Now, Wouter, you said the Hooter-type sail is supposedly faster than the spinnaker. What are you basing that on? I have seen no evidence of this. Has this been tested anywhere? If anything, I would think the opposite would be true. The purpose for using it is ease of handling, not speed.
First, I'm going to jump to Wouter's defense. He actually said he's heard two sides of the story....a) that Hooters are faster and b) that they run comparably with spis. He went on to say that he'd like to get some additional data to figure out which is correct.
Now for the real point of the post....
It seems that there are two parts of the hooter discussion...one, how to furl and unfurl the sail and two, the shape of the sail.
As far as using a roller furling method to manage the sail, I don't think there is any rule prohibiting this.
As far as shape of sail, I checked out the north sails site to get some information on their Code 0s. The keelboat handicapping systems have the same midgirth requirements as the current F16 rule, so they had to develop them to fit the rule as well. The racing Code 0's that North makes a) fit the midgirth requirement b)are set on a rope luff and c) are designed for use with roller furlers. It seems that using this same family of design, it's possible to get a "hooter-esque" sail that meets the current requirements.
However, I've heard that the racing code 0's are rather twitchy to trim....anyone have any experience with that?
Jeff.
