From: tarkkone@klaava.Helsinki.FI (Lauri Tarkkonen)
Newsgroups: rec.boats
Subject: Re: Tuff Luff and other headstay foils
Date: 11 Nov 92 15:21:37 GMT
Organization: University of Helsinki

In <1992Nov10.115948.18297@cs.brown.edu> jfh@cs.brown.edu (John F. Hughes) writes:

>In article <1992Nov10.014200.22963@klaava.Helsinki.FI> tarkkone@klaava.Helsinki.FI (Lauri Tarkkonen) writes:
>>In <1992Nov9.125516.8324@das.harvard.edu> bloxham@geophysics.harvard.edu (Jeremy Bloxham) writes:


>If you read carefully, Jeremy said he doubted that more races were lost 
>than were won. If you get in real trouble from your headfoil once in a 
>hundred races, it's not hurting you much---you lose only *that* race.
>On the other hand, it's giving you that little edge for *all* the other 
>races.

Maybe I have to specify a bit what I mean, whit my statement, that
more races are lost than won.  The performance edge is fairly small.
A good boat with a good crew sailing on proper direction wins a race.
It has a headfoil. Do you say that the headfoil won the race for them?
But when the headfoil caused a mess, that caused them to drop five
places, you hear them tell: The headfoil lost us the race. 

>And Jeremy was talking about racing, right? I confess, on this one,
>I think Jeremy is completely right. 

I did not know if the original question was about racing or cruisin
so I tried to speak about sailing in general.

>And I think that if the foils lost more races than they won, racers 
>would have pitched them after a few years. 

I am not sure about that. The sailboat racing is a very complicated
sport. If you are seriously looking for the reason, why your boat
is finishing last or first, youl usually look at the wrong end
of your tiller. :-)

>It's true that racers get on binges where boat X
.... some reasonable stuff deleted .....

Do you remember the history of the black deck?  I read it for about
20 years in the magazine Racing Yachtsman?

The story goes... Bus Mosbacher had ordered a black boat, with a white
deck. The delivery was a white boat with a black deck. The Bermuda
race was so close that there was not time to get a new one, the yard
accepted that the mistake was theirs.  The race was a succes, the new
boat won, but the life under the deck was miserable. When the repor-
ters after the race asced the skipper: What was the cause of the
good performance, he answered in anger: The black deck. Then there
started to breed theories how the dark deck was good, when it heated
the air so it elevated and kept the spinnaker upp. Then there were 
a multitude of orders of racing boats with black decks.

>How interesting. I have a 90% jib that I use about 70% of the time. It's
>on a roller. Yours is on hanks.  

Because it is on hanks I kan have full lenght battens, and after
two seasons use, I think they are very usefull.


>And you know what? I change my headsails when the weather changes. I drop the
>old one on the foredeck, secure it to the lifelines, and hoist the new one. 

Most people buy roller headsails because they think they do not have to
change sails as the weather changes. And because I do not believe in
rolling, I do not buy a roller. You got yours with the boat, if you
would have hanked sails with the boat, perhaps you would not have any
roller. :-).

>I do this singlehanded most of the time, same as you. It's a bit of a pain
>keeping it on deck without the hanks, true. I keep sail ties secured to the
>stanchion bases, ready to secure the sail as it comes down. I seems
>to work fine for me. 

I believe I could make it, but my vife wants to do, when she is around     
and she would not like to do it if the sails did not have hanks.

>I would have preferred the hanked-on version, but 
>my boat came with the roller, and I figured I'd give it a try before 
>investing lots of money converting the sails *back* to being hanked on. 
>You know something? It's worked pretty well. A *lot* of the time, being able
>to roll out the jib is awfully nice. And when I get in harbor, and want just
>the tiniest bit of power to manuever with, or to pull the bow off the wind,
>rolling out just a little bit of jib works like a charm...

>I agree. Roller reefing headsails are still a developing technology. But
>roller furling seems to work pretty decently.

I am not prepared to pay the price of the roller just for storing the sail.

>And I used to think this too, until I tried it the other way, and found it
>to be not so very different.

I happen to prefer the hanks and I am not prepared to pauy for rolling.

>A new headfoil/furler for my boat costs about $1500. About the same cost
>as a new main. About 1/5 of what I spend per year on my boat. Assuming
>that a headfoil system lasts 10 years (mine was installed by the previous
>owner sometimes in the mid-70s!), that makes it about 1/50 of my per-year
>costs. And I'm not racing Sarah. I'd like to point out that in a typical
>boat racing from our local yacht club, the cost of beer/soft drinks
>for the crew exceeds this number.

>But if, as you say, racing is too expensive, I think you should look at the
>cost of sails rather than the cost of headfoils....

The big rivers are made from small ....

>I claim that the useful gadgets appear and remain, and the useless ones appear
>and fade. The continued use of headfoils is proof enough of their utility 
>in a racing boat. For the cruising boat, the jury may still be out. I'm
>pretty convinced that in the end, it's going to be the way of the world, just
>like the "easily kinked" aluminum mast, and a million other things....

Most of the things we have are perhaps in the long run usefull, but do not
tell me that everything in a boat is optimal. There are things that are
fashion on tradition and in sailing several cruising men follow the racing
mens habits, because they believe that it is the best way to do the things.

Look, it took a really long time for the full lenght battens to arrive
to Scandinavia, just because the racing rules doomed them. When I changed
my mainsail and adopted them, there were lots of people wondering about
their usefullnes, becaue the racing boats did not have any.

>-John

- Lauri Tarkkonen
Newsgroups: rec.boats