Cirrus Icon Development

It went nicely enough one-up and with some minor conversions too... the issues were around launching and capsize recovery without the dead weight and spare set of grubby mitts of a crew. It was a very light hull, without much stability once those racks filled up.

I'm glad it's being sailed properly now though.

I saw it again at WPNSA hard standing again today- still a good looker! (even if broke!)

Would would interest me most in the icon is an alternate rig to boost the weight range up to two 80kg sailors or perhaps up to a total weight of 180kgs at a push, a sort of double handed version of the halo concept. That would be cool and would be great for a lot of sailors at club level and beyond.  There arent any boats that i would consider as a hiking double hander at the moment with a rig like the icon, it would be great for river sailing like we have out of warsash and a lot of lake sailors would probably enjoy the extra power.  

Icon has been sailed with as little as 130kg and as heavy ... as Peaky and myself on one occasion ! (Guesses on a postcard etc).  Regularly I sail with another Blaze helm ('Andy' Beddows) who is a fair bit lighter than me and we are around 150-160kg but a lot of different crew combinations have now sailed in them.    I'd make an informed guess on the 'ideal' and suggest it is between 140 and 170kg  - does not mean that those outside will be totally outclassed in many conditions either.  The Icon hull was developed after trials with smaller NS14 hulls to give a much wider weight carrying capability - ie bit more volume when needed as well as bieng stretched ....

The rig is, as Peaky says between 200 and 400 size but being fully carbon (light/efficient) requires only a bit more 'grunt' than the 200 and in some condiitons my impression is a lot less.  We tried some very large rig options indeed early on but the 'benefit' was one of diminishing returns so a more reasonable / optimal 13.5m was the final result.  

As ever the objective is to offer competitive racing to a wide range of crew sizes and shapes and for them to be easily able to 'power up/down' the rig according to crew and conditions. Now all boat developers will say similar things so you will have to be the judge of that.

Mike L.




Edited by blaze720 - 21 Nov 11 at 8:37am

Originally posted by Hughph And it had a very retro boat breaker.  :D

fyi jack... the original 1980's barton set up found it's way to a new lease of (proper) life on IainC's Summer Girl

(in return for a 1970's tufnell special and a couple of britneys.)

Edited by rogue - 21 Nov 11 at 1:22pm