LIGHTER ALOFT
An innovative new oncept in the art of sailmaking could be set to shift the way superyachts and large-scale custom race boats of the future are designed and built.
The new generation of ‘cableless’ furling headsails being developed by a variety of sailmakers use an enhanced lens-shaped structure built into the front of the sail itself to deal with the large loads required to produce a straight luff, without the necessity for a separate, solid carbon luff cable.
Eliminating the need for a luff cable alone brings its own set of benefits.
For superyacht crews in particular, luff cables, when not being used, can often turn into a difficult to manage but easy to damage liability that takes up precious onboard stowage space. Cableless superyacht headsails are also proving simpler to rig and easier to deploy and retrieve, as well as being lighter and therefore easier to move around.
Going cableless can also bring significant gains in terms of the sail’s performance too, as evidenced by the number of cableless headsails popping up on high-performance super-maxi yachts around the world – boats, and their peers.
