|
I recieved my "first round" carbon mast in October.....
Since then I have had only a couple of opportunities to sail with it. Recently I was at the St Pete NOOD with five Vipers. Good times ! There were two carbon rigs and three aluminum rigs(two of the three have second round carbon on order). I used the regatta to experiment and learn a lot more about how to get the best out of the new mast. I thought I would share my first thoughts about tuning etc. I hope that as everyone gets masts/sails etc., we will share our ideas. I had the advantage of having one of Doyle's sail designers crewing for me so I got some pretty educated input. Briefly:- 1. I really like the mast section and the degree of flex in the mast. It has a degree of overbuild and stiffness (especially in the lower section) that makes it easy to set up. This is not an edge of the envelope noodle. At the same time it has enough flex (especially in the upper section) to absorb the bigger puffs and be responsive to mast tune. 2.We were able to contrast the Class One Design carbon mast to an earlier custom carbon mast that one of the St Pete Vipers had installed as a PHRF-Beater. The custom mast was a noodle, that required two sets of spreaders(upper and lower) and an extra set of shrouds to set it up. I am very glad that the class went for SIMPLE. 3. Some have wondered how the carbon mast supports the keel during the hoist. The carbon mast does fine and has one neat advantage over the aluminum. There are two ways of hoisting the keel from the carbon mast. The first is the standard method we used on the aluminum masts of using the jib halyard with a turn around the mast immediately below the spreaders. It works just as well on the carbon. The neat addition of the carbon mast is a tang immediately below the spreaders so that the keel can be hoisted from there with a dedicated line. This means that you can hoist the keel while sailing into the ramp or hoist. This is nice for the ramp launchers. 4. In order to get a neutral helm, the headstay has to be longer on the carbon mast. I put a two inch twist shackle on the tack of my previous headstay and the helm felt near perfect. If we had one more day of sailing I would have experimented with less rake by moving the mast butt one hole aft and another 1/2 inch on the headstay but racing was cancelled on the last day. Paul Young from Rondar already knows this from his sail testing and the carbon masts are supplied with longer headstays.. 5. The first day of sailing was strong winds. In the big breeze I felt that the tension on the rig is really determined by putting enough on the uppers to maintain pre-bend downwind. In an ideal world, I might have wanted a somewhat looser rig up wind to allow the top of the mast to bend off more and depower upwind, but it is important to be bullet proof downwind and that requires prebend. We sailed with about 3-4 inches of prebend and we felt really safe downwind, while other classes (and one of the aluminum Viper rigs) were dropping masts. I was very, very impressed by this mast in the big breeze. 6. The cunningham is very effective on the carbon mast.I believe sail designs will adapt to reflect this. The Hyde sail has a strong mylar panel going vertically up the luff of the main which allows one to really load up the cunningham (keeps the sail working better in the big breeze upwind and also helps with the prebend downwind). The Doyle dacron sail panels are cross cut and was slightly less effective in this regard.We sailed with my Doyle sails on one day and a set of borrowed Hyde the next day. Garth (from Doyle) said they would definitely incorporate a stiffer luff panel in their next generation mainsails for carbon rigs. 7. The shape of my existing Doyle sail worked suprisingly well and the sail has certainly not been made obsolete by the carbon rig. 8. I did not have a reliable Loos gauge with me so I cannot pass on tension settings yet. The impact of the uppers is very easy to judge by running the main halyard down the back of the mast and looking at prebend. We sailed in the big breeze with 3-4 inches, and then eased to 2 1/2 inches for the second day with the Doyle sails (which have slightly less luff curve in them).The lowers were basicly at zero and with more time, I would have tried some more tension in them. I look forward to input from other Viperers as they gain more experience withe the carbon rigs. Enjoy! |
