For the 2008 Olympic Games some Tornado class teams developed a gennaker which could be used sailing upwind in very light breeze. This sail and the mystery around it made a huge storm within the class, and a South-American sailor started to call the sail Chupacabra.
This sail is a slightly bigger version for a different boat, but using the famous Chupacabra development.
The really first talk about this sail was in autumn of 2015 and the project started in January 2016. The whole designing process was started from some Rhino drawings.
The easy and on the other side the hard part was that the guys really knew what they want. I was sure I would like to use the Chupacabra shape, but i was not sure that i want any modifications on it and after consulting with Pablo, we have made some upgrades and the shape got ready.
Material side it was no doubt that we should go for membrane. The big dilemma was to choose the DPI number as the sail must be very strong be soft and light as it will be used mainly in really light winds.
Finally I think we have chosen the right DPI and the right fiber for this purpose.
We do lots of membranes with the gun glue of Qbond, but I was not happy about this solution on this sail. I wanted something that is much better for this sail. We ended up with the ultrasonic gluing.
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| Ultrasonic gluing |
After all the panels got their place, we just layer out in a parking lot, just to have see what we have done, just before we cut the perimeter.
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| Nice view, nice size. Yes, Deni is at the top :) |
The recut and the finishing was an average job, nothing special. Dyneema webbings at all corners with nice stitching with heavy threads. The luff is prepared for the anti torsion rope, I have used some special material here as dyneema hybrid and some cuben fiber in the covers.
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| Head Webbing |
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| Tack |
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| Soft clew |
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| Tack |
The boat is getting ready soon, some parts are still missing, I hope until next weekend everything will be together to fly this sail.
Update:After posting the picture of the construction to Facebook, I have got many quote requests on Chupacabra for Tornados, Nacra 20s and other cool boats, so there will be more posts about more sails like this.
