New Laser Rag

Originally posted by davidyacht And they look cool.

This conclusion was not arrived at hurriedly given I had a vested desire at the time to have a good tale to tell about 3dl, I'd been lobbying for a Raceboard version their raceboard sail wasn't particularly fast either, but I changed my mind.

The problem is not just the seaming, there are no seams and for so many years seams and seam shaping have been a part of sail making and design, designs are also cumulative each year or design building on a previous year, a tough here a mill there.

So taking a mould from a shape a computer kicks out as ideal, then moulding it and you have to realise (if t's the real deal) they do make a one piece and the re inforcing threads are one piece, even for the small sails.

So you will get a shape that is perfect for a given condition, but probably not so viable across a wide range of conditions. Back then these were slalom sails so the call was for a performance high speed straight liner, we took it, or at least my pal who bought one took it to speed week, where it consistently underperformed the equivalent sail in the conventional range, it wasn't just a 'feeling'.

I knew the designer then Larry Herbig, he had to jump through all manner of hoops to get a piece of the mould and the software, yet ironically the recreation side of the project, some 3dl wave sails were the greatest sail I believe ever made to date, yet they were made from moulds into panels, shipped to sri lanka and assembled conventionally over special ribs cut to the foil design. Compared to previous sails they exhibited amazing range, control, low end power, stability and 'feel'.

Unfortunately North and Mistral all fell foul of a corporate takeover towards the end of that period so he "Larry' never got to progress the project which was a bloody shame, still I'm pleased to hear you're happy with them and maybe they've made some break through to alleviate the range issues, it was 15 years ago,good to see dinghy world catching up, so it's nearly into the twenty first century, a shame it's not on something other than a sailing coffin, wouldn't it be nice if there was a development hiking una rig similar to the solo called maybe the Solution 2?

Originally posted by turnturtle I think the Solo is one of the nicest single handers to just go sailing on.

Which is why you need therapy and spiders like to live on them. (Solo's)

Hi Graeme - check this paper out from 2005 if you're feeling geeky. http://www.academia.edu/1496652/Sail_Aero-Structures_Studying_Primary_Load_Paths_and_Distortion
My limited experience of string/load path sails is that they are good at holding one shape with low weight and good life, ie a good "one setting" sail in windsurf parlance. but like you say they don't often deal with differences in set / adjustability so well. Earlier string sails early 90s in particular had all he threads set along the principal load paths and this probably was part of the problem. That paper indicates that having enough fibres laid off the principal load axis is the key to getting an adjustable sail. This also corresponds to my experience of contenders maxx fabric, which facilitates use of cross cut layouts, but ends up 15% heavier than a radial cut sail. If imagine it would take an awful long time to get a windsurf sail right as mono film is isotopic and 3dl definitely not so. Plus there is so much nonlinear Stuff going on with windsurf sails up near the head.
You see even in the high end fleets tp52 and ac when it was run in monos that there was wildly different views between teams on the best thread paths for the same sail. So I think that 3dl and the like is really good but it takes a lot of goes to get it right for any particular application, unless you have beginners luck :-)