V Twin

You have still got to remember I'm not a natural boat single handler with the experience you lot have, if you'd seen what happened when Neal Gibson got on it and got a puff, somebody with those years of I14 and all sorts of other sailing expeience, it was just 100% another league he was the one that spiked my GPS tracks at 11 mph in 7-8 mph wind.

Just a reminder... I knew all along it wasn't going to be going anywhere in a drifter, which Sundays race turned out to be, by the time I'd free'd off the kite that got jammed, the fleet were pretty much round the first boy and gone (it was a reaching start), the one time during the race there was any breeze that could be described as unidirectional and I happened to be on the same leg as the leading contender (who at the time had a considerable lead but was overwhelmed when he too sailed into a hole by the back markers that came in from the sea on a 180 degree shift, the twin matched the contender for upwind speed, once the new untrialled jib was fully sheeted (manually).

You can't call anything from this one outing, if it turns out to be a total rfwot I'll happily admit it, but so far yes in light sub 5 mph it doesn't go, but we always knew that. There is an answer, it would be to increase the volume and simply round those sponsons. If this were a board that's what we'd do, go back and re shape it, but first I need to know the top end capability of it as a planing hull.

Now, I didn't have to share any of this, it is a fecking experiment after all and if it works you can be sure other folk will be taking the good bits and running with them and y'all will benefit long term, that's the way life goes, the first off is never right, but someone has to start the ball rolling.

What i badly need to know is how well it goes in a sailing breeze and I don't have the benefit of a piece of local water with access via a slip in order to go and test it day in day out, so it takes a lot longer than it might, but then every outing is fun, even the bad ones and what else would I be doing?

Graeme is begrudingly acknowledging his own greater understanding of sailboats now compared to when he commissioned this toy- the simple fact that every boat has a compromise isn't easily grasped, especially when you're spending the annual minimum wage on something that is supposed to be for fun.  In the case of this design, its compromise is light winds, something we could have all told just by looking at the WSA and knowing there's no way he'd get the power to unstick it.  So maybe he's admitting that the 'all things to all people on all sea conditions in a massive wind range' was a tad ambitious.  But it's also worth understanding his definition of light wind.  As a windsurfer he'd probably say light wind is a F3, anything below is simply 'non sailing' cycling wind.  Conversely in dinghydom once it's over F4 then even the big boys in their Phantoms retire to the bar rather than go sailing at their Nationals.  

 

not my quote but sums up this thread I think.

 

Thanks to T Rosevelt