Mylar sails - a summary report from Frank Bethwaite

Trialing of the new mylar sails has proceeded on the basis that whoever has asked for them has been given them and has sailed with them. To date these have been:

Shane Guanaria Speers point interclub
Brad Stephens Concord and Ryde SC
Bruce Gillespie Northbridge SC
Ray Martin and Craig McPhee - test during NSW Champs
Nick Brown - Concord again

Note: The Concord and Ryde clubhouse is on the north bank of the Parramatta river which at that point is 200 to 300m wide. They sail multiple figure eights around one triangle in Brays bay just upstream and a similar triangle in Kissing Point bay just downstream of the club.

Overview: no adverse comments yet

Performance:All report greater speed

Reports: all have reported, and well. Reports to date are somewhat subjective, with varying mast bend etc., and no hard figures (which is really to be expected.) (Note:  the report from Bruce Gillespie is not available on the website.  RS)

Ray Martin (Victorian Pres) sailed on a layday morning against Craig and a cloud of other boats. They may have swapped. Wind was 3 to 7 knots, smooth but uneven, later patches were 8 to 9 knots. Conclusion: no differences discernable in uneven wind. New sails bolted in 8 to 9 knots.

Quotes from Nick Brown: " with wind 5 to 10 knots, extra roach and battens make jib behave quite differently"
" hanked jib sensitive to jib luff tension - never seen the jib leech this clearly before - very sensitive to jib sheet adjustment - realized that a lot would be gained by getting this adjustment right - found we could get real power out of the main".
Nick commented to me on shore later “Toward the end of race we stopped experimenting, sheeted firmly and sailed hard”.

Nel and I arrived at the club mid-race. Club champ and challenger very close and changing lead. Course multiple figure eights into bays just up-river and down-river of club so good transits each pass. Nick normally trails the leaders by 3 mins. He was running 2 mins behind them on arrival. Soon it was 3m 30secs. Then they pulled their socks up, leaders finished 10 secs apart, with Nick 1m 15secs behind winner.

Some additional comments from Nick:
"It would have been better if we had used the upper hole in the jib clewboard". (I had commented that he had been trimming his jib more twisted than adjacent boats.) and "The seabreeze backed as it does, and the later race was a bit of a soldier's course" and "The rig is very fast on reaches."

I think this is sufficient for the initial phase. The next step is that I am assembling a test team and will try to secure good comparative performance figures in the weeks to come. After this we will fit a cuff and repeat tests.

Frank Bethwaite
April 4, 2005.

Posted 2005/04/06 

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