No pics (yet) and no previous posts.  The idea is to progress the Bucket List rig which had no mast bearings, sail track or batten cars, but required more strings and tension than was desirable, and had the unstayed mast drawback of extra windage and disruption at the front of the sail.  Neither is a deal breaker, but it would be nice to eliminate them.    

So, the next step was a sail and fairing which are free to rotate, but the fairing automatically aligns with the apparent wind when the sail is sheeted on, giving an aerofoil shape.   To test this, I needed a mast, which was a good excuse to try a simplified build system, which has produced three pieces of tube which are being joined together, and one piece which is in the bin..  The build system worked well, and will now be in the plans.  One of the benefits of a fairing is the mast does not need to taper.  A non tapered mast is lighter, stiffer, easier to lay up and has less wastage. 

The 3 main challenges with soft/partial wing rigs are i) weight,  ii) controlling twist, which on a fast boat should be minimised  and iii) stopping the leading edge deforming.    

At the same time, we had an idea for lighter, simpler rudder mounts which would apply to all the boats, so this had to be tested as well.  The first attempt showed they would work, but that modified ogival sections were not ideal, despite being easy to build.  

Current status is I am building Speer foil blades which will go in the new mounts once they are modified to fit.  I have built a test piece of fairing, which worked, but the build method won't scale up very well.  I'll try another piece this week.  The mast is in 2 pieces, soon to be one.   I have an old rectangular sheet of unshaped dacron which will do for the sail.    The mast will be mounted mid tramp, the same as on the Volvo proa  http://harryproa.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/volvoproa.pdf.  Not because it is better than in the lee hull, but because it is interesting and opens up some possibilities not available with in hull masts.

I would have liked to do all this on Bucket List, but experience has shown that all experiments should be done on the smallest boat available, which is Elementarry.  

More as it happens.