From: tarkkone@klaava.Helsinki.FI (Lauri Tarkkonen)
Newsgroups: rec.boats
Subject: Re: Tuff Luff and other headstay foils
Date: 7 Nov 92 07:35:07 GMT
Organization: University of Helsinki

In <1992Nov6.215732.4720@leland.Stanford.EDU> stefan@leland.Stanford.EDU (Stefan Michalowski) writes:

>[David Zielke asks about the relative merits of hanks and headfoils]

If you want my opinion it is in short: Try to awoid the foil by any means.

>Cost is certainly one factor in choosing between hank and foil. Another
>is the way you like to sail. In my view, there are two advantages to
>the foil:

As said it will give you unnecessary expenses.

>  - Something or other about aerodynamics of clean entries. I can't
>    believe that this is a big effect, unless you are racing very,
>    very competitively.

I claim that mote races are lost than won by headfoils. If you bother to
gro through some more accurate description of the 'ton cup' (means quarter
to two ton), you will find out that almost every race there are boats that
have a problem when the foil fails. They hit it with spinnaker boob, dent
it, bend it or the sail just comes out of the foil in the middle and they
cannot perform that extra smooth sailchange promised them in the selling
brochures. The gain made by the aerodynamic factor is peanuts compared to
this.

>  - If you have two grooves, you can shift headsails on the fly.
>    This is absolutely essential for racing. Changing jibs early and
>    often is one of the keys to racing success.

If you are a cruising man, your headsail change will not be so time
pressed that you can not take the hanks one by one. I just met a sailors 
who lost his brand new number one genoa, when he wanted to change it to
smaller when the wind came up. He pulled the #1 down and because it was
not hanked on it went to teh water and he had not enough strenghs to 
pull it back. Of course you say that he is incompetent and fumblend,
but if he would have hanks, he would still have the genua. :-).

>The big disadvantage is that you have to go forward to hoist down and
>lower the sail. This can be wet and dangerous at exactly the time when 
>you need to shorten sail. With hanks, you just rig a downhaul from 
>the cockpit. Personally, I wish I had hanks on my boat, but that takes 
>us back to cost...

These days, I was still doing some racing, I had a interesting race with
a boat some 3 feet longer than mine. I had a huge lead, but run into a
calm and he passed me, I was truing to catch him for the rest of the 
race, until we came to the last mark before the short last leg, that was
a beat.  We both had spinnakers up, with the jibs down, he had a comfor-
table lead. We both got our spinnakers down in proper fashion, we hoisted
our jib quickly, it was on hanks, but his jib came suddenly out of the luff
some three meters above the deck. It jammed, he got four people on the fore-
deck trying to get the jib up or down, but it was jammed, we passed him
with a big smile of our faces. :-). The head foil had again lost a race
for somebody.

>Stefan

So this is wyi I feel that the headsail is a unseamanlike gadget and should
be avoided. If you ask what i thing about some furling gears, I just tell
you that at the momet I am using foresails with full lenght battens, and
I am very pleased with their performance. (But this is another story..)

- Lauri Tarkkonen