Greg,
Yes, rules are so much fun!!!
First off, the kit instructions have no dimensions for the sails. The kit instructions actually offer little by way of actual dimensions for anything. The hull is pre-marked as to where to drill for holes and where to place the various components, so they do not need to give any dimensions. Rule 1.1 was meant to be sort of a catch-all to keep people from looking for and exploiting loopholes in the rules.
The sail dimension diagrams only give maximum dimensions. So if a sail is 1 mm under the maximum dimension is it legal? Of course! If it is 5mm under max is it legal? Of course! If it is 20mm under the maximum is it legal? Yes. Do you see where I am headed with this? If the diagram only gives a maximum dimension then any sail with a set of dimensions that are less than the maximum for all those measurements has to be legal. The only caveat is that the roach and rounds must be a fair curve (as defined by the constant section batten wording, which by the way is a really cumbersome way of defining a fair curve).
If you modify your kit sails, then they must conform to this rule, but all that means is that the sail cannot exceed the maximum dimensions. so it seems pretty obviuos to me that you could make them smaller and comply with the rules.
The midgirth sail dimensions given in the table are in fact 5mm larger than the AVERAGE of the 25 factory sails that I measured. The intent of this was that sail makers will build their sails so that they measure in with no questions so they will build them a few millimeters smaller than the max. So the aftermarket sails are intended to be the same size as the average kit sail. In fact quite a few of the kit sails were significantly bigger than the max dimensions. Some sails were 15mm bigger in the top and mid girth mansail measurements. That is a lot of extra sail area. But we decided that if we chose the maximum dimension of any sail for our rules than all the aftermarket sails would be bigger than all but a few of the kit sails. That did not seem fair. So in fact, many guys are out there sailing on kit sails that violate the sail measuement maximum dimensions. That is why we had to specifically legalize all kit sails (some of them would violate the rule if measured). Plus it saves me a lot of time by not having to measure those sails.
I don’t think the rules really fight each other. Sail size is a speed controlling factor and needs to have a limit. In so far as bigger sails have higher speed potential, the limit needs to be a maximum. The current debate is whether we need a lower limit as a COST CONTROLLING factor (as opposed to a speed controlling factor). As of yet, no one has shown that there is any advantage to having multiple rigs for our class, so everyone is using full sized sails. So as of yet, there is need to impose a lower limit.
The risk is that if someone does come along and starts playing with multiple rigs and shows it to be an advantage, then it may be too late to put the genie back in the bottle…
- Will
Will Gorgen