I am doing a research paper on how technology has effected sailboat racing. any book/website suggestions? sailing has consumed my life so i will be writing about sailing for the next 8 weeks.

How about tactic's they have had quite a revolutionary effect on sailboat racing, especially in their early days. Im sure i read something recently about this topic I will see if i can find it again and get back to you.

Beigel wrote:
.I am doing a research paper on how technology has effected sailboat racing. any book/website suggestions? sailing has consumed my life so i will be writing about sailing for the next 8 weeks.



Easy!!



www.sailx.com










Look at this: Decca Navigator Systems In the old Wicklow Lifeboat, in service from 1956 - 1989, there was immense excitement when the lifeboat was kitted out with this amazing piece of technology. It was a big piece of kit in which you could store 3, yes, THREE whole way points... Think of what we have now. We have little ones the size of phones. We even have the technology ON phones for very little cost! These GPS systems can tell you exactly where you are within a few feet!

TackTacks can even be put on dinghy's with no wires or battery packs!


This is a never ending paper...!!

Frodo wrote:
TackTacks can even be put on dinghy's with no wires or battery packs!

Fro, can you put one of those on my dinghy? I'll PM you my mailing address

its gonna be a long one. ill post specific questions once i come up with them.

A general question, what time period are you talking about and when you say technology, are you restricting yourself to digital technology (you need to include computer modelling & design in that category), or does that include material and other technology.

For instance neoprene (wet suits) and PVC (dry suits) transformed sail racing.

Carbon fibre also has made a little different.

Ropes? Cant have all those fine control systems with hemp strectchy rope?

Then there are boat design ideas that have changed sail racing. Believe it or not kickers (vangs) have not been around for ever. Winged foils. Trapeezes.

Other developments, such as coaching tools and techniques used by top sailors see this article -> http://www.sailfun.co.uk/index.php/the-sailing-school/27 for instance

Good luck, Alan

moths don't even sail anymore. they fly. I guess that's why they call them moth's.

Burnulli's principle (sorry for poor spelling) that helped us sail upwind. square sails vs triangled sails?

spinnakers: symetrical vs assymetrical (assyms came later).

wooden boats -> fiberglass -> carbon fiber

cloth sails -> dacron -> mylar, kevlar, pentax, technora.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernoulli%27s_principle

bethwaite.com/home.html (bringing skiffs to the masses)

www.amazon.com/High-Performance-Sailing-...hwaite/dp/0070057990 (awesome quantitative tome)

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Czes%C5%82aw_Marchaj (a quantum leap in applied physics at the time)

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bermuda_Fitted_Dinghy (development class with Marconi Rig, 130 years old)

www.goetzboats.com/

www.mcconaghy-aus.com/

I wonder who did the first polyester sails and just smoked everyone who had cotton? North I think. You can probably call Lowell, he would probably bend your ear for a few minutes.

Hood sails (first in kevlar sails), UK sails (first in load-mapped sails) and North (first in 3 DL)...

im talkin sail shape and size, hydro and aerdynamics. materials, stiffness, mono VS multi hulls. how it all effected sailin by the skippers hand

BigRig wrote:

I wonder who did the first polyester sails and just smoked everyone who had cotton? North I think. ...

In the mid 1970's North Sails was the leader in buying polyester material, so they could buy a batch of cloth, stretch test it, and if they didn't like the characteristics they had the clout to return it and try a different cloth run. Guess who had to use the cloth they returned.

I think materials advancements have enabled most of the big technology breakthroughs in sailing.

However, some breakthroughs in sailing technique have come much later than when the technology was available. For example, the sailboard could have been done more than 20 years before the 1970's. Another example is the Tornado cat was introduced in 1968, but it took 20 years to figure out how to fly hulls downwind, and I'm sure that could have been done on a 1970's vintage Tornado, if they just knew how.

Why didn't kite sailing come before sailboards?

Why are there so many mono-hull variants when some of the first sailing craft were multi-hulls?

Why did it take so long for the most spendy sailboat racing in the world to figure out that multihulls are faster than monohulls?
-PEB

For that stuff Beigs look at instrumentation. Rochester Instruments? Some of the first digital knotmeters were on 12 meters back in the 60s. It gave skippers realtime quantitative feedback on trim changes. Quant leap in tech for sure. Call somebody older at Ockam and see if they can help.

Sail shape, etc. look at Marchaj. (pronounced "mar-shai").

thnx for the help guys! i turned the paper in on Fri 4/30/10. nervous to find out what my grade is... MONDAY PLEASE COME SOON!

FAIL!

just kiddin'

hey guess what.
i got xtra credit and recieved a 102% on my paper

You will let us have a look at that paper, will you not?

dont see why not, it is quite long, so i dont know how i will post it

put it online on a blog or website or whatever, and send us the link.