I believe the camber control is automatic in the same way that most rotating wing masts will automatically rotate, or even over-rotate, if you don't limit the angle between the mast and the boom.

  Technically you could get even more efficient by adjusting the camber, but as with manual mast rotation adjusting, that's a lot more work that I'd personally want to bother with.  Generally on my cat I just either loosen or tighten my rotation limiter based upon whether I'm beating or running, and then leave it at that.  I'm sure that a competing double-handed boat with two mast rotation adjustment lines could beat me in a race, but they'd have to know what they're doing.

  This sail is a thing of beauty!

  I initially saw it a few weeks ago when a blurb appeared in Multihulls International, but the videos they had at the time weren't very inspiring.  Plus the description of success in 30-knot winds (ending in a capsize when they couldn't control the rig properly) wasn't very comforting.

  This video, on the other hand, is amazing.  There's a better view of how the camber switches as the sail goes through a tack, and the speed looks quite real.  Even if they were intentionally sailing the other cat poorly, the soft-wing cat was still clipping along at an impressive pace for a day without whitecaps.

  Even better, this system appears not to need a rotating mast.  You'd probably want a rotating boom with a short forward nose to keep the luff taut, but that's something I'd happily put up with in return for the performance gain.  This might even be enough to let me get away with a single mast, making it that much easier to short-tack (short-shunt?) out of the five-mile-long inlet where we live. 

  Thanks Arto and Robin for posting the links.  I'm inspired.

        - Mike

 

This one is fairly cool, although I don’t see any method of camber control.  There was another one I found about six months ago that had three or four lines going up the mast that allowed the nose of the foil to swing though about 20 degrees or so and get more or less camber as desired.  That one also had a 3 or four foot horizontal rod at the top of the mast to get the back of the sail tight.  I really think the soft wings are the way to go as I believe you could make the whole rig maybe 30% smaller than a traditional one and still get the same drive.

Jerry Barth

 

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From: harryproa@yahoogroups.com.au [mailto:harryproa@yahoogroups.com.au] On Behalf Of Arto Hakkarainen
Sent: Thursday, February 27, 2014 4:43 AM
To: harryproa@yahoogroups.com.au
Subject: Re: [harryproa] Matin bleu wing sails

 

 

Just came across a more advanced version of the soft wing rig. You may find this interesting: http://soft-wing.ch/ 

 

Video of the rig on a F-18 catamaran: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DNbCZkd9tX0 

 

Arto