Frankenboat - what's yours?

Sometimes I feel like a big Cod that's accidentally been swept into a pond in a flood and the tides gone out listening to you lot.. How many una rigs do you need? It's one area that is entirely catered for and now with some truly excellent boats, Aero, D Zero, Solution, H2, to name just four that immediately spring to mind but us light sea dwellers albeit seasonal sea dwellers do want some sort of turbo assist for those long dreary processional legs infested with Laser. Tell me, what exactly is there for us? Nowt, Nada, Niet. If the current kite system doesn't work why doesn't someone come up with an alternate that does, screecher furler brought up to date springs to mind. Kites are bloody useless tearing ripping things with holes in them why not some thin gauge cuben fibre stuff cassetted..Or some dangly pole driven symmetric deal might work I did have a drawing for one somewhere didn't we talk about it some while back?


Edited by iGRF - 11 May 18 at 10:03am

On our estuary an assymetric singlehander would be a big problem, we do not have exclusive use of the water, having to share it with yachts, power boats, fishermen, moored boats, trots, pontoons; so keeping a very good lookout, and being able to manouver instantly are key requisites, and being able to run dead down wind inside the tide line is also key; so assymetric is never going to work.

One needs to think about the fun/hassle ratio.

With singlehanded boats especially hoists and drops tend to be a pain, especially if the old body is not what it was. So supposing the hoist and drop adds 30 seconds of hassle to each leg, then if legs are only two minutes long then that's a fair bit of hassle for not that much clear sailing.

Similar problems are true of a foiling boat until you reach the sort of level where you can actually keep the boat on the foils on every leg and through the manouvers.

With a single sail boat the manouvers and roundings have a much lower hassle factor and take much less time, so you get more enjoyable sailing for your money, at the price of lacking the extremes of performance.

But invaluable when you get it wrong and end up with it over on it's ear........

Yeah speed is fun - but then it you just want some speed in your life why not get a foiling moth (Edit: or a race car...which is what I did)

Edited by H2 - 10 May 18 at 4:05pm