault and had to get towed in. Let's just say that there was one less thing to do before putting the boat on the trailer.

Despite the technical problems we had a great weekend, and it was good to get back up to Rutland - a very nice spot to sail.

Paul

I bet this small technical problem was a result of the helm not doing something one ought to..... Had it been the crews fault or just general gear fatigue I'm sure even positive that we would have had the full low down!!
Would this problem have occurred if some electrical tape had been adopted? (you may answer yes or no)
Did it involve something 8.5m long? <img src=

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Well, um, to be fair it did happen when the helm cranked on the mainsheet, so um...

Actually, no. Tape is one thing that GBR 801 is never short of. The crew makes very sure of that <img src=

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Possibly... <img src=

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Paul

Last weekend was the Welsh Cat Champs hosted by Mumbles Yacht Club and here are a couple of photo's. These pics were taken on Saturday and the wind was gusting 22knts, Sundays max wind was 25knts (the sea was nice and warm on Sunday!!)
You may notice that everything is in it's correct position!!

Just got out the GP main sail which has been sitting in my locker for the last few weeks due to the high winds we have been having ( didn't want to try it in 25+ for the first time ),really light winds last night at the club racing but seems to sail along nicely, Should be a step up from the smaller Stealth type R sail I had been using. Laying it over a Landenberger sail, very similar but a litle more up top half and less down bottom

Nice to see up to 6 F16's even on a Wednesday night. <img src=

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Sorry I couldn't be there - got a few repairs to sort out. Doesn't look like I'm likely to get out again before Mumbles, thanks to work travel <img src=

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Paul

Spill the beans then, what happened ? <img src=

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Yep; that's the main difference is area distribution. More up top is always good <img src=

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