49er sails

Heard the rumour a few months back and thought that if it was going to ammount to anything, may have been discussed when they changed the foil design. The danger which you start heading towards if you increase rig size is that you are going to increase drag and innefficient area of sail in higher wind strengths, coupled with the fact that there is going to be an increase in forward pitching moment by more area up top on a boat which is already viewed as notoriously hard to sail in waves. 

Another reasonable idea which I heard on this forum was that they were considering losing weight in the wings, which could be easily done by changing to a Carbon/Nomex construction and would be quite easy to retrofit to older boats. The wings as they stand may be helping to produce increased weight aft to help prevent pitch-poling to a certain extent. If you lose weight from this area, the boat might end up becoming quite nose heavy, which would be a bit of a nightmare. They might do what they've done with the 29er and produce a 49erXX but would doubt it would immediately take over from the 49er. I personally find the boat very well balanced and would worry that modifying the design would lose the precise nature of the boat. The guys down under said they were clocking highest speeds with the Sports Rig in higher winds as they were able to use the sail area more effeciently and were hit with less drag. Increasing sail are may kill top end speed through more drag which goes against recent developments through the foil re-design as they have became "smoother" and flatter to minimalise top-end drag sacrifising low-speed lift. The rumour may have coincided with the fact there has been an increase in new boat price and the Bethwaite site is quoting the sail areas as larger than what most sources are quoting it at. There have been very successful crews in the region of 160kg and also at 140kg, don't think weight is much of an issue on the boat and from personal experience, the handling is more due to ability and agility than anything else. Will be very interesting to see if the plans go ahead and if the ISAF will be on board with them. New mast, sails etc could see at least another £5k being spent to update current boats and would push new prices up to at least £20k which may be to a step too far for the class.  

I haven't heard of this, it won't exactly be a one design if they start changing it now will it?

m_liddell they do do a sport rig, it didn't seem very popular and cost the same as a normal rig (so I think people just don't bother)