overdraft

I gave up on whippings a while ago, possibly because I suck at them? To me it always seemed that it was causing imbalances between the cover and core, that it was a bumpy ride through the sheaves and it was a bit more permanent that I wanted. What I do now is just run two or three lengths of whipping twine straight through the rope and cut/melt the ends about a rope diameter from where they protrude on both sides. The net effect is like spider legs sticking out at your marked point. Probably not visible enough for night work, but for day sailing it's easy, doesn't distort the rope and if you want to move or delete them you just cut off one of the melty ends and yank it out by the other. All ready to put the mark where you REALLY need it.

I'm stoked to see this round of the AC, but part of that is to see if anyone gets chopped in half in the pre-start... These boats are cool, but a bit divorced from everyday sailing. Using the AC/F1/MotoGP analogy the formula still needs to resonate to some degree with the spectators. If the F1 formula produced a hovercraft or MotoGP bikes had 3 wheels I think it would lose something. If I was the Master of the Galaxy I'd cherry pick some of the cooler bits but couch them in a formula that would produce something a bit more relatable. Something like a monohull of sufficient length to be magnificent, twin skin soft mains (I dig that idea) and any foiling solution you'd like as long as it is muscle and string powered only... This might result in a fixed or manual canting T-foil keel or daggerboards or who knows, but I imagine it would not result in the current crazy waving arm thing... My 2¢

Bowie reference? Hope so!

i don't know shit from shortcake, but I'll bet that on a boat that size part of the design brief will be a maximum draft based on the proposed cruising area. So once you've got max draft all you can really do is make the chord as long as necessary to get the thing to sail?

Agree with @MidPack about the 'better soft shackle' on L-36.com because it snaps shut whereas the conventional ones need to be milked shut: vid of closing both kinds Also like these a bit better than the ones with no bury as they lie nicer across whatever your attaching them to.

I love new knots but sometimes its a challenge to get crew that know how to reliably tie a bowline nevermind something new... Lately I’ve been finishing my spectra lines by pulling the end back inside the rope. It makes a tidy end quicker than whipping, but it also makes a thick bit at the end... Evans, do you think that swelling in the end would act as a stopper to help with slipping in conventional knots?

Yup!

me on the good ol’ Pocket Rocket back in the day

the pusher and blade aren’t the tricky part... length of ss rod, tap the top for a ball, file a flat surface at the bottom and drill/tap to accept the blade which could be fabricated from a variety of materials... the melges style needs to have a slot cut in the leading edge of the foil and be drilled out for the rod down the whole length. seems like it would be a difficult retrofit...

smart to post the mea culpa under the WRONG forum heading...

Zhik 700’s are 50% off on the Zhik website as we speak... well, in the USA... full pop and poorly priced in Canada still.

planned time to actual is the same as metric conversion... you gotta double it and add 30

ya, i lived in that thread when it was live... i learned a ton in there!

oh cool! direct experience! i’ll talk to Fraser... thanks!