Video of the week

The radial is a bit shorter on the luff and longer on the foot (about 20cm?) than the punk, hence the really low squat look.

The punk sail is not quite there yet but still pretty nice, but more importantly you've got a much stiffer but lighter mast up there, so you can have a much less grunty / luff curve driven sail, and the lightness of the mast means that less force is being put back into the boat when the mast moves about in the chop, meaning the boat doesn't require such aggressive technique to keep it moving. I had one of the radial olympic squad girls in it a while ago and her comments were that "It just feels so easy!"

The radial laminate sail has been a revelation to me coming from sh*tty old dacron - it looks full to start in the light but it just doesn't stretch on the bias so the sail doesn't bag out as the breeze gets up, its rock solid. Plus the cunningham and outhaul adjustments are loads more effective. I'm confident we'll hit the ball out of the park with the next one.

Its inevitable that with something like this there will be a competitive weight range, but there are a load of features to broaden that out. Plus there are bigger / smaller rigs in the pipeline.

At the tiger I got about 10 people a go in the punk, ranging from the smallest girl in the lone feva, who I'd put at 50kg, right up to Sten, who is not a small lad. All had a good time and said it felt great. Although Sten was prob being polite, as he looked a little big in it for the 3kts during his ride on the saturday. Most of the test pilots went out on the breezier sunday.

She isn't slow upwind. Not quiiite as quick as the merlins that the PRO decided to handicap me with, but not slow. Comfy and light and responsive too.

Apologies, video thread hijack over.

The hull of the Punk certainly seems to slip through the water very cleanly, at least in displacement mode and provided you keep the gunwales out of the water (you can almost see the drag kick in when they dip, heeling to windward on the run).

Nice low freeboard too - my sort of boat! (I realise that contributes to the gunwale-dipping, but hey...)

I wonder if the aspect ratio of the mainsail isn't a bit high though (even allowing for a vertically-stretched picture), especially with the very limited amount of righting moment. When you look at how quick the Radial is with a very low-aspect sail (considering all else that's stacked against it), it makes you wonder

Bit of Punk fun in a variety of conditions at the same race.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=RGwVIezkqc8

Some helmet cam stuff on the way too, watch this space..

Linky no worky....