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Hello,
I'm first of all a Catamaran sailor and Windfoiler. With few friends we are in the process to try Mini Land Yacht. The more motivated one has bought a Blokart. I'm in the process to buy a Plumekart. The idea is first of all to have fun and "race" between friends. No large areas here (south of France), so target are parking lots and football playgrounds.
The Plume kart comes with a 4.7 Frog sail. The manufacturer says it should allow me to practice on macadam between 4 and 17 knots, and that I would then need a 3m2 or a 2.5m2. Those surfaces are MUCH smaller than what I'm used to !
I do not see on the net pictures on the net of such small sails (2.5 or 3m2) on land yacht. Seagull catalogue smaller sail is 3.8m2...
Is there a reason ? Do I need such small sails? Are they only used on small karts or also on larger ones ?
Do those surfaces have a lot of panel shaping, or are they more designed by luff curve ?
Willing to learn :-)
JMF
The smallest sail I have for a mini is 4 sqm I would need a gale on hard surfaces to have any smaller
My most used sail is just over 5 sqm
Thanks Hiko, so I will wait a bit and practice with the 4.7 before final choice of a/the smaller sail.
Here's my mini with a recut windsurfer sail. Not big but not the right aspect ratio I think. It seemed to get rolling OK maybe on account of how much it could bag out. A member of the SA blokart club (BeachBall on here I think) kindly gave me a class 5 sail and I haven't used this one since.
This sail is about 3m2 at a guess. It is the top of a perished old sail, we just cut across above where the plastic window once was trying to make the best shape and sewed the original tack, clew and edge reinforcing for best fit. Mast is about 3.2m high. For lightweights it works surprisingly well, taking a good shape and has caused embarrassment when the kids (8 to 12 years old) pass us going upwind in light conditions. It needs a strong wind to get an adult moving, I've had it to 35 Kph with a great big tear across the middle of the bottom panel. (90kg) Another visit to the sewing machine is pending, there might be more patches than sail.
Thanks for all those information,
Looks like that "not racers" and Blokarts users are using such sails, but that the appear less on land yacht racers.
I have found a source for a cheap 3m2 land yacht dacron sail, and will buy it.
Off Topic: it seems that the community is not very active here. But I have found no other more active forum on the web in English (or French) language. Still people seem to practice in real life. It is sort of the first time that I don't find an active community on the web for real life activities. Especially when they are not so mainstream and very distributed on the planet. People like to share, discuss, dream together.
Seabreeze is still the place for so many interesting things on land yachting ! Thanks all to those valuable treasures we can access and learn from now !
JMF
jmf1, in the south of France there is the beach of La Franqui. A lot of landsailing is done there. For sails you can generaly say that the harder the wind, the smaller the sail, the less resistance the smaller the sail. If you look at friction, rolling resistance, weight, etc; it adds up in less speed. On a beach you have more resistance than on tarmac or ice. On ice a sail is easelly too big when you reach topspeed. A bigger sail will slow you down, but will give better acceleration. On a blokart there are 2m2 untill 5,5m2 sails. Lets say the wind is constant 15knts and the pillot weighs 80kg; on the beach the pilot will use 5,5m2, on the tarmac 4m2 and on perfect ice could even be 3m2. Idealy you want to use the smallest sail to loose the wind as soon as possible, but at the same time you want to have all the power. Surfaces of beaches are dynamic, so choices are often a compromise. Hope this will help. Greets wfw
