Cirrus Icon Development

Originally posted by tickler If the boat was lighter than its designed all up weight with crew would that not effect its performance adversely? Surely weight would not be everything?

Well everything affects everything else. But if you think about the amount that crew weight varies on everything but Olympic classes where they body build/diet to the required weight it can't be that critical...

Do you know, I never thought of it like that, displacing water. But, are hulls not designed to be efficient at a certain displacement giving water line length and width. If the boat was lighter than its designed all up weight with crew would that not effect its performance adversely? Surely weight would not be everything?

To put 75kg in context, the similarly sized RS400 is quoted as 129kg all up. That means that for every boat length you sail you push aside 54kg less water. That's like carrying 95 pints of Guinness (which is virtually a keg!), or for Laser squaddies, 160 cans of diet coke!

Vinylester or epoxy in the end?

... both are being assessed.  The philosophy is that if it needs to be epoxy it will be and if not considered necessary after full water tests vice versa - nothing on ICON will be there unless it totaly satisfies the 'function' ticket.  We are going for the full carbon low profile rig because it provides in bundles on handling and performance requirement.   On the other side of the calculation no clear resined mast (it is in white) as they are a pain to maintain, no marginally useful controls etc etc.  It might be a bit spartan to some tastes but it is and will be quick. And ALL UP sailing weight will be 75kg ish ... Icon is not a small boat.  We could go lighter as well but do we need to ?

Mike L.  (aka Cirrus)

This one is a few days old (deck and hull are now as one), but is the first picture of an actual boat, rather than tooling.  If you look carefully you can just make out the non-slip.