A short(er) story of the work done so far develping the Flattens

For those who only have a few spare moments in the day, here is a quick overview of the key points that have come out of the last two years of development that Dan and Simon have done, that ultimately led to a J-111 in the USA, called "Spaceman Spiff" winning her class at Quantum Key West Race week earlier this year, with a full set of Flattens in their Light-Medium Jib. The feedback from the trimmers and sail makers on and off the boat was nothing but extremely positive and the Flattens had allowed them to trim the sail in ways that were not possible with existing furling battens systems. The full story can of course be seen on previous posts here.

Here are some of the images from that week, from North Sails library.





J-111 "Spaceman Spiff" with NS L-M Jib with full set of Flattens









 

J-111 "Spaceman Spiff" with NS L-M Jib with full set of Flattens

close up of Lower Flatten on J-111 "Spaceman Spiff"






Furled jib on J-111 "Spaceman Spiff" with full set of Flattens



  

Up until Key West, most of the work done was on J-111's and J-109's in the UK, where the unique design of the sail pocket allows the Flattens to be simply retrofitted to any appropriate sail. 

2 off 1000mm Furled Flattens

When Simon and Dan started this project, they were pretty sure that the furling ability of the product would be good, but were not 100% sure about the sailing performance. However, these doubts were very quickly dismissed when images of the J111 sail were compared to the original design files, and showed to be "almost spot on".

So here are some images that we can show, that will hopefully show why PFT's confidence level is so high. Most of the testing that has been done has been in lighter winds, which as anyone who has used a furling batten knows, is the hardest conditions to get them to work as they should (i.e. produce a tight furl whilst still giving the correct profile for the flying sail). Testing has of course been done in all conditions up to near gale force and were all very successful; "the Flattens were faultless and very good value" to quote the owner of the boat that was racing, shorthanded, offshore. In these extremes of conditions, the simple fact that the Flattens are "stable" in both sailing and furled forms, makes them unique and will give the end user the advantage they are looking for.



J-111 Code 3.5 Jib Furled with Full set of Flattens

J-111 Code 3.5 jib Upwind with Full set of Flattens in 9kn TWS

This sequence of images were taken in early 2012. They clearly show the sail shape, both furled and unfurled.


Here is a clip, again from the J-111, sailing and furling with a full set of Flattens in about 9 knots TWS.







As mentioned, Dan & Simon have also been developing the Flattens for In Mast furling. This testing is still on-going whilst they concentrate on the final spec for the baseline Jib Flattens but is a short clip showing some of that work, done at Seldon Mast in the UK on their test rig.