If interested see my reply to Will Gorgen on todays date in the Volvo 70 thread under “New Classes”.
The bottom line ,in my opinion, is that a canting keel is far superior to a canting mast but that a canting mast can help incrementally on a fixed keel boat or when used in combination with a canting keel. A boat designed to use twin asymetrical daggerboards with a low wetted surface fixed keel strut configuration could also work as long as it had twin angled aft rudders or one rudder that was tied in to the mast angle similar to a design by Hal Robinson.
Another serious problem with canting masts is that at high mast cant angles the boat will probably have a very asymetrical heeled underbody developing large turning moments-at least throwing the boat out of balance. According to Roy, Dario of Carbonic boats that built a canting mast boat thinks the mast would also have to move fore and aft to deal with these out of balance moments.
Equally serious would be poor upwind performance caused by the lack of area for lateral resistance as the mast cants.
Doug Lord
microsail.com
monofoiler.com
High Technology Sailing/Racing