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more testing
Tuesday, 23 March 2010
" Another Solent tuning session last week pushed the Squib Sail development programme to it's final stages for the new season. This picture shows Nigel Grogan sailing Malcolm Hutchings boat to windward of Rob Larke sailing Nigel's boat. Crewing for Nigel and casting his critical eye over the latest development sails is Richard Lovering, one of Hyde's sail designers while the other designer Mike Lennon is monitoring the tuning run and taking photos from the Hyde RIB. Amongst Richard's impressive sailing CV is attending the Atlanta Olympics as the late John Merricks tuning partner- so he knows a few things about two boat tuning. His keelboat experience includes winning the SB3 nationals and Cowes week sailing with Jerry Richards as well as winning the prestigeous Captains Cup, in the ultra close XOD boats in Cowes week.
Rob Larke with Malcom crewing, are sailing 105 with the sails and set-up that Nigel used to come in 9th place at last years nationals. Although not a brilliant result , the boat was quick enough for three top five places at that event , so the assumption was that if 105 could be convincingly beaten in a straight line then the tuning process was getting somehwere.
The picture shows Malcolm's boat with the new sails, more powered up and pointing as high. What it cannot show is that a few minutes later it had pulled out distance ahead and to windward of 105 to the extent that the run had to be aborted to reposition Rob and Malcolm in clean air.
No suprises to learn that Malcolm has promptly bought the development sails and is planning to use them at the Burnham Easter regatta!
The first production set of the new designs are currently being built in Hyde's sail factory in Cebu and will be shipped back in time for Nigel to use them at the Easter Open event at Abersoch so they can be tried out on the race course against the classes toughest fleet!"
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Winter Development and Testing
We have spent the winter redesigning our sails and two boat tuning which has resulted in quantifiably performance improvements.
Jib Design - Using Nigel Grogan's boat and Malcolm Hutchin’s 819, we firstly tested all our designs to see what the differences were under the expert eye of our two sail designers, Mike Lennonand & Richard Lovering. They then used Sailpack (state of the art sail design software developed by the Italian America's Cup syndicate) to produce the perfect "flying shape" Some late nights in our Cowes loft then gave us a prototype to test. The results were very gratifying, whoever sailed which boat, and the team with the new jib were consistently higher and faster. The changes had concentrated on entry and exit angles as well as chord depth particularly high up. The new jib is also much more user friendly and easier to change gears with using halyard tension and barber hauler length.
Mainsail Design - The designers then worked on matching the mainsail perfectly to the jib. The mainsail has less fullness high up to encourage the right amount of twist and also a less aggressive leach return to aid straight line speed and acceleration. If you look at the pictures you can see the slot is matched to the back of the mainsail all the way up with no back winding and no over twisting of the jib leach - common problems we are all too familiar with.
Two Boat Tuning – It is easy to make all sorts of claims about sail design improvements, but the real test is two-boat tuning - hours of it! We spent several days going up and down the open water of the Solent with the boats close hauled a few feet apart replicating that "start line feeling" until there was no doubt that the changes we have made translate into speed gains across all wind ranges. We tried the new sails against the previous versions in conditions ranging from 6 knots short tacking back up the Hamble to full- on 25 knots in open water with waves and snow! As Mike Lennon observed "I know which sails I would use to try and win the nationals!"
At Hydesails we are looking forward to the start of the sailing season and using the new sails on the racecourse. We will be at most of the open events this year where we will be delighted to discuss the changes we have made in greater detail.
If you go to our squib page on our online store you will see full details and prices as well as an enticing Spring Offer.
We have sailcloth and production capacity for only 20 sets of sails before the nationals so it makes sense to act now. In addition cloth prices will rise after August so order before prices rise.
Tuesday, 16 March 2010
We have spent the winter redesigning our sails and two boat tuning which has resulted in quantifiably performance improvements.
Jib Design - Using Nigel Grogan's boat and Malcolm Hutchin’s 819, we firstly tested all our designs to see what the differences were under the expert eye of our two sail designers, Mike Lennonand & Richard Lovering. They then used Sailpack (state of the art sail design software developed by the Italian America's Cup syndicate) to produce the perfect "flying shape" Some late nights in our Cowes loft then gave us a prototype to test. The results were very gratifying, whoever sailed which boat, and the team with the new jib were consistently higher and faster. The changes had concentrated on entry and exit angles as well as chord depth particularly high up. The new jib is also much more user friendly and easier to change gears with using halyard tension and barber hauler length.
Mainsail Design - The designers then worked on matching the mainsail perfectly to the jib. The mainsail has less fullness high up to encourage the right amount of twist and also a less aggressive leach return to aid straight line speed and acceleration. If you look at the pictures you can see the slot is matched to the back of the mainsail all the way up with no back winding and no over twisting of the jib leach - common problems we are all too familiar with.Two Boat Tuning – It is easy to make all sorts of claims about sail design improvements, but the real test is two-boat tuning - hours of it! We spent several days going up and down the open water of the Solent with the boats close hauled a few feet apart replicating that "start line feeling" until there was no doubt that the changes we have made translate into speed gains across all wind ranges. We tried the new sails against the previous versions in conditions ranging from 6 knots short tacking back up the Hamble to full- on 25 knots in open water with waves and snow! As Mike Lennon observed "I know which sails I would use to try and win the nationals!"
At Hydesails we are looking forward to the start of the sailing season and using the new sails on the racecourse. We will be at most of the open events this year where we will be delighted to discuss the changes we have made in greater detail.
If you go to our squib page on our online store you will see full details and prices as well as an enticing Spring Offer.
We have sailcloth and production capacity for only 20 sets of sails before the nationals so it makes sense to act now. In addition cloth prices will rise after August so order before prices rise.
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