Cirrus Icon Development

Wow...that is a really lovely picture.

If not a reet propper setup mun

It looks like the Icon hull is longer??

And it highlights that bloomin jib cut.....but I'm sure you're onto that Mike....I wont mention anymore.

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Interesting photo, lots of firsts:

RS400: Sailing with a crew who has never been in a boat before.

Merlin: First time the boat has been on the water

Icon: First race for the new boat

Originally posted by ChrisJ Interesting photo, lots of firsts: RS400: Sailing with a crew who has never been in a boat before. Merlin: First time the boat has been on the water Icon: First race for the new boat

Question: which boat won?

Statement: the only boat sailing with the mast straight upright appears to be the Merlin. Is there any reason for this? Pinching comes to mind, but am I being too facile?

Originally posted by Rupert 2 boats in a small gust, the Merlin in a lull is how I saw it. mpossible to tell from 1 photo, though.

Little evidence of gust from the water condition in the photo. The gust might have hit the mid to top of the sails though, but one might have expected to have seen some wind shadow. Also, it looks like the Merlin is aiming lower and hiking a little harder (crew is further over to windward).

I would not read to much into any single photograph  .... ever !    It is just a nice photo and we thought you would like to see Icon in comparison to something else. 

Icon 002 is a long way from being opimised and was very 'buggy' in its first few races - lack of decent non-slip, battens with opinions of their own in light winds (easly solved btw), 'floating' dagger creating havoc in the tacks etc but it showed loads of potential, no major problems and real pace.  The handling is very good and those decades of development are very obvious.   I would say it is much faster than a Tasar would have been in the conditions and in medium breeze also faster but that is not perhaps a good comparison. Tacks were fast enough for sure despite low rocker; once we got the jib angles right Icon points exceptionally high and all round the course it had a very pleasing 'easy' motion.  It simply 'cuts' through the water ... 

However until we nail down the hull and rig spec and optimise everything we simply will not know too much about its relative speed.  The 400 should clearly be fast around the course in comparison and the Merlin should be faster deep offwind by a fair way in the lighter stuff at least.  Icon is not purely about speed, and we could easily make it a lot faster ... but it is aimed at a particular user grouping.    Not the fastest maybe, and it does not need to be,  but Icon will be far from slow in either absolute or comparitive terms.

The list of planned changes is already long but many are minor and easy to sort - others are a little more involved and will not be adopted until pre-production versions are with us in a while.  Already '002' will be back on the water next week with a centreboard, revised battening and rig and several other changes.  We will also try out the carbon 'stick'  rig in April - more conventional but more area etc to assess that option.  Icon is now on a fast development path as we aim to go to tooling within a few weeks.  It is still critical to run through all the options.  The rig programme can continue on 002 after the plug development starts so we are concentrating on hull at present.

Sail Material ?  Not on the critical path but we have used this material on the Blaze and Halo sails and it has proved  very durable - and they are not fully battened.  The jib may be worth looking at in more detail later.  The material has a kevlar scrim and  we have found even old sails remain very competitive - but no choice for Icon needs to be made yet.

We will again duck out from this thread until there is something more concrete or new to report to the forum.  If you are interested you can always talk with us direct.  No new Icon stuff now for next 7 days ..

Mike L.