Daniel Caselli, in Uruguay was the first customer to buy a ReallySimpleSail for his Goat Island Skiff. The sail was about half the cost of any sails he was able to get made locally or import.
He was kind enough to get out on the water briefly last weekend to see how the sail worked and looked.
He says it has changed his old Volkswagen into a Porsche.
For me, I’ve been really confident about the workmanship the Philippines team have been putting into the sails for a few months since we started into production mode. They are clearly watching what they are doing and now pushing me to document improvements to the details as well as assembly method and order of processes. Really capable and careful people.
The remaining question was, despite static measurements of the sails last year by Rick Landreville and Al Zuger that helped finalise the sail depth, particularly in relation to the spar bend in the top of the sail … we were still a little bit unsure of my design input.
The problem with static measurements are that the sail doesn’t really take exactly the same shape as when sailing. So we just didn’t know whether my design choices were correct.
Daniel’s pics have washed that concern away. The sail looks very nice, the sail quality is reproduceable and the sails look very nice on the water. We will continue to tweak and develop all these sails in the coming years with feedback from the Storer Boats community.
Just as all the Storerboats plans have been debugged by feedback from builders, we will do the same for the sails.
So, forthwith, the pics on Piriapolos harbour!
The head of the sail has been cut much fuller than the first two static test prototypes. This will alow the downhaul or alternative “vanghaul” to be tensioned much higher to reduce sail twist without overbending the yard along the top edge of the sail and overflattening the sail.
The downhaul has to be used strongly in all conditions where the boat can move freely and reliably (over say 5 knots of breeze). In stronger winds the downhaul has to be trimmed violently tight. Note how Daniel has dialed in some depth to the bottom of the sail with a looser outhaul. Ideal depth is about 1 in 10 which will give just an extra touch of weather helm and give the boat low down power to punch through waves in stronger winds. This way the depth of the sail is low where it doesn’t heel much and the super tight downhaul flattens the top of the sail.
The production sails are set up for either laced along the foot if the boom is the traditional round section timber or to set loose footed like Daniel if the boom is stiff enough. If it is a laced foot, set the depth of the sail with outhaul tension to about 1 in 10 before lacing the rest of the foot.
Back to the launch ramp. Sail twist does depower – wind is puffing up to 18, but I would recommend Daniel to have a much higher downhaul tension in these conditions.
