V Twin

The V Twin was not a fool's errand, and I still applaud GRF for it - but the expectations from it, neatly put in perspective by Chris249 were a fool's hope.

Originally posted by Pierre I think two-up in a breeze it is probably a quick bit of kit. Yes I know it's supposed to be a single hander, sticks in the light stuff etc etc etc... Mileage in it yet I believe.

I think I'd want to see a lot more development of this one plus a couple more prototype hulls before I wrote the whole concept off as being intrinsically flawed.

I think you guys are somewhat naive about just how much time, effort and money are required to properly evaluate a competely new idea. I do wonder how many good ideas are stillborn because the evaluation isn't done properly. I remember trying what we would now call a mast stump out on my Cherub in the 1980s. It was a complete disaster - mast through the deck twice in three outings - and I abandoned it in disgust, but with new materials and competent engineering the Twelve footer sailors made their version of the concept work, and there are substantial numbers of boats sailing with what is essentially the same idea, independantly developed and done properly.

I am still not prepared to say I think whether GRFs is fundamentaly flawed or not basically because I still don't really understand it. And I wouldn't want to say whether its fundamentally impossible to achieve a better balance between speed and handling than we have now. One should not forget Clarke' first law: "1.When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong."

Someone mentioned cats as the aswer to this impossible quest. What about those "Heath Robinson" Catapult cats with their inflatable hulls. http://www.catapultcats.com

+1 especially the disregard for hard earned lessons in for example dinghy fit out.  Thus creating too many variables.