Petit message de John sur la courbure du guindant de foc :
John Tushingham a écrit:
OK, let's put this to bed before it gets out of hand. The rules have always intended and shown that the luff be straight, in hindsight it would have been perfect if it had been spelled out in black & white, but nobody's perfect and we expected that clarifications would have to be made to cover any oversights in the original rules.
I make all my DF jibs with a straight luffs and I can't say I see the need to introduce any curvature, natural sag in the jib luff when sailing pushes in enough shape when combined with curvature set into the foot. I'm sure you all appreciate the ethos of the rules, so let's keep it simple and transparent so that home sailmakers don't have to learn any 'dark arts' the hard way!
I agree there have to be some tolerances built in to measurements and where necessary these have been built in to the rules. But a straight line is a straight line! Sure, there will be micro variations along that line due to human error and small discrepancies when folding over the jib luff pocket, but these are to be expected and pretty much impossible to measure at the lakeside, so it seems pointless to bog the rules down with that kind of detail.
It was felt the fairest way to deal with existing curved luff sails was to 'grandfather' them. This less than perfect situation will eventually resolve itself and will become a 'non-issue' over time, but at least everyone now knows what the rule always intended, which is why we see it as a clarification and not a new rule. A decision had to be made and we feel it's the right one, the question needed resolving - and it has been.
John Tushingham
_________________
C'est avec l'esprit libre que l'on avance...
France Laser RC