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Our shiny new sail arrived today, many thanks to a good friend who brought it over for us. Obviously the first thing we wanted to do was compare it with our existing crisp packet… sorry sail. So we decided to share what we saw. To be clear, our old sail is very old, so it has shrunk over the years, especially the bolt rope, that and it is very badly delaminated. So that will affect the comparison, but here we go anyway.
The obvious differences
A side by side comparison of our new and old sails, along side Peter Freyne’s colourful RS600. The obvious difference is the square top profile of the sail and of course the new black colour.
Maybe someone else knows whether the threads are actually carbon or dyed polyester. It looks more modern, rather than a throw back to late ’90s I14 mains.
The other obvious change is the Tri-Radial panel layout, as opposed to the broad seam construction of the old sail. Overall the sail looks more modern and powerful than the old one.
The less subtle changes
We set the two sails up with the tacks linked together, and the majority of the luff lengths lined up. From this photo is clear that the clew has been raised a few inches and the leech straightened.
In the same places on the sail we can see increased luff round. It looks like the new design has a straighter leech and more shape in the front of the sail. This would support the increased leech length and the square topped design.
The shrinkage from the old is probably making this seem a bigger difference, sail but the luff of the new sail looks to be longer, and the head of the sail is obviously squared off giving a lot of additional area at the head of the sail.
Out sailing we are glad to say the new sail is more powerful and sets better than the old sail. But in fairness the bar was pretty low in that respect as the old sail is badly delaminated. We had to reset the diamonds to take the increased luff round, so there is some fine tuning to do in that respect. We will also need to reset the Cunningham tails to account for the longer luff length, but we expected that due the old sail’s shrinkage.
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