I have no idea about the price. I imagine it's not cheap because it's a high-tech sail still in the development stage.
However, since we just got the roof sheathing on our new house, right before Wednesday's snowstorm up here in Maine, the SoftWing price doesn't stress me.
It's going to be a while before I have to worry about which sail to actually get (house is notably over budget already), and by that time the solution looks like it will have worked itself out.
I'd probably skip the reinforced (carbon?) mylar sails and go with dyneema. That should cost a lot less, be essentially impervious to UV, be very tolerant of wrinkles while stowed, and shouldn't pose the same creep-stretch issues that a more highly-stressed single-skin sail would experience.
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The worst case would probably be to go with fewer/larger/thicker frames, like Pha or Matin Blue, instead of a greater number of lightweight frames like softwing. Most of the work could probably be done at home, particularly if you have a sailmaker CNC-cut the panels ahead of time.
And if you go with a single mast, you could make some good arguments for going with a junk rig with multiple mainsheets instead of a softwing with a boom under stress.
It's also important to note that Pha went faster and pointed higher than a standard Tiki Wharram soft wingsail rig, which according to James Wharram's experience went faster and pointed higher than a Bermuda-rigged Wharram. That's a pretty good worst case.
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But I still like to drool over that SoftWing. It's got a beautiful foil shape that would look just perfect on a modern proa, and I like that it's got many lightweight tri-segmented frames positioned more closely together than the junk/wing rigs I've seen. I could see that working nicely at high speeds, albeit with a bit more stress.
I'm guessing that we'll see some nice progress over the next few years now that Beneteau and Softwing are busy testing their products. Even if SoftWing doesn't come up with a decent sail price or licensing fee, someone's likely to refine a design and make it competitive with standard high-tech sails.
- Mike
That looks very interesting. Have you seen any indication on pricing? The idea is cool, but if the sail costs more than the boat, I don't want to tease myself.
- Gardner
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