Silver Bullet?

Moth front and center at North's Headquarters

Great start for the North Sail's International Moth program. Our V7 and V8 designs have been used in only three championships to date. In each of these three events only one sailor has used the North Sail for the entire event. However, in each of these events the lone sailor with a North Sail convincingly won the regatta:

2009 Australian Championships- 1st Place Nathan Outteridge (North Sails V7 MH)

2009 US Midwinter Championships- 1st Place Chris Williams (North Sails V7 MH)

2009 Victorian State Championships- 1st Place Rohan Veal (North Sails V8)

This past weekend at the Vic States Rohan raced with the new V8 design. Rob Gough from Tasmania also used a North V8 in the first two races, taking a 1st and a 2nd with the sail before heading back to Tasmania. Both Rohan and Rob were using new Bladerider VRX's which have been immaculately constructed. Rohan was using Bladerider spars and Rob was racing with a CST 353 mast.

These two new V8 sails were having a slight problem keeping the cams rotated, we are looking at a couple different details to solve this problem (Changing battens stiffness, stronger luff sleeve material and revised orientation, batten angles, etc). I am sure both Rob and Rohan would have been even faster with sails that had better cam rotation. Once the sails are 100% we will be starting our first production run of about 50 units.

The first batch of Southern Spars masts and booms have been shipped out. A few of these rigs will be tested in Hawaii as well as the first North Sails V10 design.

Winning equation for everyone to think about: Bladerider + North Sail = Silver Bullet

What's on YOUR mast?

Southern Spars

MemBrain Model of Southern Moth Rig

I always enjoy working with Sparmakers, it was one of my favorite parts of the AC design and luckily a very large part of North Sails Design Services work.

One of the things I find fascinating with mast analysis is that simulations can be checked with hand calculations pretty easily. This is something which is not possible with sail design, maybe this is one of the reasons that sail design still is very much a mix of art and science where mastmaking, while still a very creative process, is a pure engineering exercise.

Working with Southern Spars is always great, they have more engineers in-house than most of the other mastmakers combined (I don't think that is an exaggeration)! So there are always new tricks to learn. As everyone will soon know (Or should have figured out by reading the sail selection chart) the new Southern Rigs are a little stiffer than most other moth rigs.

Right now we are developing the V6 and V10 designs. North Sails Cape Town has built a lot of test sails so far for the Moth, so it was important to try to model the Southern Rig carefully to get the luff curve perfect in order to keep our prices affordable. Therefore a lot of homework was done to hopefully get the V6 and V10 designs perfect on the 1st couple prototypes.

The above graph is the measured deflection and predicted deflection of the CST 351 tubes. This test was required to calculate the EI's (Stiffness and Stiffness distribution) of the most common skinny mast.

Two Southern Spars tubes are being offered, the Standard P1 tube and the Phat Boy tube for sailors above 85kg or so. The theory is that larger sailors apply more force through greater Righting Moment and therefore force masts to bend more than a smaller sailor.

Therefore it is possible to design two different stiffness masts which will bend the same if a more powerful sailor is using the stiffer mast. This is critical for North Sails because by understanding this relationship we can make a mainsail design which should work for both rigs as long as sailors choose a rig which is appropriate for their size and fitness. This also gives larger sailors a more level playing field as they will not loose as much power through added mastbend than the average mothie.

The chart above shows the total mast deflection of a CST 351, Southern Spars P1 and Southern Spars Phat Boy rigs. Also shown is the Southern Phat boy rig with an additional 10% more downhaul which is a good measure of the added mastbend the stronger sailors can exert on the mast (Mostly through side bend) than the average mothie.

Side Bend of spars modeled in MemBrain

Fore/Aft predicted bends

Please feel free to contact me if you are interested in a Southern Spar for your Moth and I will put you in contact with your closest Southern dealer. Prices and info on the Southern Spars Element C6 micro carbon rigging to follow...

Moth Midwinters

Just back this week from the Moth Midwinters (20 hour drive down and 30 hour ride back home through a snow storm). We had a small fleet (Only 3 Boats) but had a great three days practice before the regatta where we all were able to try some new things. Most importantly for myself, I was able to try the V7MH design which is the same sail that Nathan won the Australian Nationals with. The sail setup great on my CST 352 rig, but I am looking forward to giving it a try on the Southern Spar as soon as it arrives.

In other news, the 1st batch of V8 sails left for AUS, although they just missed delivery for the Adelaide International Regatta. Hopefully we will have news to report on the new designs next week. We will then go straight into production of the V6 and V10 designs.

Also note that there are two V7 AP designs left for sale. Please drop me a note if you are interested. One sail is unused and the other only used three times. These would be good sails for larger or stronger sailors with a standard bladerider rig, Fastacraft Mast, C-Tech or a CST 351 mast.

Details will be announced for the Volvo Ocean Race Moth Expedition regatta in Boston next week. Posibility of a dozen boats making it the biggest event on the East Coast to date.

Enjoy the pictures from testing before the midwinters. As always, hospitality in New Orleans was once again amazing. Next years regatta will be Feb 17-20th.