Friday, May 28, 2010

Custom sail discussion with Jeff Henderson part 2

Part 2 of the custom sail discussion with Jeff.

Lil update on the battens part of the discussion. I stopped by again and convinced Jeff to let me experiment with the batten length, because I would really like to feel the difference between long and short battens on the same sail. He wasn't too hot (joke!) on that since he knows that difference very well, but then he thought that it might be interesting for the blog readers to read my report. So, thanks guys for reading this blog...

So here's the plan.
He's going to make those pockets for long battens all the way to the mast. I'll test it for a couple of weeks. Then I'll bring it in and have the pockets shortened with a quick fix (I'm thinking to test only one first and then two).
If in the end I will prefer the long battens, it will be easy to remove the quick fix. If I will prefer the short battens instead, he will have to do some sail surgery to do a proper shortening job and avoid that lost of sensitivity on the luff he mentions in the interview.
Can't wait.



Lil forecast.
As Thursday's weather map clearly shows, there has been a respectable fetch oriented towards Hawaii that will send overhead waves to Hookipa over the weekend (Sunday being the best day).


South shore might get some action too, probably the usual Maui waist to belly high stuff at most spots. It's actually a bit of a difficult forecast, because the low on the right of the southern pacific weather map of May 25th shown below is more east than usual, so we'll get some angular spreading of a bigger swell headed east of us and that's always difficult to predict.
What's easy to predict instead is that the internet will soon be flooded with photos of huge Teahupoo (Tahiti is around 18S, 150W you can barely see it on the map).


Part three of the custom sail discussion with Jeff sometimes next week... stay tuned.

Post update. As soon as I published this post, I received a press release from Watermanleague.com announcing that Dave Muir won the third event of the Standup World Tour.
They attached two photos... good timing, uh?

This is the winner.


This is Duane Desoto.

5 comments:

Nice said...

GP, I _really_ like this series. More so than the surf-interview with Kazume, which I also liked a lot. This insight interviews is something that enrichens the blog I think.

Tell Jeff that your discussions, seeing the "office" and sails, really makes me miss Maui and the people. It's so darn easy to fall back in old routines when not there - materialistic living, underchallengening job etc. :-P
Wish I could bring he whole family and live there for a year or more, but no can do, and I can
t be away from the kids that long. It would kill me more than being a hamster in the "wheel of ordinary"

Keep it up. Sounds like a sail I want, except I can't do without the colorfulness of the SF's

drm said...

Why are you guys sitting in your underwear discussing sail design? ;-)

Really like the interview!

Gregor said...

Why not just have full length batten pockets with half length (or what ever shorter length) pockets piggy-backed onto the same batten pocket.
If my memory serves me, Neil Pryde, I think, did just that with a series of sails back in the early 90's, it was touted as a convertable batten system. But I can't remember the name of those sails. A good idea at the time, you could go back and forth with the setup depending on the conditions.

cammar said...

Niclas,
colors are a "nice to have", but since my sail won't be in dacron, it will be a completely clear see-through sail.

Drm,
please update yourself on the lastes board shorts fashion trends... :)

Greg,
that's what I was trying to ask Jeff in the interview. He objected that such a solution won't be optimal for the shape/performance of the panel by the luff when using the short battens. The end of a batten pocket needs to be kinda bulky/strong because of the strong pressure it receives.
Instead, he will let me experiment with the batten lenght and once I know which lenght I want, he will make sure that I have only one proper pocket end at the related place.

Unknown said...

Nice vid to get more understanding of sails. BTW, my '05 HSM Psyclones have a convertible batten. This video triggers me to try the full batten setup once again.