Category Archives: Measurement

Sunday 6th Club Report…!!

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Update : Lots of members are away (Easter and all that) so I was expecting the Club to be quiet. Not so!!

It was a cracking blue sky day with bags of top end A rig breezes around. Out on the water, the Proteus design work-up was well under way. Craig and Nigel had Proteus N and Proteus N+1 out there, and Phil H was driving Craig’s original Vanilla IOM design as a benchmark.

I’m ‘off games’ so was delighted to find Hugh and Rob V measuring up Rob’s new F6 Marblehead which Rob hopes to campaign to the Worlds.

I’d seen some IOM measuring previously but it was really interesting to see Hugh getting the rigs registered for the Marblehead. Learned a whole lot from both of them, I can tell you.

After a jolly sociable lunch, Craig and Nigel continued the Proteus calibrate-and-practice routine on the north course. To my eye, Proteus N and N+1 were performing very similarly indeed as the gusts swept through the course. Nigel was especially happy with the rig pre-bend now. I shall not reveal what “N” has reached, but it’s pretty amazing!!

How They Weigh a One Metre ?

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When you come into Radio Sailing, you hear a lot about weights. It’s a hot topic, just like it is in dinghy and keelboat racing.

As an aside : when I ordered a new Dragon keelboat, I remember going to the builder (who had lots of Olympic golds, world titles and the rest of it) and asking what weight he thought the boat would come out at. He said 1700kg is the rule. I naturally asked, “Yes, but what weight do you think you can build mine to?”… “1700kg” came the reply. And he did. Amazing.

So in at least One Metres and Marbleheads, owners and builders have the same keen interest in weights as my Dragon Builder.

I was keen to see my new IOM weighed. The photo above shows the setup. A digital scale with fine graduations plus a wooden IOM standing bracket. Easy enough to see how the Measurer does his job now.

In fact, here is my boat being weighed. Note hatches and onboard battery are inside the weight limit.

Thinking of my Dragon story above, I thought you’d be interested to see how accurate my IOM builder was. “He’s 21Gms over!”, you proclaim !!

Well, I thought that too, so I asked him. I take it that lots of people do. I received a well practiced answer. He says that they target 20gms over because they find that scales around championships do vary. So if you weigh in at a Championship and it looks like you are 20gms over, you can always pop the corrector out.

OK – so he was 1gram over !!….

How Will My Sails Get Measured??

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So got your new boat? Have your sails been measured and certified?

Check first at the tack of each sail and see if bears a Measurer’s mark or signature? If it has a signature, it will have been measured in. If not, think about getting it done.

Datchet Radio Sailing have the measuring process well sorted. In the workshop, there is a giant board maybe a couple of metres long – see photo above.

I’d half expected when watching the measuring process, that the big rulers would come out and key measurements recorded for all your rigs. It was much cleverer and faster though.

The Measurer had a collection of pre-marked half dowels. So it was very fast for him to run the dowel rods over key dimensions of each sail – check if the sail measurements were within prescribed limits, ….and we were done in no time.