Technology
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Structured luff sails have created fresh challenges for deck and rig hardware designers with working loads going through the roof. This has spurred Rigging Projects to develop some creative solutions
Load-sharing sails have generated a lot of excitement at the cutting edge of sailing – first code sails, then headsails, now mainsails – and with good reason. Their performance boosting potential is significant and their ability to give a huge range of depth and camber to sails is leading a revolution of tech trickling down from the America’s Cup to all boat platforms, even superyachts. The ability of structured luff sails to reduce loads has been grabbing headlines but the load has to go somewhere else. That creates new challenges for designers of deck and rigging hardware. Rising to the challenge, Rigging Projects has developed some creative, forward-thinking solutions. ‘We’ve always looked to push
boundaries,’ says Nick Black, a partner and designer at Rigging Projects with a background in naval architecture and grand prix sailing. ‘When there haven’t been solutions in themarket to handle emerging technologies, we’ve always gone after it, often starting fromscratch as we did with our locking headboard cars.We’ve seen our product range grow exponentially in a short period of time to deal with these challenges. With structured luff sails, the camber
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control is incredible. Youmay be reducing the load on your forestay but the load split between sail and forestay has gone from10 per cent on the sail, up to 40 per cent and Rigging Projects have had to come up with unique products to deal with this.’ ‘As a result our auto halyard lock
range has seen an extreme jump in loads. This was a driving factor for us integrating load cells into our forward locks. For example Aquarius II, the 212ft ketch that Royal Huisman is building, in partnership with Rondal, would normally have had a 15-ton jib halyard lock. It has now jumped up to 40 tons. It used to be enough to have a load pin on the forestay or rigging terminal but if we’re going to handle such large loads we really need to know where they’re going and thus we designed the first lock with an integrated load cell.’ This new style of lock is already on the 155ft sloop Hyperion, which also needed a new, stronger topmast section to handle the extra strain of a new structured luff code 0. Halyard locks are just one small
part of the Rigging Projects Group. With the recently launched Gunboat 80-01, Rigging Projects Design was instrumental in bringing together the owner’s team, Gunboat, North Sails
Above: for the first Gunboat 80, Rigging Projects had to re-engineer its locking headboard car design because the boat’s Helix structured luff mainsail triples the cunningham load, which massively amplifies the load on the headboard car. Fitting the new one on the same track section was a feat of engineering
and Southern Spars to develop one of the most advanced performance cruising cats. ‘We were excited and lucky to have an owner with the vision and belief in all of us as a teamto ‘design in’ load-sharing across the whole sail wardrobe including, for the first time, mainsail Helix structured luff technology which was pioneered at the last America’s Cup. As with headsails the cunningham load on new Helix mainsails has jumped threefold,’ Black explains. ‘For 80-01 it’s 6T (compared to 2T for non-structured) and that’s a massive change which amplifies the load on the headboard car. We had to redesign our locking headboard car to work in the same envelope but handle these extra loads, which is quite an engineering challenge.’ More and more, Rigging Projects
design services are brought in at project initiation by boatyards or private clients to help bring together the design loop and sailing system implementation. ‘We’re tremendously passionate
about our role in helping clients realise their dreams with their boats,’ Black says. ‘Our ability to do the turn-key package from initial design concepts to hardware provision, textile manufacturing
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