i saw the windsurfing touring blog with the purpose built hollow board for storage and i noticed that when touring they could only carry one sail size & i thought a variable sail size would give these boards a far greater use .The idea would be to utilise the boom travel and say 3 sizes out of 1 sail that's all i say as far as design goes say for touring eg 10mt 8mt 6mt looks good on paper i think i have overcome all problems without having built 1 of course . i realise that some but not that much performance would be lost to specific design size sails as we have now but i thought that would be offset because of the lower performance of a touring board anyway so would there be a market should i make one or just have enjoyed the challenge of designing it .i have never made a sail and would require a person with these skills to make my design & i imagine that would not be cheap to see a prototype through i dont even know if this has been done before or not any feedback would be fantastic thanks max

Sails are tricky things to design, especially when you make radical changes like that.

I would guess that if you did get it built, it might not perform all that well due to no fault of your design, but purely because it was the very first prototype. I'd expect the same if I just copied an existing sail and tried to get it built.

After a couple of iterations of testing it might work well though.

I'd build the first few out of dacron or similar, something you can sew easily with a domestic sewing machine, and then easily make changes to as required.

The landyacht people seem to enjoy this sort of challenge, perhaps if you ask in here:
www.seabreeze.com.au/forums/forum.asp?FORUM_ID=68
you might get some good ideas on how to make it a reality. I'd love to see how it works

yes but would anybody buy them & i don't see too much performance lost as i still intend to have battens the only real draw back i can see is that the smaller sail would always weigh as much as larger but that shouldn't be a problem

You'd probably need a series of cut outs for the boom and a way of pulling the reefed area off the mast to roll it . maybe a heavy zip and velcro set up . adjusting the sail sail on land would be do-able the challenge would be accomplishing it on the water.
Probably not too much luff curve and a softer mast as the sail will have to come down the mast as you reef
Nebs is right about the material , youd need to make it in a dacron, or similar so it can roll up.
I can smell a challenge a comin'

dont need cut outs

i saw some on that old windsurf around tasmania doco. they had like 2 sections you could zip off.

seemed to work, can't say i'd want one thou.

^^^^ They were called Delta Sails I think. You could change foot panels. They were reported to work all right.
They closed down about 10 years ago.

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actiomax said...

dont need cut outs

please expand on this statement. your answer with account for 10% of your final mark in the subject "Sail Design 101" legible diagrams will give a bonus 5%.

i thought of making the sail roll inside a zip on luff pocket that could go over and have the boom attached to the luff pocket straps for height adjustment and it would not have to clamp to mast roll up to next position and down haul would go through the luff pocket and sail maybe stepped battens or inflatable bladders like kites for battens

This add is out of Wind Surfing magazine March 96

thanks for that glitch i guess its not a new idea wonder why it hasnt taken off

Maybe they realized that people would buy less sails.
maybe the colours wernt trendy enough, or were last years colours.
i wonder how many people bought a trifoiler

i just wish new sails were still $359 still then i could afford them

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Glitch said...



This add is out of Wind Surfing magazine March 96

I think its great idea..If I had the $ I'd buy one! How often do I rig up a sail go out and have to come in and change and by then I'm buggered and can't get the beat out of a sail..I've always said they should have a furling sail or something but I didn't realise they'd made one.

After doing a few long distance windsurf trips in Aust and recently in Fiji I can't say that we ever really needed an adjustable sail (although i thought about it a few years ago myself).

When you are touring on a longboard the sail size doesn't seem to matter as much as we think it would.

Recently we sailed approx 40km from one side of port phillip bay to the other in a light to moderate sea breeze 10 - 15 knots and sailed back the following day in a howling northerly 35 knots plus. what we found was the board design and weight seemed to make the bigger difference than sail size.

also keep in mind that if you're windsurf touring you're hardly going to rig up and sail out to sea in a 35 knot breeze, you'd be smarter to stay put and try some fishing or read a book until the front has passed.

designing a sail specifically for windsurf touring would be a project i'd be interested in. when you're rigging up on beaches covered in coral and sailing a loaded up longboard in 0 - 25 knots you need a different rig than a race board and it seems hard to find a suitable sail.