Smaller sails for ladies & Juniors
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Hi,
I saw that North in France had made some cut down sails for OKs (see Picasa gallery here https://profiles.google.com/oronsiaux/photos/5640598990679608289 ) and heard that P&B in the UK and various sailmakers in Australia had done the same.
Is there an “emerging standard” for this or is each initiative completely local? It’d be nice to have a standard option.
H
The clew appears to be cut very high on that sail!
I think that cut down sails work to a degree, but isn’t the fact that sailors have a mast stiffness and sail cut to suit their weight doing the same thing?
Plus it avoids the potential for argument over it being “an even playing field”
Tony
Well, soft mast or flatter cut, more sail area is still more sail area and more weight is still needed than with less area.
As for “why a standard”, it’d be (perhaps) nice to have a youth division, lightweight, grandmasters, whatever, who could all be on the same rule.
true however adi walker is 60 kilos ish and sails full rig and has a soft mast and goes very quickly
I wouldn’t be very happy about any suggestion of an ‘OK radial’ (or an ‘OK 4.7’, come to that). I don’t have any problem with people using smaller sails or smaller rigs, but I’d be really resistant to allotting small rig boats a different py number, because that effectively fragments the class. After all, if you want to sail an OK that’s fine, and if you want to use a small sail on windy days that’s fine too (and class legal, I think, isn’t it?) But if you are (or think you are) too small to be competitive in an OK it’d make more sense to sail a Europe rather than campaigning for a small rig version of the OK so that you can be competitive against other people who are also too small to sail OKs! Personally, I’m 85 kilos and I’d MUCH rather sail an OK than a small rig version of a Finn or Phantom, which is rather the logic of your suggestion.
Davehaving left the i.c. class for much the same reason as dave outlines as the class was progreesively fragmented by adding a spinnaker option, then changing the rules to reduce the weight by 50% and introduce a box rule for measurement of hulls the class can now barely field 10 boats in each class.if you want a class with options the ok is not for you.if you want an exillerating technical sail it is. first learn to sail it with the rig you have before you try to change things.
Surely with an appropriately flat but sail and good use of sail controls its possible to make the boat reasonable for lighter weights. It is a boat that rewards good boat handling.
And to a certain degree, with my devils advocate hat on of course(!), there is an arguement for the fact that there are many, many classes now that a light weight may well choose over ours. Should we not look to appeal stronger to our appropriate market segment for fleet growth, and leave what is a great little boat alone? After all the competitive weight range is still a good band!
I think as much as anything else the uk fleet has stronger competition nationally for growth than many other nations, since dinghy sailing is so big for us in comparison to other regions of the world.
I get the arguments against class fragmentation, believe me.
I was really just asking whether there was any coordination of what seemed to be multiple efforts to bring in a smaller sail size. Since I’m new in the class I could only presume these efforts were being pursued because there was interest in a smaller sail.
H
All this is not new. In Eastgermany there used to be a minirigg with a small sail especially designed for young, light sailors.
Looked like this
http://kleinanzeigen.ebay.de/anzeigen/s-anzeige/berlin/boote-bootszubehoer/u508871It was quite common in the GDR.
Niklas
Mary uses a smaller sail very effectively and as far as I know it meets all the measuring criteria. In a lot of conditions she is very competitive with the fleet with this sail. There is no reason that anyone shouldn’t use a smaller sail in fleet racing as a way of having a bit less power as long as it measures. A lot of work has been done with this in Aus I think and they could tell how 80% rigs fare in fleet racing.
I wouldn’t want to have different racing for another version of the OK – our boat is what it is- but getting the best setup to suit a racer in the fleet and getting more people in the racing is a good thing. There are times when youngsters would do better with a bit less power and I am used to the fact that a lot more of the fleet are 85k plus and I won’t get much of a look-in when it blows. The 80% rig will do a lot for the confidence of some sailors and help get the techniques in place.
I can see what Hugh means – but the reason why our juniors sail OKs is because of the challenge. Some days they are blisteringly quick and some days they are out of it but having fun just the same. There is an 80% sail being used and it fits in with the class rules as far as I know. It just needs someone to buy a sail and use it.
Bill
In Australia the smaller sails were developed to assist our juniors to jump into the OK at a very early age. Eddie O’Donnell’s two youngest boys started sailing with us at Wangi on Lake Macquarie, NSW when they were only 12 and 13 years old. At no time was there ever intention to develop any other rig class for the OK Dinghy. Eddie experimented with the original German junior sail but this was just too small to be of any effective use in progressing the boys towards a full size OK rig. The next steps were to move to full mast height sails cut shorter along the foot at 80% and 90% measurements. The 90% sail proved to be very effective for the lads as they developed their skills in our boat. Now at 17 and 18 years old both boys have progressed to using full sized rigs and racing competitively in the Wangi club fleet.
OKDIA has full details of the sail measurements. I understand that it is a copy of the 90% sail that Mary is now using. The 90% sail is very effective up wind in moderate to fresh conditions and for our smaller sailors around 70 kgs is reasonably effective down wind.
Bill.
Hi Burt, Hopefully we will have at least one junior competitor for Denmark 2012. Just who this might be will depend on results recorded during our current season in our various States and in our 2011/12 Nationals to be held at Adelaide SC in South Australia 3-8 January, 2012. Cheers, Bill.
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