[MHml] walker\rigs\human nature

[Rob Denney]

G'day,

Thanks for the nice words.  Unstayed, twin booms would be a problem as the flex at the mast head would do all sorts of weird stuff to the jib shape.    Stayed, I guess there is some potential, but the weight would put me off.  I would rather go higher and accept that the top few feet of the jib were not doing anything.  There was a Grainger 45' cat which had a twin boom set up with both sails reefing vertically .  Grainger disowned it, but the owner had megabucks so it was pretty well built, albeit more complex than I would have done.   Unfortunately there were a lot of niggly problems with fittings falling off and electric reefing motors not working so it was never properly tested, then it caught fire and the experiment ended.  

I never sailed on it, but had a look and it all seemed more trouble than it was worth.  I now think this applies to headsails generally.  The America's Cup boats now have square top jibs, and need collapsing spreaders and inflatable battens to allow them to work.  Rumour is that this "innovation"only cost several million bucks to develop and gains them 0.0001 knots upwind. Money well spent, I reckon! ;-) 

Mr Walker is an interesting mix of snake oil salesman and innovative thinker.  The rig has potential (a version of it performed quite well at speed week back in the days when interesting rigs and boats were more common than sailboards), although not for commercial ships, but he apparently got through far more government and private sector money than his output would imply.    As for the court case which Yachting World lost, I thought that it was quashed on appeal and they did not have to pay the million quid.  Regardless, the issue was not the performance, which was just as hopeless as Matt Sheehan (still employed by YW) said, but some irrelevant comment about the maneuverability of the boat.   The boat in the picture looks pretty awful, but at least they are sailing it, so maybe we will get some development and some actual numbers.

regards,

Rob

----- Original Message ----- 
  From: John Scott 
  To: multihulls at steamradio.com 
  Sent: Thursday, September 07, 2006 2:08 AM
  Subject: [MHml] walker\rigs\human nature


  Going back to my original pointand the old Greek guy,it seems to me that much accepted wisdom is belief based and not fact based.The article I referred too appeared to test  generally accepted beliefs about rigs and appeared to illustrate that they were at variance with the 'facts'.I am inclined to think that a sign of wisdom is the ability to change ones beliefs in the light of evidence to the contrary.I.E.open mindedness how interesting it is then for me to hear such vituperation expressed towards the WalkerWing sail,whichwhatever oneBELIEVESorFEELS about its aesthetics or coventionality,Iunderstand ,does work ,most efficiently---shocked I am therefore to encounter such apparent 'close mindedness' inthe Multihulls at ... forum ,open minded as we all must be in order to take such  such an interesting the fact based superiority of multis as opposed to our 
  irrational friends ,the dreaded,closed minded Monotonous Hullers------Human Nature.-was it ever thus!       
  On a more serious note it would be interesting to hearthe thoughts ofthose masters ofopenn minded originality and practical fact based experience at HarryProa regarding the twin boom balestrom idea  
  Don't forget'Iknow only that I know nothing',so please people lets not have anyone getting their mainsail in too much of a twist over any  of the above   Regards  js































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