Saturday, October 9, 2010

The Wing

I might as well chime in on my take about solid wings. I think they should be allowed to develop. My expectation is that they would be neither popular nor harmful to the growth of the class. Even if Bora or Adam would win the Belmont worlds using a wing in some races, my bet is that they would use a traditional soft sail and mast combo for some or most of their races. And I doubt that spending lots of money for a custom wing would earn anybody a trip to the podium. No, winning requires a more expensive commodity: time on the water. 

Wings would allow tinkerers to continue to experiment. Whether it's Karl's fully articulated mainfoil, Gui's dihedral rudder foils, or Adam's solid wing, diversity is good. One idea may sooner or later prove to be the next best thing for the class. But we'll never know unless we let the tinkerers play.

O yeah, and Bernoulli said nothing about compressible or non compressible fluids. Only that total energy is conserved and that an increase in kinetic energy must result in a decrease in potential energy. When applied to moths there is a corollary: an increase in moth related expenditures must result in a decrease in expenditures elsewhere (food, clothes, living...).

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