Hi!
Well, I must thank for the nice plans for the Razor 3 and Harpy. Boy they where a lot of fun to build. I finished the razor 3 first and tempted the waters with a Mac A rig. A bit modified in the sense it has a longer luff and jib but the foot remains as per plan. Weight overal with this rig was about 480 grms. It worked well enough to get it sailing and trying it out for the first time, but I was leaning lower than 45 degrees in strong winds so it was a bit hard to control in strong gusts. Relentlessly I proceeded to make a Uni rig like the ones in the plan. Same dimensions and all and retrofitted it to the razor. Left the other rig aside for now and continued to build a harpy which my dad in law started building before going back to Ecuador. So last Friday I had two completed footy sailboats ready to to sail. I was very impressed with the performance of the Razor and the Uni rig. It felt like it glides over the water, and in strong winds it is a bit easier to handle. Nope, I dont switch sails depending on the wind speed, but it sure is fun to sail this two.
the harpy was matched with the Mac rig A mod, and apparently it was the right combination. Saturday my son (6 year old ) and I went to the local pond and gave it a try at racing each other before his soccer game (at the same park) and we had a blast! I was chacing him up and down wind, right and left and whatever straight sailing line we took on, the harpy always had a beggining advantage but the razor always was closing in fast! and i mean, very Fast (ok, so I let him win in interest of keeping him excited about it!)
My razor had a home screwup bulb I made by banging and hammering, glueing and taping some lead that I had around. The Harpy, I made a mold out of clay of a rough size and shape of what I wanted to get close to. Made two halves and glued them together and sanded away the shape. Hydrodinamicaly much cleaner than the razor.
This past Sunday afternoon I was sailing late in the afternoon and my rudder post failed. I gues Carbon Fiber is not that great as for this function, so anyway, In the downwind leg I was skimming fast the surface when I saw something float up from underneath the boat, and the razor made a sharp u turn and lost all control coming to a complete stop. It took me a while to wait for the wind to blow it ashore but at the end I recovered the rudder and the boat! (that should have happened with my sailplane and all I would get is a big trashbag!) Back home y was inspected what went wrong and could see theat the brass bushing holding the rudder post had a flange that basically cut into the carbon fiber rod. I took the ooportunity to fix the rudder and at this point decided on modifying the razor’s bulb to get a nice hydro dinamically shaped bulb. Boy its going to be faster without all the parasite drag!
I must say it has been a lot of fun and cant wait to get back to the pond with my kids to have a new race (well, chase around my son kind of thing)
Here’s a picture of each, hope I can load them!
Enjoy
Enrico
