Pics of MIT Tech dinghies under storm trysails

[rbgarr]

planing along in a (reportedly) forty knot blast of wind during last weekend's collegiate regatta on the Charles River in Boston.

http://oak.conncoll.edu/ntaylor/CamelsGal/pages/DSCN0963.html

I never experienced winds close to that strong when I was there. Heck, I didn't know they even had storm sails for those boats!

Edited to add quote from Francis E. Charles, Sailing Master, MIT Sailing Pavilion:

"It is often said that the Charles River (in Boston, MA) never has waves and the breeze is too often light and shifty. And those Tech dinghies are just slow. Well, this past Sunday we were host to the unofficial Fall NE Dinghy Championship for the 66th annual Professor Schell Trophy. The Roger Williams Hawks won the event in extreme conditions. Just after the A Division start in FJs with storm jibs, the River turned white with a 50 knot gust. It was an amazing sight as everyone handled the conditions and not a single boat broke down. For the final race the wind backed off to about 40 knots for B Division in Tech dinghies with storm sails with non-stop planing downwind."

[Figment]

I applaud MIT for being prepared for such conditions, and for making the decision to carry on with the regatta. A lot of schools would have called it off on Thursday.

[Ian McColgin]

They look like reefed mainsails from here. A trysail does not normally have such a high aspect.

In any event, good show.

[JimConlin]

I think I raced in those same boats and water under similar conditions about 42 years ago.
Is it too soon to tell whether fiberglass will hold up?

[rbgarr]

They look like reefed mainsails from here. A trysail does not normally have such a high aspect. In any event, good show.

Here's a picture of the sail. It's more of a short hoist storm main than a trysail.

http://oak.conncoll.edu/ntaylor/CamelsGal/pages/IMGP2741.html

And then there's this (uhh, ahem) "light weather" rig that someone cobbled together for a Tech dinghy. Gotta say he had fun with it! :D

http://www.juggernuts.com/comments.php?id=5227_0_1_0_C

[Ian McColgin]

Very nice. Summer sails and winter sails.

On more traditional Scandanavian boats one sometimes sees winter sails and summer sails. A good way is to make the winter sails about as big luff and foot as first or second reef on the summer sails and to make them unbattened hollow roach. Don Street advocates this as a way to fill the gap between working sails and storm sails which are usually too small to be all that useful.

[fair&fair]

Those Techs were replaced at some point in the last fifteen years I think, maybe even more recently. As far as FRP lasting, it is still a mystery to me why some folks think fiberglass rots. Fiberglass has been proven to last quite a long time as evidenced by Sydney Herreshoff's (1951) Arion, refurbished by Damian Mclaughlin in 2000. It is usually the wood and other materials used in some fiberglass boatbuilding that rots, thus causing structural issues....issues that wooden boat owners have been well acquainted with for centuries.

[Thorne]

Interesting photos -- kinda like SF Bay on a summer afternoon...

;0 )

Fair -- you don't sound very "fair" -- who said anything about "rot"?

Jim wondered, " Is it too soon to tell whether fiberglass will hold up?" Do you see the word "rot" in that sentence, 'cause I sure don't.

I've owned both glass and wood boats, and had both fail due to structural / mechanical issues completely unrelated to "rot". I've also seen rotten wood core in glass, and of course rotted wood planks and ply. But things can break without rot being a factor on any boat design and material.