I've been given an opportunity to interview Jay and Pease Glaser of the brand new and Very Hot GLASER SAILS Loft in Huntington Beach , California. I've got a bunch of questions for the dual Olympic Medalists (ex: thoughts on materials , theory vs. practice in sail design, collaboration with top sailors in different classes , the future of catamaran sail design , .....).I'd like to represent your burning question as well. What are two questions you'd like to see addressed in the interview ?
Thank You ,
Paul Kilkenny
F16 USA #300
1. Is there a difference in difficulty between designing a sail for a monohull and for a multihull?
2. When somebody asks you to build a sail for them, what questions do you ask? In other words, what information do you need to customize the sail for that particular buyer?
3. How many more new materials can you guys possibly keep coming up with?
I'd like to hear his thoughts on cat spinny shapes & materials. Will there be a future for Cuben fibre laminates in spinny's (Tornado has banned laminated from this sail).
Mike.
Will there ever be snuffer system on A cats? I am looking for him to build me a sail when I get my Nacra A2.
Doug Snell
Hobie 17
Soon to be Nacra A2
www.tcdyc.com
I'm interested in the new main sail designs in the Formula 18 Class - specifically the new sail cloth that is allowing a return to horizontal cuts which seem to be outperforming the radial cut sails in Europe.
Cool interview opportunity - right on.
you guys are good.
John,
That new cloth has been under development since the early 2000s. A NW Florida loft (?) was at the heart of it with Contender Sailcloth.
Bob
Do I remember reading that the Cuben Fiber shrinks over time? Or is that another exotic fabric....
whew
at first I thought this was a mean parody of HWSHBN's infamous thread on SA.
carry on...
Same.... My first though was $hit duck FOSD
On that basis, I'd like to know how future sail designs will cope with the fourth dimension? 
On that basis, I'd like to know how future sail designs will cope with the fourth dimension?
Due to the Horse Power on the back, sails will have to be cut flatter to deal with the increased apparent wind........
Well you asked
Sorry for the thread hijack..... Please carry on
Yeah, sorry. 
I'd be interested in knowing more about thoughts on square top design and batten angles/stiffness.
Does going bigger with a more upright leech necessarily mean more speed? Does mast technology have to be developed further - before tops are bigger or after (or at the same time)?
Does a bigger square top need a stiffer topmast? etc..
Bob,
I'm a little surprised you're not sailing A cats. Care to comment?
There already is;
Marstom sells his snail system, or you can just fit one of the current ones are.
As for sail questions
1, Does he see any way in which sail design can help in the lift to drag ratios?
2, Re: SPi design; does he see them getting flatter as we learn to sail with them, or will they become fuller as we continue to move to W/L courses?
3, Spi Cloths - what next ?
Not intending to hijack a subject, I deleted my somewhat unrelated remarks.
There is something unstable and duplicitous about responding to one's own thread question. That said.....:
Here are some observations Paul -
1. From the standpoint of pure consumerism few of us have the knowledge / experience to articulate (meaningfully) to our sailmaker precisely what we want our new sail to do ( no surprise here , reference the "How Is Lift Created" thread before attempting rebuttal ).
2. Even the sailors who win consistently in their class are ,( for the most part), "unconscious competents" who will confidently share equal volumes of excellent and totally wrong information about why they win.
3. The classes of cat. that are approaching the refind potential of their boat.( ex: Tornado , Acat), are those classes that have attracted the most theoretically sophisticated sailors with long histories of data driven adjustments via meaningful cross testing.The rest of us have been the recipiants of these developments.
4. The practical value of "theory" in sail design / evolution, is painfully subordinate to practical and on the water testing (again, reference the "How Lift Is Created" thread).In theory a square big head main should be slower than a 1/2 parabola big head. So, why are all the big head mains square (on the water testing i'll bet ) ?
5. Because we know so little about why sails are fast or slow, we're collectively losing mountains of practical data that could advance the art generally.
