Louis Vuitton Cup

[Cheechako]

Great racing on TV yesterday from San Diego Bay. Smaller one design cats than the Americas cup will be. Shorter course too. It's amazing those hinged mainsails actually work... they look like hell. They fly staysails regularly too..... Now where is that sailmaker that likes to post lately that staysails are useless.....? Sail trim is an interesting thing. Yes the basics about flying telltales etc are good for a starting point, but it's all about a lot of variables. These staysails were trimmed quite loose at the top... basically limp on the leech for the top maybe 1/3. On IOR boats we often had the mainsail cracked just to the point where there was a slight bubble on the luff.... and the boat was faster that way.

[colemj]

Those are not staysails, they are the standard racing jib. The sail in front of them is a genoa (code 0), and is only put up for reaching and very light air (like in San Diego - they weren't used at all in the Plymouth series). The boats usually don't take the jib down when the genoa is flown because the courses are so short and the boat speeds so fast. They would lose more time changing sails than they gain in the extra efficiency. The code 0 is on a furler, so it is easy to take in and down.

Mark

[Cheechako]

yea, they look more like a Solent rig....

[colemj]

Yes, I guess they do since they are so small and fractional, but they are the standard jib for that boat.

Mark

[kaimusailing]

It looks like they will not be racing until April. Great coverage, put it on the big screen. Watched Cascais and Plymouth as well. Looked at couple of large cats at the Annapolis boatshow. The standard is large fully battened main, flat staysail, roller furling gennaker or spinnaker. On the last America's Cup, the Oracle catamaran would only sheet out the wing sail 6 degrees from the close hauled setting. On one of the downwind legs in these AC45 races they were hitting 50 km/hr. I'd like them to have a race around the holidays in New Zealand or Rio.

You can check out A Class cats, which are similar in technology and sailed one up.