American Magic has a "Bat Wing" main now

[mcexley001 18]

Similar to what we saw on ITUK recently, American Magic's Patriot now has a main with battens extending past the leech.

Any consensus on the intent of this development?

Screen grab from Justin Mitchell's Youtube page.

[Indio 782]

6 minutes ago, mcexley001 said:

Similar to what we saw on ITUK recently, American Magic's Patriot now has a main with battens extending past the leech.

Any consensus on the intent of this development?

Screen grab from Justin Mitchell's Youtube page.

Fuck that's a lot of spray...

[Xlot 700]

 

[Windskip 15]

9 minutes ago, Indio said:

Fuck that's a lot of spray...

20-24 knots windspeed, and they appeared to be doing little splashdowns a lot and then popping right up, maybe testing some new mode. Very very fast at times from the look of things though.

[A3A 85]

The Italian boys are FOS. This is more likely a quick and dirty test of a smaller head width for heavy air. It's cheap and easy to modify an older existing main this way and not sacrifice a set of battens, nor mess up all the shape control scheme in the top of the sail. At around $200 per meter, the 16 battens (8 per skin) will run near $20k.  If the concept is good, then you build a sail to size with a proper set of battens. 

[I14RACER 176]

5 hours ago, A3A said:

The Italian boys are FOS. This is more likely a quick and dirty test of a smaller head width for heavy air. It's cheap and easy to modify an older existing main this way and not sacrifice a set of battens, nor mess up all the shape control scheme in the top of the sail. At around $200 per meter, the 16 battens (8 per skin) will run near $20k.  If the concept is good, then you build a sail to size with a proper set of battens. 

Nah. These guys have money to burn. They are not doing anything half way. Even for testing. They have in-house sail designers and makers. This was intentional. So that they could meet sail width measurement specs and make the sail smaller for lower righting moment in heavy breeze.

[kindofblue 0]

The battens remind me of our Hobie Cats ;-)

[A3A 85]

12 minutes ago, I14RACER said:

Nah. These guys have money to burn. They are not doing anything half way. Even for testing. They have in-house sail designers and makers. This was intentional. So that they could meet sail width measurement specs and make the sail smaller for lower righting moment in heavy breeze.

The rule allows a full meter of head width between max and min. They must be seriously overpowered if they need to get smaller than minimum and resort to measurement tricks. I'm not sure the AC sail measurers would measure the straight to the batten tips. It would be to the intersection of the projected leech segments. 

[Mozzy Sails 444]

7 hours ago, A3A said:

The rule allows a full meter of head width between max and min. They must be seriously overpowered if they need to get smaller than minimum and resort to measurement tricks. I'm not sure the AC sail measurers would measure the straight to the batten tips. It would be to the intersection of the projected leech segments. 

this is all in the NYYC thread.

And yes, the measurement arbitration put out the adjudication that this is exactly what they do. 

Is the width of the AC logo specified anywhere? Perhaps that is sized so it would fit he min head girth?

[.......................... 167]

19 hours ago, kindofblue said:

The battens remind me of our Hobie Cats ;-)

I was going to say it looked like a 1990 Chris Cairns Tornado sail built for the windy worlds with the hollow between the battens and the straight run from batten two to five to let the middle leech blow/twist open in the big puffs...

[alanjs 0]

within the rules, a mainsail area can be as low as 135 sq. m with minimum head size (maximum foot). The deduced sail area and lower CofE results in increased performance in higher winds (as illustrated yesterday?)

[atwinda 87]

On 11/19/2020 at 8:32 PM, I14RACER said:

Nah. These guys have money to burn. They are not doing anything half way. Even for testing. They have in-house sail designers and makers. This was intentional. So that they could meet sail width measurement specs and make the sail smaller for lower righting moment in heavy breeze.

I genuinely believe this mindset does not take into account a cost-benefit analysis. SURE they COULD spend $25,000 to cut the main and battens to try an idea, but is that worth it if you could test the same case for $2000-$4000 and avoid ruining a set of expensive battens in the process? Let's say it didn't work out, and you cut the battens down- if those battens were not specific to that mainsail, you're out a ton more money to use the non-recut main again.

And again... Recuts take TIME (the one thing you can't get back), what other sails are they building? With the first regatta a month away, are they going to be bringing new sails online for that... You'd expect those blanks to be arriving around now to be finished by then. Ya gotta make sure the graphics team has plenty of time to paint/apply the pretty sponsor logos on the sails.

I don't think "they have money to burn"- that money has to be accounted for and used prudently to ensure the team as a shot of their goal. Spend carelessly and you may not have cash at a crucial moment to develop and implement a new system. ETNZ have been up front about bring new gear online at very late stages of the cycle- and I am sure all these teams are applying an agile mindset to their final configuration.

I stand by this was a quick recut.

[snaerk 45]

Na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na Bat-Main !!!!