CODA :
when I ended my research (alot and i'm not that stupid) and sat down to order my mainsail I included my credit card number and one specific design parameter : " Make the sail fast to "A" mark"...
We should know more than we do...
PK
How did each of you learn how to make a sail?
Do you think that sail making will evolve to a point where we will be using sails that have built in ways of changing their shape, besides the rig controls that we now used to accomplish shape changes?
If a material would shrink when tensioned, sails could automatically flatten themselves to de-power themselves when they develop higher loads. Are there any sail clothes available or presently being developed that will shrink when tensioned?
Do you think that we might ever see a sail that almost exactly resembles the wing on a bird with all the feathers, tendons, and methods of changing shape? How soon?
Who should be the honorary person that we name the 4th corner of a square top sail after? Tack, Clew, Head, and ?? Same question for the fourth side, what to name it? Leach, Foot, Luff, and ?? What seems to be the industry standard name for the fourth corner at this time?
Do you predict any changes in battens? (The way we use them, the way they are built.)
Are there any new technologies in Kite Boarding or Windsurfing that we may eventually see in our cat sails?
Would you like me to stop asking questions? 
That was a very entertaining post, Paul.
After the square top main, what else can be done in the future to make a sail react more automatically to pressure changes?
How about.
How does current mast design, mast material, and mast flex impact designs?
Or
Any new ideas on how to get the spin doused faster and or easier? What do they think about the Marstrom snail? Will that wear out spins faster or slower than the skunk/bag combo?
And lastly
Any good ideas for old spins?
"Are there any new technologies in Kite Boarding or Windsurfing that we may eventually see in our cat sails?"
Reworded : Will we see windsurfer rig technology on catamarans with wide luff sleeves, camber inducers and fibreglass/carbon masts graded for stiffness to suit the sail cut and provide the automatic leech twist-off we are looking for, and if so, how soon ?
Last question : Why are catamaran sails and masts so much more expensive than the windsurfer rigs that are 20 years ahead ?
Size?
Have to disagree, Hobie 1616.
Sail area aside, the manufacturing of a Neil Pryde RS6 or Naish Stealth racing sail is far more labour-intensive, and with camber inducers, extra wide luff-sleeves etc, I would imagine there is about the same amount of sailcloth in a 11sqm racing sail than there is in a 14sqm cat sail.
The masts are 100% carbon, and a 4,6m mast will set me back about $1000. Now, multiply that by 4 and add a bit for a standard aluminium Hobie Tiger mast.
I realise the difficulty of applying windsurfer rig technology to cats, unless on unstayed masts, then you`d rig it on the ground like a winsurfer sail and step it when you want to sail. I know it`s been done, Grob has a very interesting design (I`d want to take both his rigs and convert them back to their intende purpose ).
Just curious to see how w/surfer rig design may or may not influence cat sails in future.
Size?
I think the answer is sales volume.
Gareth
Steve,
I think sailbuilding for windsurfers are more industrialized. Sails are cut and assembled in e.g. China, in a large standarized production run.
Cat sails are mostly buildt and assembled by smaller organizations and are far less efficient in production becouse they can not standarize to the same extent or have the same volume. I am sure you can get the same price pr. sail for Mosquitos as for windsufer sails, if you order 10.000. of them
It's the same with masts, no standarized production for cats, while windsurfers are very standarized. Windsurfing masts are machine buildt, whereas our tubes are often hand laid up. Then the cost of fittings and installing them need to be added. Buying just the extrusion and rigging it yourself is not that expensive (for alu, carbon is a different matter).
What I would like to know, is what fibres and laminates we can use that are not based on oil. Are there any competitive cloths made today that are not somehow dependent on oil/oil derivates?
Steve, are you saying that a Hobie Tiger mast is $4000? Even if you're talking Aussy dollars that's $2,950 US. A replacement aluminum mast for a Nacra 6.0NA (the only pricing information I could find online) is $895 US complete.
Kinda reminds me of a thread I saw on a different forum quite a while back....
"The future of yacht design."