The Lightwind-Beast development

I get many emails on how to make catamarans more effective for lighter winds. We can see many sails which is not so efficient. It has power, but cannot go forward fast. I have seen several cases on different regattas that the boat is flying a hull in really low wind, , but was very very slow. It means it has too much drag.

This whole light wind passion started several years ago, when we bought our Tornado. We have lots of light wind days on Lake Balaton. I have started to think how to pimp her. Now let's see what was done in the last two years.

New direction - The Foiling Moth - Part 1.

We are in several foiling projects and more is coming. We do so much analysis on the sails for different foiling boats and we spent so much time to work in this area so decided to jump into some moth sails as well.

Chupacabra XL

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.

Tornado Worlds 2016 - mission done

10-16. June, the Tornado Worlds were held in Lindau, Germany. We know quite well the place as we were racing a lot there with Libera in the good old times during the Libera Cup and Rund ums.

Mainly it is a light wind place with flat water, but we know very well that some strange things can happen there.

We have started to work on the new sails just after the 2015 Worlds. We knew that we need something new for really light wind.

And the journey began...

8mod - the big main and jib

We got a special order to make an 8mod sport boat upgrade. The boat is not a normal 8 meter one design, it has a slightly longer carbon mast and a retractable bowsprit.

The task was to make as optimal mainsail and jib as possible for lighter wind sailing.

Europa 30 Bestia - the mid-genoa

"Bestia" (HUN 12) is another Europa 30 we are working on. This boat has already a set from us, which was made last year. The inventory contains the genoa, the mainsail, and a small jib. It turned out that the gap is too big between the jib and the genoa. The task was to make a mid-genoa which perform best from 4-6 beaufort.

3D view of "Bestia" sails

Europa 30 Johanna - the mainsail

The Europa 30 class is a really Hungarian class, it contains really different boats so the class rules use the KLR formula to make the class more unified. Our sails are quite successful in this class. The first set was made in 2012 for the boat called "Fétis" ( HUN 16) and the second generation came in 2014-15.

Johanna with the old sails

F16 Optimization - The Mainsail

In the last post of optimization I talked about the jib.  Let's see now the main motor, the mainsail.

Everything has started with this sail modification. A team from France asked me to make a more powerful sail for the Europeans. I was thinking a lot which direction to take as I was pretty happy with our first mainsail design. It had a 6 batten.

F16 Optimization - CHP2k16 Jib

Our F16 sail optimization started around late May, early June 2015 for the Europeans. I have started to write another post about this project it turned out to have different posts to the different sail types.

Let's start it with the jib. The reason I have chosen this sail to start with is very simple. The last version got finished just right before Xmas and headed straightly to France and participating on the Martinique Cata Raid. It was a quite quick project for this sail, the time was far too short for the right and full analysis, we had to built the jib in an absolutely short time.

By the way, the guys, Emmanuel Le Chapier and Théo Constance won the F16 class and got 4th overall, fighting against the F18s.